For newcomers in digital amateur (ham) radio communications, getting familiar with all the terms, modes, reflectors, etc., can be very confusing. If you listen carefully, you will notice that I’ve made some definition mistakes will describe it! Hihi. No matter how technical we are there are so many things to cover it’s really something to learn one shot. In this video, I’m trying in my own words, to explain the differences between all this.

I start describing what is a reflector, then I describe D-Star (DCS, REF, XRF) with some basics. After, I switch to DMR, probably the most confusing one, and I go to DMR Tier I and Tier II, then to DMR-MARC, DMR+, Brandmeister (BM) and IPSC2 reflectors.

I finish with Yaesu System Fusion (C4FM), Wires-X, FCS and YSF.

Hope this video will help, let me know what you think?

Thanks for watching.

73
Pascal VA2PV

Correction 8:24 (thanks to radiosification)
For DMR users, here's some details about DMR Tier I vs dPMR.

The new 446.0-446.2MHz extended frequency spectrum will double the number of license-free PMR446 channels available for equipment operating at 12.5 kHz and 6.25 kHz channel spacing:

• Analogue* equipment which can only operate on 12.5 kHz channel spacing increases from 8 to 16 channels

• DMR Tier 1** digital PMR446 which operates on 12.5 kHz channel spacing with a Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) channel access method increases from 8 to 16 channels

• dPMR446** digital PMR446 equipment which operates on 6.25 kHz channel spacing with a Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA) channel access method increases from 16 to 32 channels

** Due to their different channel access methods, DMR Tier 1 and dPMR446 digital equipment are not compatible with each other when operating in digital mode.