ICOM IC-705: A slightly different perspective

Yes, the AMBE codec is proprietary and closed source. It's a chip now. You have to buy that chip to use AMBE. There are about 2 dozen other codecs that are open source. Who knows? We might start switching to an open source codec in the near future.

As for the open source standards?

DStar: ?
Fusion: ?
DMR: Publicly available through the ETSI: https://www.dmrassociation.org/dmr-standards.html

DMR is the only standard that makes the packet definition publicly available.

Open source always wins in the long run for at least a couple of reasons. 1) Better, more reliable interoperability 2) Cheaper, because it promotes competition among the vendors.

DStar is available from other manufacturers because Icom licenses DStar to other manufacturers, kinda like what Bill Gates did when he first came out with DOS and Windows.

I just personally choose to stick with analog for the time being--and not promote DStar, even if it prevents me from buying this neat looking 705. Not that I do much voice anyway. My personal problem is that I spent three years testing military systems for interoperability and I know how it works and who always wins in the long run. (Not to mention, again, the disparity, divisiveness and anxiety all these standards cause in newly licensed hams...)

 

D-Star is a open Standard

Here it is https://www.jarl.com/d-star/shogen.pdf

ICOM just licenses the AMBE source code in their newer radios and implements it into their firmware. I assume every other digital radio manufacture is doing the same thing now, including the Chinese.

It's fine that you don't want to play with digital radios or promote them. But you ought to be accurate in the reasons for it.

 

Walla be darned. I searched hi and low for the DStar standard about a year ago and could never find it. Thank you for giving me the link. You wouldn't happen to have the link to the Fusion standard, would you?

My reason for not playing remains accurate. If/when the ham community starts to implement trunking, DStar (and Fusion) will be obsoleted by DMR.

Peace out.

 

This should work

http://yaesu.com/downloadFile.cfm?F...V02_EN-GB.pdf&FileContentType=application/pdf

My understanding is that Yaesu is holding back the Wires-x stuff but I'm not sure about that.

 

Thanks for this! I’ve just started playing with Fusion and I’m curious about what’s going on after the ones and zeros get sent out to the intertubes by my hotspot.

 

No, but word has it that it will come with a yellow whacker vest.

 

...and have to remain mindful of the battery condition on yet another piece of equipment used to control the radio.

 

There is nothing special about a resonate antenna and resonance itself does NOT make an antenna work better.

Telling that you seem to think an antenna is either resonant or "random wire" which presumably means end fed. I use a balanced line fed doublet at home, all bands. Without my amp I can run it through an in-shack balun and my FT-990 internal tuner fine, but that old radio matches a much wider range than the newer ones. With my amp I use an external tuner.

I would DEFINITELY have and use a tuner in portable operation, unless for some reason I wanted to park on only one band and maybe one segment of it at that, but prefer external as the matching range of modern internal ones is just too limited. Just suck it up and be resigned to carrying one more box. A small manual tuner for QRP is tiny and light.

 

Whatever works, different strokes for different folks.

I bring my 4 band mini 100 watt portable from hyendcompany.com 49:1 UNUN , works on 40,20,15 and 10 meters without a tuner and it just works and it works very well, these EFHW with 49:1 don't work like a normal end fed with 9:1 which needs radials, the 49:1 makes them inefficient outside the resonant band and a tuner won't change that but it makes it "work" as far as the radio is concerned so the random end fed or whatever you want to call it can give multiband use with a tuner on all bands you want but might not work as well as the EFHW with 49:1 UNUN which needs no Radials. I brought hyendcompany Antenna to Germany and used it with my X5105, 5 watts and made some nice contacts.

Having said that, my EFHW 8010 from myantennas.com works brilliantly and can get from Ireland to North America, Central and South America with no tuner and 100 Watts, it's up high it's a great antenna, it's not a beam but for something that's a simple piece of wire it works very well indeed, again, no radials.

I also love the Super Antenna MP1 because it's easy to setup and I have no problem making contacts all over Europe and even got to Canada from Ireland @100 watts , ok I got a 52 but he heard me no doubt due to his beam antenna and high tower but the point is I got there with such an Antenna, I must use it more at home to try get more DX contacts. It would be good to be able to use it with some king of remote but I am happy with that antenna.

Different antennas for different uses. When I work portable I just want to get out and make contacts and the EFHW and Super Antenna mean I don't have to use a tuner and carry something extra and also buy something extra.

 

Read up on D-Star. Depending upon exactly what you wish to accomplish with trunking, D-Star has very likely been capable of the same (practically speaking) from the beginning.

I cannot imagine a scenario in which DMR 'wins' the digital wars. It is by a very wide margin the most difficult to use of the major three, and it provides less facility overall to the end user than either D-Star or Fusion. The main things DMR has going for it are cheap radios.

 

Very nice work, very informative - thank you, Julian.

 

This was an above average info session. Well done!

 

I hope this comes in some form of hard case else those protruding knobs will get very wobbly very quickly!

 

Or you could watch on your smartphone.

 

I'm going D-Star. No real reason to use anything else in my area.