Getting ready to use GPS / APRS on your DMR radio

 GPS Position Reporting. Among other features, DMR supports GPS position reporting. This was created for the Part 90 world, not ham radio. There is no provision for sending your ham radio call sign along with your position report so unlike with APRS, Part 97 ID requirements are not being met if your radio is making periodic position reports and you are otherwise not conversing and saying your call sign at the required times. Please take this into consideration if you activate GPS position reporting in your DMR radio and take action to stay in compliance.

Each DMR radio vendor has their own format for GPS position reporting. This is not an issue for Motorola, Hytera, and Tytera GPS-equipped radios because BrandMeister can pass your report to the dstar.su server for formatting and transfer to APRS. Step 1 is common to all three brands, setting up your call sign, SSID, and symbol that you want to appear on APRS.


You need to register and this can take a few hours or up to a day to happen.

Step 1: Go to the dstar.su self-care web page https://www.dstar.su/selfcare/ and register. Once you are on the main self-care page, select Ham DMR. They need to know your radio brand, position reporting interval, desired SSID to go with your call sign, APRS symbol, and DMR Radio ID. If you are not experienced with APRS, we suggest an interval no less than every 3 minutes and just your call sign without dash anything.

Once registered and set up you should be able to send GPS data to ID 5057

Some radios allow auto send every X minutes others allow you to send your position via a text. Both seem to work well on BM network.

You can also send and receive messages over APRS by sending a text to 5057

Call sign ssid message

Note capitals for call sign 

E.g

2E1AVX hello James

Or

M0JFP-7 hello James

You can check if positioning and messaging is working by going to http://aprs.fi and typing in your call sign.

Let us know how you get on??