Monday Night FreeDMR Net 13th March 2023

1. A Few Notes from the Net
2. Topics and Questions
3. Which are the best Dashboards?
4. FreeDMR has Many Servers
5. Kerchunk

Facilitated by the Brisbane Amateur Radio Club A successful net was help Monday 6th March 2023 0900 UTC. Once again Les, VK4LEZ did a great job as net Controller.

Participants

1. VK4LEZ Les
2. VK4PK Glenn
3. VK4MWL Michael
4. VK4MPS Karl
5. VK4MCU Martin
6. VK4EHT Bruce
7. VK4ANB Norm
8. VK4ACF Rod
9. VK4RA Rod
10. VK4GWR Graheme
11. VK4VVK Lin

A Few Notes from the Net

1. Another successful net with operators learning more about FreeDMR
2. A number of Amateurs have joined FreeDMR as a result of last Saturdays Training and Codeplug updates to several radios.
3. Rod, VK4RA joined us for the first time and submitted a detailed instruction on how to select TG 5050 on the Retevis RT3s See: Frequently Asked Questions
4. Improvements are being made to the functioning of the Motorola repeaters VK4DU (under test) and VK3RAA on the FreeDMR network.
5. Shaun VK4NSP has contributed some very interesting examples of Rewite Rules. See:DMR Rewrite Rules
6. Bruce, VK4EHT gave a recap on his investigations into Dial-a-TG.
7. There were a number of questions about which is the best Dashboard to use. See Below.
8. Please make your suggestions for topic and asks your questions on the next Monday Night Net.

Topics and Questions

1. How are you finding FreeDMR? Are you enjoying the new DMR Network?
2. How are you accessing the Network, Simplex hotspot, duplex hotspot, or Repeater?
   What radios are you using?
3. Is FreeDMR truly open? Have you tried more than one Repeater and Server?
   How do they differ? Do you like peer-to-peer architecture?
4. How do you find the documentation for FreeDMR? Where do you find the best docs?
5. Have you used Dial-a-TG and how do you find it works for you?

Which are the best Dashboards?

There are many choices of Dskboards with FreeDMR. Each server has its own dashboards and then any MMDVM Repeater will have a PI-Star Dashboard. So there are basically two types of Dashboards, FreeDMR Servers type and the Pi-Star type. They are quite different in the way they present data. As to which is best is a matter of private opinion. I am currently using the FreeDMR-Australia Server so I have one sceen open on this and I am transmitting via the VK4RBA Repeater so I have it's Pi-Star Dashboard open on a second screen. For more details see: Dashboards Explained

FreeDMR has Many Servers

REMEMBER that FreeDMR has many servers to choose from (three in Australia) and each may be configured slightly differently. Each Repeater or Hotspot can connect to any of these servers world wide, can also be configured differently. Try to be aware of these differences. For example, FreeDMR allows you to configure Talk Groups as you see fit. (Where you have administration rights. For example, your hotspot.) There is no matrix to say what TG's are allowed or to specify a time slot.

Kerchunk

In common usage kerchunk definition is, "with a sudden heavy blow or thump". (Wiktionary) For amateur's in general the term kerchunk means to key up the repeater to see if it is there. For amateur's in the digital world is means to open a User Activated repeater to gain service.

It just takes a few seconds on Push-to-Talk (PTT) button on the transceiver to user activate most repeaters, resulting in a kerchunk sound. Then the successive Push-to-Talk's will allow communication to occur until the timer expires which is configured on the repeater or the hotspot you are accessing. This is usually 10 to 15 minutes.