Re: C4FM (System Fusion) radios
By: Diamond Dave to All on Sun Feb 27 2022 05:16 pm

they're on the pricey side. Just wondering if anybody has experience with them and can recommend a particular radio, or avoid one.

Personally, I've yet to own a Yaesu that I didn't like. I have not tried the FT60 or FT70, but they are probably great for getting on Fusion for the first time, especially if you're not _that_ into radios. But, the FT3DR is definitely my favorite HT right now. It has a BRIGHT color screen that stays on all the time (you can set it to shut off, but I haven't), a SUPER fast-locking GPS, fast memory scanning, and AMAZING battery life compared to my previous Yaesu HTs (which include the VX-1R, 5R, 7R, and 8DR). I very stupidly didn't buy one when it was $300 on sale, and ended up paying close to $400. Well, now they have the FT5DR which is _exactly_ the same thing in a slightly different shell for $459 on sale. Sheesh. I'm not saying go buy this, but if you like radios and you do buy it, you probably wouldn't be disappointed. This is assuming you want a HT.

For a mobile, I personally like the FTM-300DR. It doesn't have a touch screen like the 400, but it _does_ have Bluetooth (as does the FT3/FT5) which works surprisingly well with the Yaesu BT earpiece that is $30 on sale, and it has two real VFOs so you can do cross-band repeat. The annoying thing is that it will repeat Fusion out to analog, but if you try to respond with analog it will only repeat analog and won't send back out to Fusion. Hopefully that made sense :D

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Re: C4FM (System Fusion) radios
By: DaiTengu to Diamond Dave on Fri Mar 11 2022 03:39 pm

That said, I rarely use the HT ever since I got my IC-705 (which is D-STAR, so not compatable with those repeaters in digital mode). I have a digital hotspot on a raspberry pi that I use from time to time, but I still have issues trying to find an active room/reflector/channel/whatevertheycallit.

So do you use your PiStar with D-Star right now? I'm not sure if I ever got mine to succesfully work... probably because I don't know anyone else with D-Star and a PiStar :). I've used D-Star pretty much just over simplex. There is at least one D-Star repeater near me but nobody ever talks on it. I'd like to get more familiar with using it with the hotspot.

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On 03-26-22 11:03, Phigan wrote to DaiTengu <=-

So do you use your PiStar with D-Star right now? I'm not sure if I ever got mine to succesfully work... probably because I don't know anyone
else with D-Star and a PiStar :). I've used D-Star pretty much just
over simplex. There is at least one D-Star repeater near me but nobody ever talks on it. I'd like to get more familiar with using it with the hotspot.

I use D-STAR and a couple of different hotspots, including a Pistar one. :) Works fine.


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Re: C4FM (System Fusion) radios
By: Phigan to DaiTengu on Sat Mar 26 2022 11:03 am

That said, I rarely use the HT ever since I got my IC-705 (which is
D-STAR, so not compatable with those repeaters in digital mode). I
have a digital hotspot on a raspberry pi that I use from time to time,
but I still have issues trying to find an active
room/reflector/channel/whatevertheycallit.

So do you use your PiStar with D-Star right now? I'm not sure if I ever got mine to succesfully work... probably because I don't know anyone else with D-Star and a PiStar :). I've used D-Star pretty much just over simplex. There is at least one D-Star repeater near me but nobody ever talks on it. I'd like to get more familiar with using it with the hotspot.

Yeah, I have it working. I've tuned into a digital net on d-star once, but I had to spend about 20 minutes getting things sorted ahead of time just so I wasn't futzing with it during the net.

I'm kind of rooting for M17, An open source protocol that's easy to implement and doesn't require special hardware would be amazing

DaiTengu

... The things most people want to know are usually none of their business.

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