MSK ANI on your HT

Incomprehensible acronyms in this post, I guess. MSK is a "modulation scheme" that sends information digitally. I don't know much about the details, but you can find more info here. ANI is "Automatic Numbering Identification", which is a way for a radio to identify itself to others. And HT is "hamspeak" for a hand-held transceiver -- what most people would call a "walkie-talkie".

There seems to be a lot of confusion over ANI, and it's something that many people find in the manuals for their Chinese HTs. The Baofengs have DTMF, 2-tone, and 5-tone. I'm not going to get into the details too much. DTMF is what phones use to send the number corresponding to keypad, and most everybody is familiar with that. For these modes, a number is sent either at the beginning or end of a transmission in the form of tones. It might be somewhat useful on commercial radios, but on ham radio it's worthless. It's just a slightly more complex "roger beep", which is good way to irritate other hams.

PuXing, TYT, and Wouxun radios have MSK in addition to DTMF. In theory, you can send your callsign in a short data burst at the end of your transmission, and it will show up on the screen of the people receiving you. In practise, it usually doesn't work that way.

My PuXing PX-777s have MSK, and they send the data burst. They don't display anything, though. I don't have a Wouxun, so I can't speak to those. In the PuXing and TYT software, you enter your callsign in the ANI settings.

Here is a screenshot of the PX-888K software where you set up the MSK callsign:

Here is the screenshot from the TYT UV-F9 software where the callsign  is programmed:

I am able to send my callsign from my PuXing PX-888K to my TYT UV-F9 (and vice versa) and have it display on the receiving end. I set it up exactly as shown, and it worked right off the bat.

If you don't see "MSK" as one of the options in your "ANI" or "PTT ID" settings, then this won't work on your radio. It won't work with DTMF, 2-tone, or 5-tone. All that you can send with those are numbers, except for the letters A, B, C, and D with DTMF. I don't think that the BaoFeng software will even allow you to enter letters at all, regardless if they are those four. Most radios don't allow you to do this, or it just doesn't work. Like I said, the PuXing PX-777 will send, but not receive, a callsign. My TYT TH-9000 (1.25M) doesn't have MSK, but my TYT UV-F9 (70cm/1.25M) does.

As with most "newfangled" ham radio things, the use of ANI (whether MSK or not) brings out strong feelings in opposition. It's not the way things were done thirty years ago, so it's wrong... and get off of my lawn! I think that MSK ID is great, and I wish that it was more common. Often people mumble their callsigns, or rattle them off quickly as if you already know it. Usually, I have to ask people to repeat it or say it phonetically. Other times, I simply forget their sign during the course of the conversation.

With this digital ID setting, the other person can see your callsign displayed right after you are finished talking, throughout the conversation. There's no confusion over similar-sounding letters. Obviously, it doesn't take the place of the FCC requirements to identify yourself. It's just a convenient supplement to voice identification. It would also be nice if repeaters would use an additional MSK ID, but that isn't likely because the controllers aren't designed for that.

The MSK ID sounds like a short (one second or less) squawk at the end of your transmission. The sender can't hear it, of course, but the person receiving can. This sets the stage for all manner of irritable people to complain or simply refuse to talk to you. On the PuXing and TYT models that support the MSK ID, it can be turned off through the menu keypad, but that could be challenging while driving. You can also set which channels that you want PTT ID to be sent on through the software. So, if you find that people on a particular repeater are annoyed, you can set the radio to not send your ID on that channel.

Another issue is that those fancy, expensive non-Chinese radios can't decode MSK, so the hams using those radios won't be able to see your callsign anyway - but they will still be "exposed" to the squawk.

To avoid the inevitable controversy, I limit myself to using MSK ID on simplex. But, if I know that someone has an MSK-compatible radio, I will often turn the ANI on during the course of a conversation. Since these people are always newer hams, and don't have a knee-jerk negativity to the Chinese radios, it's a safer bet that they won't go ballistic. In fact, they generally think that it's "cool" that they can see my callsign scroll across their display, and they want to know how it's done.

Realistically, I don't expect that MSK ID will ever "catch on" because most radios can't make use of it, and there are competing digital technologies such as MDC-1200. Still, it's just another reason to pay a bit more for a PuXing PX-888K or TYT UV-F9 instead of a BaoFeng UV-5R.