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So, i've been chewing on a little project/notion for a weekend fun activity and i'd like some input and thoughts. As we have mentioned, a couple of us hang out (loosely used) with a squad of prepper hams that have a weekly 2 meter net and all that. Everybody including us had a great fun time at FD but they're kind of.....green on the radio? So not many contacts happened, lots of listening, bit of nervousness. I was thinking about this and how everybody had a great time setting up portable stations but found the actual radioing kind of intimidating. Keeping in mind everybody's tendency here, they like to store water and make fire by hand, i'm thinking about basically organizing what can only be described as a radio-based wargame. What i'm thinking is a simulated exercise to test people's skill with information relaying, net running, and most importantly, using as many different bands and methods as possible to complete the "goal." Just things in my head would be making sure that some of the stations are well beyond 2 meter simplex range (these guys love their FM) to get people setting up NVIS antennas and using 40/60(it's not a contest!)/80 meters to get out a couple hundred miles. Things i've pondered: -Game starts with a series of 4-6 stations in the Denver metro area, and a net. These stations will gather unique information (count the number of cars in a particular parking lot, an address of a well known business, something like that) and a 2 meter net will collect the information throughout the first day. While these guys are getting their information collected (they would be checking in throughout the day, not all at once), a couple of other teams/guys roll up into the mountains, up around Cheyenne, wherever we can get them to stretch out about a 2-3 hour drive. _Those_ stations would check in with the 'city crew' via HF and collect the info. Once they've gotten their traffic, we'll have envelopes with 'return traffic' that would be opened at specified times, and the process would continue in reverse. I don't' want to make it too complex, but i don't want to make it super easy either. If there's enough interest I'd even like to work in digital and other modes to show people the capabilities of various bands and operating procedures. Any thoughts or ideas on how i could make this a whole lot of fun would be very welcome! it's still months out, possibly a next-spring thing even, but it seems like it'd be a hell of a lot of fun and I've started reading all the US Army field manuals about field ops and net running to get some direction on this.
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Jul 4, 2016 04:06
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I think your idea is great and will offer value to the community you describe... however I'm not sure it's going to help you with respect to increasing contacts @ Field Day which is where you started your post. Field Day isn't a contest but really is a contest. If the Field Day participants aren't into contesting they won't have the attention span for operating on FD. Same thing happens to all the local clubs here... people are more interested in setup, socializing, eating, and tear down. That being said 9 contacts is on the very thin side even for the most non-contesting hams out there, they just need to get in front of an HF radio more often in a comfortable environment when people aren't watching them... I'd wager most of them do not have HF setups @ their residence. Perhaps starting a local HF net, or just casual BS'ing on a certain frequency on a regular basis, may help them get used to their equipment and get over the mic freight.
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Jul 4, 2016 12:31
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Good thoughts! To clarify, I don't really give a poo poo about Field Day itself, it's too busy and none of us are interested in racking up points in that event itself, but I think a lot of people were disappointed at what they thought FD was versus what it actually is. I know I was surprised with the wall to wall stations 1 khz apart and quite a bit of yelling and shouty poo poo on the air.
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Jul 4, 2016 13:59
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In that case then your plan sounds like a good one. I would still try to figure out how to get them over mic freight. Even when you go to more a interesting exersize, mic freight is still an issue.Jonny 290 posted:I know I was surprised with the wall to wall stations 1 khz apart and quite a bit of yelling and shouty poo poo on the air. Also FD, is really a good test of a receiver's quality in terms of selectivity.
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Jul 4, 2016 14:29
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A radio-based wargame sounds fun as hell, though I don't have anything concrete to offer in terms of suggestions. It seems like one of those things that you throw paint at the wall a bit and see what sticks, then keep refining over time. Requiring any simple code-breaking is right out given the encryption rules, but maybe you can provide a scavenger hunt style series of keywords that are scattered around different regular broadcasts across different bands, digital types, etc. Maybe try thinking of the event in terms of a radio-based escape room could generate some ideas.
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Jul 4, 2016 14:34
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I bet that group would be interested in a fox hunt.
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Jul 4, 2016 14:38
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I've always wanted to participate in something like that. I'm the county Emergency Coordinator for ARES, up in NW Minnesota. The local county Emergency Manager is useless and I have brought up scenarios where the Ham community could be useful, but it falls on deaf ears. I'm assuming that everyone at the state level is either retired, or has some kind of cushy do-nothing desk job where they can just go and play radio whenever they want, since every training exercise they put forth is at like 1400 local in the middle of the week. It has been brought up to do these things on weekends, when people outside of the Twin Cities Metro would be available to attempt some of this, but that too goes nowhere. We had some fun at field day, however. One guy setup a few MESH nodes to link the logging computers for the stations, so we could see at a glance which station was on what band, plus chat capabilities.
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Jul 4, 2016 17:53
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bought a couple Heavy Boxes for $44 at a local flea market 
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Jul 5, 2016 01:44
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I made 0 contacts this FD, so you win. We have the largest single day charity bicycle event on the same day FD starts, so I usually do that instead, and end up tired as poo poo. I do SAG with VHF and APRS. Plus for FD there are a bunch in the club who are contest heads and want you out there making runs and holding the frequency, which I didn't feel like dealing with. I've done it though. Having a good crystal filter and bandpass filters on the feed really helps. On the other topic our local ARES and RACES groups run HF local nets, VHF simplex nets phone and digi, and location drills where we set up portable and run relay, send forms, pictures etc. You would
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Jul 5, 2016 09:23
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After getting my general license I finally got a radio and antenna tuner this weekend! I'm excited to go out and put this stuff to use. Also I'm terrified. I've never actually transmitted in my life and I dont want to gently caress up to badly. Also I read through an ARRL magazine and my head was spinning with all of the antenna info, complex electrical diagrams and jargon. Some of it I know from studying for my exam but a lot of it was new to me. The amount of knowledge the average ham seems to have is astounding. I was going to check into the local ham club and see if they had an "elmer" group that helps out newbies. Any advice beyond that? Also I was going to get an old computer and dedicate it just for ham software. I know I'll need a dedicated soundcard more than likely to hook up to my transceiver. Are there any brands out there that lack support for most of the software out there? Or would onboard audio from an old Dell Optiplex work just fine? Finally any recommended software suites out there for someone starting out? I was just going to throw Ubuntu on there and then install this HamShack software I had read about before.
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Jul 6, 2016 15:38
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As the old saying goes, you were given two ears and one mouth because you are supposed to listen twice as much as you talk. This is very true in Ham Radio. Listening to how people carry themselves will show you what you need to do. Instead of using a soundcard and dealing with the issues surrounding ground loops and stuff, I'd look into a rig interface device such as a SignaLink or RigBlaster.
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Jul 6, 2016 16:15
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Try listening to local UHF/VHF repeaters to find one that has some traffic if you want to get the hang of it. Plug them into your memory and let your radio just spin through scanning them while you read a book or something; after a while you'll notice that one or two will have the most traffic. You'll hear some conversations and get a feel for the general courtesies. Don't be afraid to key one, wait a second for everything to spin up, and introduce yourself. "AB0XYZ monitoring, new ham here, wondering if someone might have a second to answer a few questions?" People will be pretty helpful if they know you're new. They generally won't jump up your rear end for minor faux pas and it takes months of crap to prosecute actual, legitimate, malicious broadcasters so if you forget to repeat your call sign every ten minutes or something, you'll get a gentle reminder and not someone from the FCC revoking your license the next morning. Play by the rules, but don't be so afraid of them that you never transmit. Finding a club with some garrulous old retirees is a good idea for learning a lot in a short time. 20m (my favorite HF band) is kind of for poo poo right now (for me at least), so you might have better luck with UHF/VHF repeaters at the moment, really. Still, don't let that stop you from trying out HF. Grab a copy of the band plan (http://www.arrl.org/files/file/Regulatory/Band%20Chart/Hambands_color.pdf) and tack it up in your shack so you don't step outside your privileges, and just tune the dial listening around. If you hear someone, go ahead and wait for a lull in the conversation and chime in with their call sign and yours so they know you're talking to them, they'll probably be thrilled to chat it up. The first time you contact someone 600 miles away with just a radio and antenna and bullshit for a few minutes is just absolutely fun on a bun. Sign into qrz.com and set yourself up a profile, too. It's the first thing I check when I hear a new call sign, just to see who's out there. An old Dell with Ubuntu will work fine, I use a GX260 with Ubuntu. I maxed out the RAM and it does still stutter a tiny bit on modern websites, but it's fine for radio work. For digital modes, fldigi will probably be your go-to program.
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Jul 6, 2016 16:28
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BaseballPCHiker posted:After getting my general license I finally got a radio and antenna tuner this weekend! I'm excited to go out and put this stuff to use. I totally forgot to ask - what equipment do you have?
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Jul 6, 2016 18:31
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K2F needs to get their fuckin' rear end on the radio so I can finish 13 Colonies before it ends in 4 hours. E: Bagged him. 13/13 yay i get a participation certificate. Sniep fucked around with this message at 03:01 on Jul 7, 2016 |
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Jul 7, 2016 01:23
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Congrats! Speaking of papers... I really really want a Triple Play award... I got 100 out of 150 confirmed on LoTW... just need to get over my laziness and learn CW for the last 50. (No, I'm not going to do it with lovely software) I'm posting in this hopes that I can maybe help to self-motivate myself.
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Jul 7, 2016 03:06
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AbsentMindedWelder posted:Congrats! I installed an iPhone CW keyboard, replaces the whole keyboard space with a CW key. After a while, I got pretty good at it, especially texting while walking in the winter with my hands in my pockets. I still can't copy for poo poo though.
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Jul 7, 2016 03:15
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Yes, Keying with software is easy peasy, and I have no problems with that... Receiving is where the problem is. Software in my experience can copy machine made code no problem, but fail miserably with human generated code from a straight key or paddle.
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Jul 7, 2016 03:23
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A lot of people on the air have super lovely fists. Especially the old bug dudes. Dahhhhhhhhhhhh didididididididi dahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh I suggest just getting good headphones, setting aside multiple short sessions a day, kick the kids/dog out and Don't relax with a drink or other intoxicant beforehand. It's amazing how much focus you need when you're starting out. Beat on that lcwo site with a vengeance. It's pretty good.
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Jul 7, 2016 03:36
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hogmartin posted:I totally forgot to ask - what equipment do you have? I have a secondhand icom IC-725, with an external speaker two button noise filter and a MFJ Deluxe Versa Tuner II. I also picked up a antenna mount that is designed for small places like apartments and mounts to a railing. I also got this weird looking antenna that I'm hopeful I can string back and forth in my apartment: 
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Jul 7, 2016 04:22
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quote:Amateur Electronic Supply (AES) Going Out of Business
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Jul 7, 2016 06:10
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Second largest retailer, 4 locations. 
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Jul 7, 2016 13:42
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BaseballPCHiker posted:I have a secondhand icom IC-725, with an external speaker two button noise filter and a MFJ Deluxe Versa Tuner II. I also picked up a antenna mount that is designed for small places like apartments and mounts to a railing. I also got this weird looking antenna that I'm hopeful I can string back and forth in my apartment: I would recommend picking up a cheap dual-band HT as well since I don't think the 725 does 2m/440. A little $40 Baofeng dual-band would be fine. Especially if you're just starting out, talking FM to people in your city/county will help you meet people who can mentor you. It's also pretty reliable. I had a 30' random wire with a tuner for HF up in a tree at the old apartment and I could pull in stations, but nobody ever heard me on it. That gets frustrating fast. With an HT and a basic 2m antenna, you can chat all day with people in your area. I'm not saying you should give up on HF or anything, just that it can be really frustrating depending on your apartment situation, and getting lousy results kills interest in a hobby fast. With a dual-band HT, you can make a few local contacts loud and clear, and they might be able to help you optimize your HF setup. hogmartin fucked around with this message at 14:31 on Jul 7, 2016 |
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Jul 7, 2016 14:27
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hogmartin posted:I would recommend picking up a cheap dual-band HT as well since I don't think the 725 does 2m/440. A little $40 Baofeng dual-band would be fine. Especially if you're just starting out, talking FM to people in your city/county will help you meet people who can mentor you. It's also pretty reliable. I had a 30' random wire with a tuner for HF up in a tree at the old apartment and I could pull in stations, but nobody ever heard me on it. That gets frustrating fast. With an HT and a basic 2m antenna, you can chat all day with people in your area. Thanks for the tips, any help I can get starting out is much appreciated. There is a ham swap meet this weekend, I'll go and see if I can find a cheap dual band HT. Anything else I should look for at the meet? I'm also in need of a power supply as I just have a marine battery to power my station for now. I was hoping that I could operate on the 80m band as I wanted to try and talk to my grandfather a few states away, hopefully I can rig something up thats discreet in my apartment and be able to talk to him with the right conditions. Is the ARRL operators manual and antenna book worth buying? Should I look for older used copies or are they something you want the new version of?
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Jul 7, 2016 15:28
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BaseballPCHiker posted:Thanks for the tips, any help I can get starting out is much appreciated. There is a ham swap meet this weekend, I'll go and see if I can find a cheap dual band HT. Anything else I should look for at the meet? I'm also in need of a power supply as I just have a marine battery to power my station for now. 20 meter might be a better choice since lower frequencies generally want larger antennas. You can talk across town with a HT and a rubber ducky at 440MHz, people start stringing dipoles across their yards or sticking up big Yagi antennas for 80 meters. It's not impossible; I'm sure there are people doing QRP stuff on lower frequencies with an Altoids tin radio with a coin battery and twelve feet of wet string, but 20m is where I have made the most contacts, and the most clearly, with an apartment-friendly antenna. There are people who know much more than I do about it on this thread, and hopefully they'll correct me if I'm wrong, but in my experience, receiving can be done with just about any antenna, transmitting requires a more precisely-designed system, and transmitting lower frequencies requires a physically larger antenna. The tuner helps, but it can't alter the physics. How far away is your grandfather? On 20m from MI I've made contacts in places like NY, GA, and once Puerto Rico. It's kind of like a rotating lawn sprinkler; there's a dead zone near me (I've never made a contact in OH or IN), but about 500-800 miles out the propagation path seems to work out just fine. I'm also using a Buddipole antenna in an L configuration, so maybe if I changed the geometry things would be different. Again, I'm basically a beginner with this stuff.
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Jul 7, 2016 16:09
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BaseballPCHiker posted:Is the ARRL operators manual and antenna book worth buying? Should I look for older used copies or are they something you want the new version of?
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Jul 7, 2016 16:21
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BaseballPCHiker posted:Thanks for the tips, any help I can get starting out is much appreciated. There is a ham swap meet this weekend, I'll go and see if I can find a cheap dual band HT. Anything else I should look for at the meet? If you find a nice HT and you see accessories that will work with it, go ahead and grab those too. I'd get a mobile antenna, mic, and USB programming cable. They aren't strictly necessary, but the mic and antenna will make it more convenient to sit at home and chat vs. having to hold it just right. The programming cable will let you add presets and adjust settings with Chirp (http://chirp.danplanet.com/projects/chirp/wiki/Home) on the computer and then just blast them over to the radio instead of punching them all in by hand.
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Jul 8, 2016 15:29
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The sweet spot for HTs is in the 90s models. They're still running well with a couple easy fixes, old enough that they don't have PC programming (usually!) and as such people dislike them now. Which is stupid. Note that i shop hard for these because I have serious fundamental problems with the Chinese radios. I won't argue about it, don't want to, but here are my thoughts on big3 HTs that i've been around. My current inventory is almost all hamfest based. -Icom W32A - got it for $50. Rebuilt a battery pack with nimhs and bought another nicad pack. Dual recieve (can even do same band on both sides), full duplex, beautiful high end HT. This one can even get it via CHIRP! No idea why he didnt unload it for $100. -Icom T22H $10 - super reliable 2m only HT in the same generation as the W32 (translation: battery packs and chargers swap). I ran this on a 700 mAH pack for over 24 hours on Field Day. incredibly efficient, has PL tones, nice audio. -Kenwood TH28A $20 - This one I stumbled on a bit. It's a beautiful rig but has a design where the battery pack slides up into the radio like a pistol mag. As a result, the 6xAA holder won't mate with the radio when you're using AA NIMH cells - a common trick we use. Sadface. Need to get a proper pack for this one. It's neat though - 2m transceiver with 70cm RX. Super well built radio. -Icom 24AT $30 - I've wanted one of these for 20 years. So when one showed up on Craigslist, I lowballed him and held fast until he emailed me back. Two months later. Learned a bit about 90s radio design by fixing the shorted rechargeable button cell backup battery. Another full duplex box, aluminum case, built so tough. -Yaesu VX3R - $60 - these are addictive but you SO need a programming cable to load them up. But you should do so. With everything. Get your airband, get the podunk cops, get all the FRS channels in there. An amazing swiss army knife. Mine came sans batt so I got a 3xAA, similar tight-fit as the Kenwood with rechargeables but this one works ok. Yeah, it's only one watt, but if I'm up in the mountains where there are repeaters and can bring only ONE radio, this is it. -Icom 2at/4at $20 and $10 - Museum pieces. No tones. No memories. AA packs. This is what you bring when you and your buddies are in the woods and you need an ht that will NOT die that you can work with gloves on. My best suggestion is to bring your phone and if you're not familiar with an HT, do a quick search for its page on Universal Radio - they've left their spec and info pages up for everything they've sold since the early 80s (yes, they imported old paper). If they offered a PL tone encoder option, the one you're looking at probably doesn't have it. If it says "built-in", buy! Jonny 290 fucked around with this message at 20:38 on Jul 8, 2016 |
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Jul 8, 2016 20:30
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I had one of those waterproof/shockproof indestructible HT's made by Icom in '03 or so but I can't remember the model number. Sadly it got stolen but even new it was 100 bucks and had every feature you could want for jawwing on a repeater or simplex. It was ugly as hell but you wouldn't mind falling in the mud with it.
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Jul 8, 2016 22:57
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Jonny 290 posted:The sweet spot for HTs is in the 90s models.
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Jul 8, 2016 23:04
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ALL over the place. http://www.batteriesamerica.com/ is HIGHLY regarded and will sell you great packs with charger jacks and all sorts of cool poo poo. Ebay has a wide selection too and you can save lots of money if you can wait 2 weeks for them to ship it over from China. Very few HT's from oh, about 1980 on don't have aftermarket replacement packs out today. Also, reminder that if you are looking for a single band HT and don't mind slightly chunky, pick up a Realistic HTX-202. They are seriously, seeeeriously one of the best 2m HT's ever made. The belt clip is the size of an index card, which feels stupid, until you realize it's the heatsink for the finals. Built so tough, high power output, PL encode, and Icom 2AT series packs fit on it. The only thing wrong with the 202 is that the button cell dies and you see an "ERR 5" message if it's been off for a few years; if you replace the battery and reset the radio, it comes back to life. See if you can track one of those HTs for ten bucks and break out your soldering iron! (Other odd tip: the rechargeable button cells they used a lot in the 90s rigs for backup are very similar to the VL2020 battery used in BMW key fobs from about '95 on. Everywhere on ebay, five bucks and you're good) Jonny 290 fucked around with this message at 23:09 on Jul 8, 2016 |
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Jul 8, 2016 23:06
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Speaking of Old HT's... After my D-Star repeater being non-operational for 6 months... somebody FINALLY emailed me yesterday asking me what's wrong. Also, a repeater owner who replaced his old school Micor with a lovely Fusion one is now having problems with the 2m final. (For those unaware, the fusion repeaters consists of 2 FTM400's in a box with a control board... it is by no measure a commercial quality machine)
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Jul 8, 2016 23:21
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i've heard you literally cannot run the Fusion repeaters on high power cause smth smth they explode or burn out.
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Jul 8, 2016 23:25
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Indeed. It just goes to show you how fast they were trying to get it out the door (for marketing purposes). They couldn't even design a machine that had good finals and real heat sinks... and a receiver that is better then a mobile radio.
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Jul 8, 2016 23:29
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Posted this in the yospos thread but i'm not stingy with my pics. 20 meter delta loop is UP! You gotta find it though :P Noise is down 3 s-units over my inverted L, signal is even or +1 s-unit. HOT. Corner feed, super easy. Fed with 3/4 wave of RG6 quad shield. Gorgeous SWR curve with < 1.3:1 across all of 20 meters, dead flat at 14.200.
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Jul 10, 2016 01:41
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Jonny 290 posted:Note that i shop hard for these because I have serious fundamental problems with the Chinese radios. I won't argue about it, don't want to, but here are my thoughts on big3 HTs that i've been around. I don't want to argue either, and I don't want to start a derail, but what are your fundamental problems with them? I don't have anything invested in them, but as a knockaround $40 HT that lets new hams start talking, I think they fill a niche pretty well. I also have HTs that cost 3x as much, and they're much nicer to use, but the Chinese ones seem like a good value for the price. This was probably all hashed out before I started following the thread, I just haven't dug far enough back to find it. Feel free to link an old post that lays it out.
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Jul 11, 2016 15:23
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Can't speak for Jonny, but personally, it's as simple as I like nice things. I get joy out of acquiring, owning, and using quality equipment for my hobbies. Chinese radios don't bring me this joy at all.
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Jul 11, 2016 15:38
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Fair enough, and I agree. I also feel that getting a functional cheapie, when you're dipping your toes into a hobby, helps you figure out what you want to look out for when you know enough to get the good stuff: "My first one had a crap X and it bugged me, I want to make sure that I try out all these higher-end candidates and make sure they have a flawless X before I drop $250 on one". Mostly I was wondering what "serious fundamental problems" means and if I'm missing something obvious.
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Jul 11, 2016 15:53
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I went to a ham swap recently and had a decent time. All of the "cheap" HTs were at least $100 though so I held off on buying anything until I get my Icom setup and working with my current antenna and equipment. I did get to talk to a lot of old hams that were excited to see someone interested in radio that was under 30 and I walked away with a old copy of the ARRL operators manual book for $5. Theres also a club that has a elmer program that starts meeting again in the fall so I should be able to learn more from them come then.
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Jul 11, 2016 16:36
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I'll play. -Harmonics and spurious emissions. They say "oh, 95% of these things pass FCC spurious emissions guidelines. If you put yours on a tester and it looks good, you're _fine_." However, a 'tester' in this case is a $3000 spectrum analyzer. And if yours doesn't pass, you're going to be in trouble as you transmit on 291.300 MHz in the middle of the military airband. -Receiver desense is monstrous. You can't take a Baofeng into a big city center or even near it. They fall over hard and just get overloaded with pager RF, high power public service repeaters and similar stuff. -Roger beeps and all that sort of crap. It's evident they have a very 'swiss army knife' firmware in this and I have heard people on the air with some pretty awful deedly-doodly roger beeps. -Slow TX/RX turnaround time. You can tell when people are on a Chinese rig because it takes 700 mS to switch from tx to rx and vice versa. That doesn't seem like much until you learn that most of the big3 radios will have 20-50 mS turnaround, tops. Their first syllable gets cut off because the radio's still spinning up its clockwork. This flaw slaps you again later, when you upgrade radios and want to play with your old Baofeng on APRS or packet, because it won't work. -This isn't a thing for everybody, but due to the slow tuning/lockup time on these, scan speed is horrible. I will put any of my 20 year old Icoms on a table next to a Baofeng, we'll start scans at the same time, and mine will be doing 10-15 channels a second scan speed while the baofeng is like 1.2 channels a second. So, its secondary utility as a 'small town scanner' is useless too, or its really annoying in a high traffic area with a lot of repeaters. We have about 35 2-meter and 45 70cm repeaters in our area. I would not and could not tolerate needing a full minute to scan through them. -Stupid reverse gender SMA connections mean any antennas/adapters you buy for Baofengs will be junk drawer candidates when you pick up a big3 radio. -I bought a $12 Baofeng BF-888 for a science project, plugged it into a $29 genuine name brand FTDI serial adapter and it blew my adapter up. Anecdote, but there ya go. Jonny 290 fucked around with this message at 19:54 on Jul 11, 2016 |
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Jul 11, 2016 19:52
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Jonny 290 posted:I'll play. Thanks! Jonny 290 posted:-Receiver desense is monstrous. You can't take a Baofeng into a big city center or even near it. They fall over hard and just get overloaded with pager RF, high power public service repeaters and similar stuff. I've seen the opposite case, honestly, It seems like it takes a lot to pop the squelch, even after adjusting it in CHIRP. Jonny 290 posted:-Slow TX/RX turnaround time. You can tell when people are on a Chinese rig because it takes 700 mS to switch from tx to rx and vice versa. That doesn't seem like much until you learn that most of the big3 radios will have 20-50 mS turnaround, tops. Their first syllable gets cut off because the radio's still spinning up its clockwork. This flaw slaps you again later, when you upgrade radios and want to play with your old Baofeng on APRS or packet, because it won't work. Never ran into this one because I rarely do simplex; most of my VHF/UHF is on repeaters and some of them take forever to "snrk? huh? what? oh, I should pass on a signal?". If I'm making the first call in I'll do the key/"this is"/release/wait/re-key/"KD8ZQI" thing just to get the hamsters woken up. Even on the 857 or the FT-7900. Jonny 290 posted:-This isn't a thing for everybody, but due to the slow tuning/lockup time on these, scan speed is horrible. I will put any of my 20 year old Icoms on a table next to a Baofeng, we'll start scans at the same time, and mine will be doing 10-15 channels a second scan speed while the baofeng is like 1.2 channels a second. So, its secondary utility as a 'small town scanner' is useless too, or its really annoying in a high traffic area with a lot of repeaters. We have about 35 2-meter and 45 70cm repeaters in our area. I would not and could not tolerate needing a full minute to scan through them. No, this is a totally valid complaint. The Baofeng's scanning speed is completely ridiculous. Compared to the VX-6R, where I can barely read the presets as they fly by, the Baofeng is absolute hammered rear end, and thats with like 4 repeaters to scan through, I can't imagine using it as a scanner. Jonny 290 posted:-Stupid reverse gender SMA connections mean any antennas/adapters you buy for Baofengs will be junk drawer candidates when you pick up a big3 radio. Yes, this is completely dumb and there's no reason for it, even if adapters are cheap. I have no idea what the point of cutting themselves out of the market for 95% of the aftermarket whips and duckies was. Good points, thanks for that post. I still believe that a bargain buy-it-on-Amazon radio that gets people to start talking (and maybe learning what features they want when they upgrade) brings in more people than having them scour hamfests for a DJ-580T without knowing why they should want it. Again, apologies if this is a rehash of a discussion from 2013 or something.
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Jul 11, 2016 20:27
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