Training for the December 26, 2013
Salt Lake City Southeast Division Emergency Preparedness Net
By T. Michael Smith (KM7TMS)
System Fusion
As perhaps many in this audience know, early radio transmitters used spark gaps to produce radio frequency oscillations in antennas. It was an on and off carrier, key type of technology. Efforts to reduce interference and obtain even waves led to a CW -- or a wave of constant amplitude and frequency. The general license manual I’m reading tells me that Morse code is considered a digital mode (5-3). The advent of wireless telegraphy around the turn of the 20th century led to Marconi and Braum winning the Noble Prize in 1909. Radiotelegraphy was off and running, only to be later eclipsed by the advent of voice wireless technology. Then came our electronic computers and the communications world significantly changed again. We Hams have many forms of digital communication in addition to our continuing CW. Today’s important digital forms include a lingering radio teletype (or RTTY), and packet, and D-star and the new Yaesu digital. This evening the last is my main topic – the emerging digital Yaesu offering.
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| Yaesu FTM-400DR |
If some of you have been following what little we publicly know about this developing technology, you realize it promises to offer strong competition to our previous digital modes and place Yaesu firmly within the Ham digital market. You also know that it is now arriving. It is labeled “System Fusion,” perhaps because of its very interesting marketing move to offer two new digital transceivers and a new UHF/VHF repeater which repeater can receive and transmit both analog and Yaesu digital signals. System Fusion is “FM Friendly,” apparently meaning both analog and Yaesu digital users can share one new Yaesu repeater and communicate with each other. The most visual part of the system‘s roll-out are its two digital transceivers, as few users will start with the repeater. A digital dual band handheld called the FT1DR and a dual screened dual band mobile called the FTM-400DR are offered. I refer you to the Yaesu website and something like the recent HRO catalog for more particulars.
Being more of an ICOM man, I was not very familiar with Yaesu’s development, until I recently became part of the team that is working to outfit the Salt Lake City Public Safety Building’s Ham Radio Room. The Yaesu system had been under corporate development for some time and a few rumors of such development would occasionally be heard in the Ham community. Perhaps you heard some. Fortunately for our SLC team that was advancing the equipment purchase list to city authorities, Yaesu was just going public when we needed them to be opening up. Marvin Match was leading the team and I thank him for his electronics expertise. Thanks to the team’s work and progress with SLC Emergency Management, I can say tonight that our city’s Ham Radio Room will have a Yaesu digital component. But, don’t get the notion that we have just gone digital Yaesu. The room will also have a D-Star, packet, CB and possibly in the distant future, HF capability. We have focused on the 2 meter and 70 cm bands, analog and digital.
Because this new SLC digital Yaesu component is becoming part of what we do, Susan and I will be adding digital and mobile Yaesu’s to our personal radio gear. Perhaps, some of you may want to consider such for your stations.
Digital communications have become very popular in the land radio market because of their clarity and information capabilities. Digital communications have a reputation of occupying narrower bandwidth than analog, making their use of frequency space more efficient. Yaesu chose the C4FM method of digital communication. This 4 level frequency shift key approach is currently a leading, popular technology that encodes bits of data as frequency shifts. The competing D-Star signal uses, and lauds a narrower bandwidth path in its transmission. The Yaesu’s is said to be about twice as wide, and hence, claims a greater capacity. As long as the larger width is not a problem for your local frequency neighbors, the Yaesu approach could be better for passing more data. I’m among those eager to try this new equipment.
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| Icom IC-2820H |
Before anyone gets overly excited about the arriving Yaesu technology, I remind my Ham buddies that with a D-star and free D-rats software, I can digitally communicate with other Hams around the country or even abroad if I so choose. And, I can do it on my rather simple, inexpensive 2 meter/70 cm transceiver at low wattage with a simple small antenna. Some operators even go with just the standard internet and a dongle device that replaces the radio. D-star has been around long enough to grow a distribution of repeaters, although it’s a little lean locally, and also reflectors, over much of the country and some of the world, not to mention all the user groups, online reference tools, known nets and frequency locations. With that Icom perspective, I note that we all now will have the additional opportunity of trying a new, competing Yaesu technology, and then watching it grow and develop. If we get the Yaesu equipment in and up by April, we can anticipate a digital Yaesu component in the spring 2014 ShakeOut drill.
This is KM7TMS returning the microphone back to net control and standing by for questions and comments you may want to advance.
