In the days long before Brandmeister, DMR+, and just about every network other than DMR-MARC, KS-DMR was born. In October of 2010, K0USY Group placed the first permanent Kansas DMR repeater in service in Lawrence. Shortly thereafter, K0USY Group purchased a c-Bridge in order to enable networking on their own, without dependency on a national network or the baggage associated with national networks. K0USY kept the network in Kansas, but retained upstream feeds from DMR-MARC and later the newer networks.
Immediately, the c-Bridge showed its limitations and the group became increasingly dissatisfied with its lack of reliability and inflexibility. In mid-2013, Cort Buffington, N0MJS began a project to reverse engineer the Motorola IPSC network protocol. Again, the group won its independence; this time from commercial networking products never intended for amateur use and from the networks who built networking tools, but refused to release them to the community. By late 2013, K0USY Group was operating on its own IPSC networking/call routing software called DMRlink – which it released as open source.
When MMDVM became stable and introduced the “HomeBrew Repeater Protocol”, again K0USY Group responded with HBlink, another open source software suite for networking MMDVM repeaters. With help from co-developers Steve, N4IRS and Mike, N4IRR, DMRlink and HBlink gained the ability to intercommunicate – creating another first for amateur DMR: An open source solution to connect MMDVM and Motorola repeaters with each other.
As the K0USY Group grew and began collaborating with other repeater owners, it eventually started using the name KS-DMR for its networking operations. This was to separate its own group of repeaters from a statewide network it hoped would evolve based on the open source tools it had provided to the world.
6 comments on “Kansas DMR History”
Gavin
March 13, 2019 at 1:14 pmBOOM!
James Andrasek
April 23, 2020 at 5:46 amGreetings!
I’m KD0LQD and live in Scott City, KS. There isn’t any DMR repeaters out this way… yet, but I look foward to operating on the system when I’m in the system coverage. Just got an AnyTone radio and I’ve been talking on it over a PiStar. Really looking forward to getting on an actual repeater though. Who knows, maybe the club I’m in and your group can work out a plan for the Dodge City; Garden City; Scott City area!
73’s
KD0LQD
Gavn
April 2, 2023 at 8:45 amThat would be great. By the way, you can connect your hotspot to KS-DMR. The instructions ate on ks-DMR.net.
Stephen Smith
October 7, 2022 at 5:00 pmNotable history of DMRlink and HBlink, developed in Kansas and shared with amateur radio operators everywhere. Thumbs up for exemplary engineering, documentation, and implementation. Originating in 2013, KS-DMR stands the test of time.
73 de KWØZ
Greg Mitchell
March 15, 2024 at 9:09 pmIs the Eldorado 444.9875 dmr repeater still on the air? Have it programmed into a motorola 4350 that I was able to use on the repeater. It does not access the repeater anymore . Thanks N0WHC.
nv8q
March 24, 2024 at 3:01 pmTry it now, there were some networking problem at the tower.