Amateur Radio operators using DMR assist in New Hampshire rescue

It's essentially the same here in the Rockies. And as AC1LC said, things can go sideways quickly. Fortunately, the person in this case thought to bring along another means of communication besides his cell phone (ham radio and/or satellite communicator/PLB).

It's not only risk of running out of battery charge. Unless one is in town or very near a major road, coverage WILL BE spotty, at best. The cell phone companies love to advertise wonderful coverage but it's untrue.

 

Chip, Cannon has a Brandmeister DMR repeater on it

There are a lot of areas up here in central and northern New Hampshire where there is zero cell phone coverage. And some people say to just carry a satellite phone.....looked at the price of them? In the areas devoid of cell coverage radios are the only means of communication, public safety radio, CB, GMRS and Amateur Radio. Other parts of the country have the luxury of being completely blanketed with cell phone coverage....here, not so much.

 

Rog.

 

Help out me here...

DMR is 'brand specific'? As in DMR radio will only work with the matching brand (version) of repeater? A licensing thing?

 

There are several DMR capable radios. Anytone, Radiodity, Baefeng (however it's spelled) BTech. The big 4, Yaesu/Icom/Alinco/Kenwood don't make DMR radios...at least not now. I personally use Anytone radios. I have a 578 in my shack and two 878 HTs for field use. DMR takes a little getting used to because of the code plugs and programming but if you're comfortable with spreadsheets it's not a big problem. Yaesu has System Fusion for their digital mode, Icom and Kenwood use DStar. Personally, if I was going to go to a different digital platform I'd go to Yaesu because of the extra bells and whistles that they offer. But, you need to check what types of repeaters are in your area. Where we are it's just about 50/50 DMR/Fusion with a couple DStar repeaters thrown in for good measure. If you check Repeaterbook it will tell you what platform the repeaters use for digital formats. Any DMR capable radio will work on any DMR capable repeater, the repeater radio brand doesn't matter. To futher complicate things for you there are also Brandmeister repeaters which are DMR but have their own talkgroups that may or may not work with DMR or DMR+ repeaters. Again, check Repeaterbook.com to see what's in your area.

 

Alinco does sell DMR capable handheld and mobile transceivers. See http://www.alinco.com/products.html

 

Chip, there's a Brandmeister repeater on top of Cannon, DMR on top of Mt Washington.

 

My bad! I didn't realize Alinco made DMR radios, that's good to know.

 

These are the BEST kinds of stories about ham radio "saving the day" .... I am a total DMR noob, but this story not only makes the case for DMR (it's not as tough to figure out a some say) but also for enabling the GPS feature for excursions like this if your DMR HT has it! Man, you guys did a great job DFing on-the-fly like that too ... but doing so in a mountain range can get tricky IIRC .... 2 meter signals get bounced around a bit between hills and can slow you down a bit .... we had this problem when we did fox hunts in southern cal back in the day .... seems to me GPS would make things even easier nowadays. Nice job you guys!!!!

 

You can carry it one step further and active APRS on your radio if you have it. Makes it real easy to find someone then.

 

flare gun on the batman belt maybe ? box of waterproof matches for a fire ?
hiking alone without a PLB ? come on man
any bears on drugs involved ? danger will robinson

 

Yes sat phones are expensive which is why I said “satellite communicator”, i.e. Inreach,
Spot, etc. or PLB Personal Locator Beacon. Ham radio can cover only so much and then some op needs to be listening on the other end.

 

Agree 100%. The Inreach/PLB is one of the best rescue tools out there. In this case ham radio filed the bill, other parts of the White Mountains the radio may not have worked.

 

Thanks!
It is when you get to 'code plugs' I glaze over.
I still use an old ICOM 28A in the shack and a VX5r for walkabout.
Set the frequency, offset and tone - done.

 

Nice to hear that DMR did something like that.

However, around these parts, the DMR repeaters are owned by some serious pendejos.

Because of this, I mostly likely will never use it.