Hmmmm, now this is interesting. You know how when you buy a nice new FTM400 and you switch it on, type in your callsign on the wonderful touch screen, dial up the frequency of your local gateway or Fusion simplex frequency and chat? Very simple, no set up required, easy. No codeplugs, no dodgy downloads of every repeater in the world except the one up the road, just dial up and chat.
Well, DMR, I am told, is moving on. I have a DMR radio, I mainly use it to monitor a local FM frequency and the local DMR repeater and it is OK, the audio is fine etc etc, it isn’t a 400 though, not by any means. Anyway, apparently DMR is moving on. They give you a 2inch non-touch screen and apparently it is as easy to use as any other radio. Non of this having to fire up the PC and spend four hours on the codeplug when someone puts on a new gateway any more, no, you can do it on the radio apparently.
One of the nice features of Fusion is the location system. Out of the box, no menu changes, once your 400 locks on to GPS, the distance and direction of the other station are instantly available (in DN mode). In fact even the 100 does this too.
I recently had cause to read the manual of probably the very latest DMR Amateur Radio. Now this is about the same price as an FTM400 so it must be as good. I am told the audio is excellent, well actually DMR audio should be as good as DN Fusion, and my TYT9600 DMR radio does have nice audio, not as nice as a 400 on a decent speaker, and no where up to the phenominal audio received on the FT991A when connected to a half decent HiFi speaker, but the 991A is a lot more expensive, but anyway, I will take it that the new DMR set has superb audio. However I will paste an excerpt from the manual with regards to the GPS location function on this new radio, and how you can instantly see direction and distance.
(3) Get GPS info
Select Get GPS info, and it will send out a signal to the target radio which will start the GPS positioning
and send a message of its GPS position to the transmit radio.
**You have to check on the function in CPS-Optional Setting-GPS/Ranging- Get GPS positioning first.
Now, personally. to me, that doesn’t sound overly simple. Maybe it is? Maybe I have this wrong?? But I will stick to Fusion, it is simple to use, works out of the box, and I like the way the GPS works out of the box too.
Maybe 2in non-touch screens are the thing this year, the FTM300 has one? No, I will stick to my 400.