Since around September last year, I started using DMR radio. I was just about to come back from Eurofurence when I saw a message in my local radio club’s chat (shoutouts to OH2K) from someone selling a bunch of Anytone AT-D168UV. Before that, I was told that DMR had a pretty large community in Finland, but never really tried it.
Most of my contacts until then were done either on local repeaters, using bog standard VHF radios (Baofengs, Mobira), or on 20m using FT8 and a fancy Xiegu radio.
Now that I’ve been in the DMR world for a few months, I can confidently say that it’s the most fun I’ve had with the hobby so far. From doing a few QSOs after work on a weekday to participating in more organized nets during the weekend, I find it very enjoyable.
I usually hang around the world-wide talkgroup 91, as it is the most active on the Brandmeister network. Sadly, 91 can be a bit of a wild west sometimes with stuff including, but not limited to: people inventing their own phonetic alphabet, audio levels from both ends of the spectrum (AKA will either need you to boost full volume or blast your ears off at minimum), and of course, lots of network issues (EG, you thought you were talking, but nope, someone got the slot before you).
Luckily, TG91 is not the only one, I can cite TG92 (Europe) which sadly was a bit dead today when trying to do a few contacts; TG208 (France) which was also kinda dead, if not for that lone ham that was sitting at their club waiting for calls; and of course, my local one, TG244 (Finland) which is fairly active on weekends and in the weekday evenings.
DMR also has its events, for instance, on TG244, every Sunday at 19:00 (Finland local time), there is the FinDMR check-in, mostly receiving Finnish callsigns from all over the country.
On TG91, every Saturday at 16:00 (UTC), there is the World-Wide Check-In, which this time goes through the entire world for people to check-in. In late December, I actually joined the net controller group for the World-Wide Check-In and managed my first net on 2026/01/17. Reading a script and callsigns back might seem a bit boring at first, but in the end, it’s pretty fun and requires some degree of concentration.
During my first net, it felt like I completely messed up. My hotspot (more on that later) overheated and missed the two first countries because of that. I also had the logging a bit wrong, so certain callsigns didn’t go through as they should have. For the second one, on 2026/01/24, I was a bit more prepared, tho forgot to add more calls to certain countries with more callsigns (for instance, Finland needs at least three rounds, while I only called two times).
For those curious, I’m currently using an Anytone AT-D168UV in combination with a Pi-Star MMDVM hotspot.
And for people saying DMR is “cheating”, I don’t care, I’m having fun, and it’s certainly cheaper and simpler than having to buy or making a huge antenna (which I won’t be able to install anyways). I might as well sell my HF hardware given I have close to no use for it (maybe to at some point buy one of those really fancy Hytera DMR radios).
If you want to do a contact, look for me in either 91, 92 or 244; or send me a message (e-mail/Signal) to schedule a QSO (yeah, I know, more cheating).