Thanks to our generous alumni, Micheal Salem, N5MS, the OU Radio Club now has use of a DMR repeater!  DMR, Digital Mobile Radio, is an ETSI standard that encodes voice into a 6.25 kHz wide digital stream.  It then puts two streams into a 12.5 kHz channel using two TDMA time slots.  The repeater itself is connected via the internet to a network of other repeaters, worldwide, meaning that from your DMR HT, you can talk to other hams pretty much anywhere the DMR network goes.

I hear some of you saying, "Gee, Peter, isn't that like the D-STAR repeater we already have?"  "Yes, yes it is.  Almost exactly," I answer.

D-STAR is a JARL standard that uses a slightly different vocoder and doesn't use TDMA but otherwise works the same way (connection over the internet to other hams in other countries).  DMR is a commercial standard, so some stuff has been "bent" by enterprising hams to do things more to our liking.

And no, D-STAR and DMR don't work well together.  Yet.

The upside is that you can get a DMR radio for <$150.  So there's that.  :-)

Feel free to tune in to 443.825 MHz, but unless you have a DMR radio (or are clever with an SDR) you'll only hear digital data.  

More on DMR:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/TYT-Tytera-MD-380-UHF-Analog-Digital-DMR-Radio-USB-cable-Software-US-Seller-/301801103374?

If you see Mike or hear him on the air, thank him!

73,

Peter