Recently, one of our many DMR users in the club asked this question:
"hey guys im not understanding how this crossband is suposed to work. when i select my hot spot in mone list then i select ontario in the TG and key up i shpuld be in the ontario TG dmr for some reason im am getting traffice from ysf america???"
Here is my answer. You should know that this Ham has a single channel for their hotspot and changes the TG on the radio to switch among TGs. Another operating style is to define a channel per TG. To each his own.
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On page 3 of my DMR2YSF deck, I should have augmented the diagram I pulled from the web or at least put in some words that showed a YCS/FCS Reflector along the right side with the other DMR networks to be explicit. While not necessarily obvious at first read, the statement I make on page 3, "The Gateway is sort of like a mini reflector, TX'ing and RX'ing among a set of reflectors and/or networks" alludes to combining of multiples streams of traffic from varying networks and/or reflectors. YSF/FCS are two types of reflectors.
The Pi-Star YSFGateway feeds into the DMR Gateway independently but at the same time as the other configured networks. If DMR Network 1 has no traffic, but the YSFGateway does, then the DMRGateway service on Pi-Star will pass the YSF traffic. I think Pi-Star DMRGateway gives precedence to DMR network traffic. I have been listening to YSF America's link on my Anytone and if 3023 suddenly has some traffic, the YSF traffic stops and the DMR TG 3023 starts up. It is a DMRGateway after all and the Pi-Star developers probably felt that DMR traffic should win over YSF traffic. You can still carry on a QSO on 3023 when there is YSF traffic through the Pi-Star YSF gateway. Why? Because you are TX'ing against TG 3023, not 70xxxxxx. If you wanted to switch to 70xxxxxxx, you would change the current channel's TG to 70xxxxxx or change to a channel you programmed ahead of time with the YSF TG number.
You might still probably be scratching your head and saying, that is fine Brian, but I don't understand why my radio is still spewing out AmericasLink when I keyed up DMR TG 3023. I will take a guess, based on your description of the way you operate different TGs, that TS2 is being used for DMR TG 3023. I will also assume that you have the Anytone's digi monitor turned on. As you may have learned from my DMR2YSF setup guide, the YSF/FCS reflector traffic is configured to come across TS 2 (page 24). Since the DMRGateway is receiving traffic from different networks simultaneously, the Pi-Star DMRGateway process selects one based on an internal priority scheme. Because the YSFGateway is sending AmericasLink traffic across TS 2 and you have the Digital monitor set on (dual or single), TS 2 TG 70xxxxxxx will start coming out of your radio. If you turn off the Digi monitor and you have TG 3023 set in your radio, then you will not hear AmericasLink traffic. However, the channel will have traffic (AmericasLink) and you should see the little turquoise light on the top right of your Anytone light up. This means the channel is active with traffic and you will not be able to TX on 3023 on TS2 as pi-star is busy TX'ing on TS2 AmericasLink. You would need to switch time slots to TX on TG 3023. In conclusion, the combination of enabling the DMRGateway function and having the Digi Monitor on explains why you hear AmerciasLink during RX between your 3023 TX'ing.
