KM6USO.net

It was a privilege to host the PAPA System Thursday Night Technical Roundtable Net this evening on the topic “All About Hotspots”. We had a great conversation with over 30 check-ins spanning the world from Wales, U.K. to Sydney, Australia that ran for 2:40. If it weren’t for my trusty assistant (daughter) at my side, I don’t think I would have made it through the whole night.

Use Cases

Here is a short summary of the Use Cases for hotspots we discussed:

• When you have no repeater access
• For exploration and learning without impacting the local repeater
• Cross-moding (e.g. using a D-STAR radio to access DMR and so forth)
• Monitoring and duplexing for net control
• Travel
• Mobile (with battery or car power, cell phone wifi, etc.)
• Gateway (your connection to an AllStar node)

Hotspots

I also mentioned the following hotspots that I own and what I use them for:

• Zumspot with Pi-Star – primarily for D-STAR, occasionally for DMR; managed through a web browser.
• Openspot3 – primarily for cross-coding from DMR to D-STAR and YSF to P25, as well as occasionally for DMR and travel; managed through a web browser.
• ClearNode – RF AllStar node; managed with an iOS app

Software

Lastly, while not exactly hotspots, I shared the following software providing related capability:

• BlueDV (on Windows with a ThumbDV) – for D-STAR and DMR
• Transceive (macOS) – for AllStar

I’d like to thank everyone who checked in and the PAPA System for the opportunity to host.