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Unboxing SkyBridge Plus: The Newest Ham Radio Hotspot

Unboxing SkyBridge Plus: The Newest Ham Radio Hotspot

The new SkyBridge Plus is the peak of intuitive design and top of the line performance. With a brand new interface, black finish, and Pi 3 board, Hams will be reaching through your radio to grab it.

If you'd like to see this remarkable hotspot with your own eyes, click below to watch our full unboxing.

 Are you ready to unbox your very own SkyBridge Plus?

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Video Transcription:
Did you know a digital hotspot can supercharge your DMR experience? Hi everyone. I'm Cody, W3AMG, with BridgeCom Systems, and today we're going to be unboxing the brand new SkyBridge Plus hotspot. Of course, you probably know what I'm talking about, the SkyBridge Plus from BridgeCom Systems. This is the most capable hotspot in DMR. So what can you expect when you receive your SkyBridge Plus? Let me show you.

Now we are going to unbox the new SkyBridge Plus hotspot. So here we go. SkyBridge Plus, says on the front of the box in cool packaging here. We're going to open it up.

There we go. So here is the SkyBridge Plus itself. You can see it's a new sleek gloss black finish, and we have that big screen here. This is a... Wow, this is a big screen. This is cool.

So, let's see what else is in the box. Okay, so here's a power adaptor. This is actually a new and improved power supply. It's more powerful. This is a two amp power supply as opposed to the one amp, so this will be able to run the bigger SkyBridge Plus.

We have a car charger, so for those of you who like to use this on the go in your vehicle, you can actually power this in your vehicle. One of the other cool things that comes with is a battery. This battery will power the SkyBridge. Now this car charger can also charge your battery, so if you want to use this on the go, you can charge up your battery in your vehicle as well as your SkyBridge.

Obviously we have an antenna here, so this is going to screw onto the SkyBridge like so, just like that. There we have a nice little unit.

Let's see what else. Then here's the power cord. So this will plug into the back of the SkyBridge here for power. And a micro USB, and the other side will just go into your wall port here.

And then one of the awesome features with this new generation SkyBridge, so we include the ethernet cable, but unlike the original SkyBridge, now we don't have to have a dongle or an adapter. We can plug that ethernet cable directly into the SkyBridge, so you don't have to worry about any adapters failing or anything like that. And finally, here we have another micro USB cable. This can be used to charge the battery separately from the SkyBridge. These are both interchangeable for whatever you would like to use them for.

Perfect. So now let's take a look at the SkyBridge itself. We have this nice big screen here. This is great. It will display the contact's name, call sign, and their mode ID, display their transmit and receive frequencies, whatever you're talking to the hotspot on. This will display the contact's country and their flag. This is a cool feature. Being able to see the country flag I think is really cool when you're out talking on the worldwide talk group.

It will show you what mode you're on. If you're on DMR, for example, show you what talk group or node you are on. It will also display your RSSI and your BER, so you can know if you're getting good reception on here. And finally, it will display your IP address. So if you have it plugged into ethernet, you can take the IP address, type it in on your phone or your browser, and get right into Pi-Star without having to use any programs like Angry IP or something like that to go find the IP address. It says it right on the screen, so you can get there immediately and set up your hotspot with your call sign.

The great thing about all of this information, it makes it super easy to send out a QSL card to your fellow hams, whoever you talk to on there. Got all their information there. You can look them up in QRZ and get their address and send the card their way. One of the greatest features with the new SkyBridge Plus that you cannot forget, it is now running a Pi-3 board. So you can plug this in, it almost instantly boots up and you're ready to talk. Same for when you're programming it. So if you click submit, it saves your changes and you're ready to type in more information. You don't have to wait for the one to two minute boot-up time anymore.

So that's what the SkyBridge Plus can promise you: the capabilities you know and love, but now with a powerful, user-friendly design to give you a streamlined experience in DMR. Thanks again for watching. I'm Cody, W3AMG, with Bridgecom Systems. 73.

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