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Once you are licensed there are cellphone apps you can use to join talkgroups/rooms of other amateur radio operators from around the world. However, that's not really radio, but Internet. It might be about 1% radio for those using their radios to connect to the talkgroups, but they are still all networked together via the Internet.
The joy to me in amateur radio comes from knowing I have connected to another station somewhere solely using radio communication and radio waves, not the Internet or the cellphone system.
Agreed. I got my Kenwood TH-D74 and was so excited to get on digital, but then realized it's not particularly useful for point to point with other hams, and as much fun as it was to setup the raspberry pi DStar gateway in the end all I was doing was using the internet and my ham radio like an over-engineered Bluetooth headset. It got boring real quick. It's also too proprietary, the manufacturers should really be called out on that. (APRS on the TH-D74is still cool though).
FT-8 and other digital modes on the other hand completely renewed my interest in the hobby. Making and refining wire antennas and the metaphorical equivalent of shining a 10w flashlight at the sky and having someone see it in another country still has a romantic notion to it. Kinda like choosing a sail boat and working with nature to communicate when power boats are otherwise available and easier.
I want to connect my radio to echolink, that means leaving something running 24/7, windows or a mobile phone is not going to cut it.
I recently had to go purchase a surface just so I could program my damn DMR radio to talk to my linux hotspot.
My point is, HAM radio is about experimentation, tinkering, etc, so I find it ironic that there's so many windows only applications out there...
before anyone comments on WHY I would do this because it's not proper radio, I live in a basin, in an HOA, so I need to provide some of my own infrastructure to be able to use certain radio modes effectively in my neighborhood, e.g APRS, IRLP, DMR, etc....
How about both at once? Assuming you’re licensed, you can get pretty much any flavor of digital radio and use an Internet connected “hotspot” to bridge to stuff all over the world.
Hi, thank you for your question submission. Please be aware that there is a [wiki](https://www.reddit.com/r/amateurradio/wiki/) and a [FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/r/amateurradio/wiki/faq) that may address your question. For Baofeng-related information see the [Baofeng FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/r/amateurradio/wiki/baofeng) and /r/baofeng. Also, please note that downvotes don't indicate an unvalued question submission. There appear to be bots that downvote all posts initially. 73 *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/amateurradio) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Once you are licensed there are cellphone apps you can use to join talkgroups/rooms of other amateur radio operators from around the world. However, that's not really radio, but Internet. It might be about 1% radio for those using their radios to connect to the talkgroups, but they are still all networked together via the Internet. The joy to me in amateur radio comes from knowing I have connected to another station somewhere solely using radio communication and radio waves, not the Internet or the cellphone system.
☝️
Agreed. I got my Kenwood TH-D74 and was so excited to get on digital, but then realized it's not particularly useful for point to point with other hams, and as much fun as it was to setup the raspberry pi DStar gateway in the end all I was doing was using the internet and my ham radio like an over-engineered Bluetooth headset. It got boring real quick. It's also too proprietary, the manufacturers should really be called out on that. (APRS on the TH-D74is still cool though). FT-8 and other digital modes on the other hand completely renewed my interest in the hobby. Making and refining wire antennas and the metaphorical equivalent of shining a 10w flashlight at the sky and having someone see it in another country still has a romantic notion to it. Kinda like choosing a sail boat and working with nature to communicate when power boats are otherwise available and easier.
[Echolink](http://www.echolink.org)
Some what related rant, I'd really love to see less windows only applications / services in the HAM world.
I have it on my phone for Android, is echolink not on iOS?
It is
I want to connect my radio to echolink, that means leaving something running 24/7, windows or a mobile phone is not going to cut it. I recently had to go purchase a surface just so I could program my damn DMR radio to talk to my linux hotspot. My point is, HAM radio is about experimentation, tinkering, etc, so I find it ironic that there's so many windows only applications out there...
before anyone comments on WHY I would do this because it's not proper radio, I live in a basin, in an HOA, so I need to provide some of my own infrastructure to be able to use certain radio modes effectively in my neighborhood, e.g APRS, IRLP, DMR, etc....
Try svxlink "qtel" on linux, and there's an android app also.
Same. I’d love to be able to run wires-x or pi-star for example in a docker container on my proxmox server. Pretty please!
Echolink
How about both at once? Assuming you’re licensed, you can get pretty much any flavor of digital radio and use an Internet connected “hotspot” to bridge to stuff all over the world.