DMR Learning Series: Zones

Zones are simply a way of organizing channels.

Zones are a concept that have been widely used in commercial and public safety radios.  Because DMR was originally designed for commercial users, we hams get the benefit of zones as well! Think of a zone as a “folder” for channels.

How you organize your channels into zones is purely a matter of personal preference.  Most radios can have 16 channels in a zone.  For DMR repeaters, I usually have three zones per repeater.  The first contains all of the channels containing talk groups I regularly use, such as Local, Ohio, and North America.  The second zone contains all the TAC channels (since our repeater is on the K4USD master, we have TAC310 through 319).  The third is all the other channels on the repeater that I don’t normally use but want access to, such as Parrot.

I’ll list a few of the channels in each zone to give you an idea:

Zone 1 (Primary)

1. Worldwide
2. North America
3. Midwest
4. Ohio
5. Local Net (2)
6. Local (9)
7. etc.

Zone 2 (TAC)

1. TAC310
2. TAC311
3. TAC312
4. TAC313
5. etc.

Zone 3 (Misc)

1. Parrot
2. Audio Test
3. Fusion Link
4. etc.

Again – this is just an example. Organize them in a way that makes sense to you. 

Questions? Leave a comment!