Obtaining a DMR id with the Australian class licence

One of the very first things you need to use DMR (Digital Mobile Radio) is your DMR id. These are provided by RadioID. Naturally, they require a copy of your licence to prove you hold your call sign, and show a stern warning along with a mock up of an Australian licence saying if it doesn’t look like this, you can’t proceed.

Unfortunately, since Australia moved to a class licence system in 2024, I no longer hold a licence with an expiry date etc. I googled around for what to do with no luck, but in the process discovered there was an Australian DMR group on Facebook – “VK DMR Network [OFFICIAL]” It’s a request-to-join type thing, but my application was approved, and about five posts down was someone asking that exact question I had.

If you’ve come here looking for the answer, it is to find the “Letter of Confirmation” the ACMA emailed you in 2024 and upload that – it’s something only you would have and it includes your name and callsign.

Even though I never use Facebook these days, I’d still recommend joining that group if you’re starting in DMR. DMR looks complex to get set up with lots of opportunities to go wrong, and the responses to questions in the group were welcoming and helpful.

Back to APRS

I once owned an expensive Kenwood handheld – perhaps a TH-D74 – that I had been excited about because I wanted to try APRS. To get on APRS at the time the option was to buy an expensive radio or to piece together (or home-brew) the audio interface, a GPS and the board to pull that all together.

Recently, Chinese radios have started to integrate these in reasonably priced handhelds so the last couple of weeks I’ve been trying the Vero VR-N76.

It’s a modern radio in the sense that you can program it over bluetooth as well as using the bluetooth (with it’s own app, or a generic app using the built-in KISS terminal) for doing APRS.

APRS

APRS – Automatic Packet Reporting System – is for sending telemetry packets over amateur radio. Packets can be repeated ‘digi-peated’ by radios set up for this to form a bit of a mesh. There’s no flow control, but packets contain some ‘path’ information which is altered when they are repeated so they don’t live forever and flood the network. Packets can also be ‘iGated’ onto the internet, which is a useful way to check your packets are getting out.

This image is from the very popular aprs.fi that can be used to view packets containing location information.

Here’s a trip from today. I’ve hovered over a packet sent from Albany Highway near Boddington. You can see on the map my packet was digipeated by VK6RMS at Mount Saddleback, then again by VK6RAW at Katanning, then iGated to the internet (but not repeated) by VK6SR at the Mount Barker repeater site. Here’s the packet that was iGated:


2026-01-07 18:07:45 AEDT: VK6MIB-9>APN000,VK6RMS-3,VK6RAW-3,WIDE2*,qAO,VK6SR-10:=3255.63S/11644.28Ek305/059/A=000925146.5 / 439.150

A few minutes later my packets were taking a different path:

2026-01-07 17:06:28 AEDT: VK6MIB-9>APN000,VK6RMS-3,VK6RMW-3,WIDE2*,qAO,VK6ZRW-10:=3306.66S/11656.61Ek321/052/A=001108146.5 / 439.150

Shout out to everyone involved in building and maintaining this infrastructure, – in this case WARG & Southern Electronics Group.