Another Baofeng DMR?

With the DM-5R now being confirmed as a real radio and examples of it out there in the wild and a US$10 upgrade to make it work with Tier 2, it seems Baofeng may be releasing another DMR that will work with Tier 2 out of the box, the DMR-82UV, again dual-band, based on a UV-82, which in turn forms the basis of the GT-5.

Again this information was found on Delboy's radio blog and he had found it in turn on an external site that he had to translate from Google, the site showed a picture of a pair of these HTs, showing a vastly different display to the rest of the Baofeng range, though to me it looks much the same as a stock UV-82, though a stock UV-82 has the UV-5R display in it.

Price? Well early reports suggest less than €100, this is from Delboy's source, this one seems like a more viable alternative than the DM-5R but I would consider buying both to see how they fair, all Baofeng HTs are generally cheap, and both these are likely to get you onto DMR for sub-£100, however I still maintain the best one to go for is the well established TYT MD-380 (or the newer MD-390), though it is 70cm only whereas the Baofeng HTs are dual-band though I do not know if any DMR activity takes place on 2-metres here in the UK, though these HTs can do FM as well so all is not lost.

I suspect that as time progresses with Baofeng DMRs is that they will become popular with those wanting to use DMR and cheaply, I maintain my position as being more of a fan of System Fusion as it sounds better, is less of a hassle to set up for both repeater and station side, and it coexists with FM much better due to the AMS on the current available radios for it (all Yaesu of course but maybe one day a radio will come along by someone else that works with it), though I do want to play a little with DMR to see what's what with it, I still maintain an aversion to D-STAR to keep out of the way of Chance Callahan KD0MXN until the FCC do something about his many breaches of Part 97 of which they are aware of.

Well on this latest development from Baofeng I will let it play much like I let the DM-5R saga run it's course and I will post any notable updates

73 de M6RSQ