Imagine sitting in your living room using an inexpensive hand-held radio and making crystal clear, static free contacts throughout California, the United States, and the WORLD! This is not only possible, but it’s easy to do using Digital Mobile Radio (DMR). And, we’re doing this now, right here in Santa Barbara!

This month, SBARC hosts a special presentation by Michael Rickey, AF6FB on the new and quickly growing DMR digital voice mode.  Michael will give us a demonstration on how DMR works and explain how the PAPA system is supporting a build-out of DMR repeaters in Southern California, making it easy to stay connected to the network throughout our region.

DMR is unlike most other digital voice modes used on VHF/UHF FM in amateur radio as it is supported by several major radio manufacturers including several low-cost imports commonly used by amateurs.  DMR networks can be accessed from repeaters here in Santa Barbara and also through home-brew and professionally built hotspots. You can get on the air with DMR with a Tytera MD-380 HT for as little as $80 and access thousands of talk-groups around the world and even chat with fellow SB hams dabbling in digital on our very own SBARC DMR talk-group.

Most DMR repeaters can access the same talk-groups available on any other repeater.  So no mater where you travel, you can radio home.  DMR also uses TDMA to support multiple users per FM repeater pair and at 12.5 kHz wide, it is far more efficient than traditional analog wide-band FM.