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The current UV-5R models have apparently been locked out of the bottom of the 2m band, but it's hard to find definitive information because even the Amazon listings aren't updated. Is there a new go-to for an inexpensive but functional HT that can access the full 2m and 70cm bands? The Radioddity UV-5RX3 looks like a steal for $45 with a free programming cable (Amazon promo). I've been out of the hobby a long time but am rekindling my interest in DIY electronics. I'm more interested in getting into homebrew stuff, but I just want a basic HT for tinkering with APRS, and maybe working a satellite or two. I could buy an FT-60R if I had to, but at $170 I'm not sure I would get my money's worth.
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Oct 25, 2018 17:48
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| # ? May 20, 2024 14:19 |
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baofengs are going to S U C K on both satellites (poor sensitivity, ability to get overloaded by any nearby VHF pager tower) and APRS (it takes about 700 mS for the radio to switch from transmit to receive and vice versa, not nearly fast enough for actual aprs). Trust, you want the ft60. (Keep in mind that for real satellite operation, you're going to want either a full duplex dual bander - not really around much any more - or two radios, as you need to be able to hear yourself on the downlink to make sure you're making it in and not stomping on anybody else)
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Oct 25, 2018 19:54
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Fair enough. I'm not in a huge hurry, so I'll keep an eye on eBay. I need to refresh myself on regs and theory anyways since I got my Tech 2006/2007ish and never did much with it. Figure I should go ahead and get my General while I'm at it. Regarding needing a dedicated receiver for satellites - I plan on picking up an RTL-SDR as well. I suppose that hooked up to an RPi or something similar would cover me there?
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Oct 25, 2018 22:49
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it might. the hiccup there is that the rtl sdr sticks have 'wide open' front ends with basically no filtering, so they'll see some desense when you're transmitting, even on a different band - the degree will depend on polarization of the antennas, separation etc.
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Oct 25, 2018 23:25
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Jonny 290 posted:baofengs are going to S U C K on both satellites (poor sensitivity, ability to get overloaded by any nearby VHF pager tower) and APRS (it takes about 700 mS for the radio to switch from transmit to receive and vice versa, not nearly fast enough for actual aprs). Trust, you want the ft60. The vox delay on the Bingbong radios was way slow but for dry beacons it worked okay . I have a Bluetooth TNC which works pretty good for that . But the battery indicator which is always saying full until it turns off is not .
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Oct 26, 2018 00:09
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Hi ham goons. I just got my Canadian licence on the weekend and the callsign VA7KWI. I'm planning on doing a 2m / 70cm install in my jeep. A couple of the guys at the club I did the test through recommended the Kenwood D710 with builtin gps to do the APRS stuff as well so that is kind of what I'm leaning towards. If anyone here has any experience with antenna locations on a Jeep wrangler i'm  I'm currently thinking a mounting bracket on the tail light as that is going to be more protected from treebranches and poo poo on the trails.
mashed fucked around with this message at 01:02 on Oct 26, 2018 |
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Oct 26, 2018 01:00
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Iirc energy radiates from the tip in a way but if you shadow the antenna behind the vehicle it will have an irregular radiation pattern. It will work though. I think you can try a bumper mount on those too. I have a D700 with external GPS and it works great for what it is. I have the voice module too - don’t bother with that in a vehicle it is annoying as all hell. Never had an issue with it, my only qualm is how chunky the hand mic is with all the buttons versus the one with my TM-231.
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Oct 26, 2018 01:10
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a half wave or 5/8 wave vertical will get the radiation up a bit and do quite well there. comet SBB-5NMO is somethin' to look at. In addition, half waves dont need hardly any ground plane (theyre the preferred VHF/UHF whips for fiberglass boats and RVs), and 5/8 waves don't need much more than that.
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Oct 26, 2018 01:16
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With an antenna like that comet one you mention do I need to be tuning it with an SWR meter after its installed?
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Oct 26, 2018 01:23
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Yeah little bit of whip adjustment is likely in order, but it's got a set screw. It may be dead on from the factory. a decent swr meter is pretty clutch for any ongoing operations though and i'll share a cheaty hint: a cheap CB swr meter is NOT accurate at measuring power at VHF, but it is equally inaccurate at measuring forward and reverse power, so it'll give reasonably accurate SWR readings.
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Oct 26, 2018 01:26
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Half wave is no gain though, right?
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Oct 26, 2018 01:40
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I have finally set up my radio the way i wanted. 1x kx3 1x behringer sound card 1x signalink usb 1x power supply 9999x cables HDSDR+RMS Express+LP-BRIDGE 
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Oct 26, 2018 16:43
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For a Jeep Wrangler, agree that the tail light mount is best. They're easy to install and you can run the wiring without drilling. For 2m you should be fine since you're basically bound by line of sight, and can probably manage with 100W. If you have a hard top and want to transmit while parked, aim toward your target because the signal will direct through all that metal and blast out the opposite front corner from your tail mount. With a soft top, I don't know. It only mattered on mine for 40m. Sadly I had to take all my stuff off my Jeep because of break-ins. I need to get a portable crank up antenna or just buckle down and do backpacking/hiking tree long wires or something.
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Oct 26, 2018 23:35
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Partycat posted:Half wave is no gain though, right? it's a hell of a lot higher gain than a 1/4 wave whip with a weird inconsistent ground plane. Plus you don't want too much gain - remember the 'squashed donut' model of omni antenna gain and then think about all the weird angles and slopes a Jeep hits on the trail.
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Oct 27, 2018 15:46
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Somebody once told me that vhf packet link (winlink usage) is limited to 2 jumps. Is that true because the planned route between these radio clubs need 3 jumps. :/ A>R>R>R>B R: repeater also: updating age old supermicro server with windows update having a memory leak. Kill me.
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Oct 28, 2018 23:17
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PhantomOfTheCopier posted:For a Jeep Wrangler, agree that the tail light mount is best. They're easy to install and you can run the wiring without drilling. For 2m you should be fine since you're basically bound by line of sight, and can probably manage with 100W. If you have a hard top and want to transmit while parked, aim toward your target because the signal will direct through all that metal and blast out the opposite front corner from your tail mount. With a soft top, I don't know. It only mattered on mine for 40m. You made me think, what’s the coolest backpacking setup possible? Basically I want excuses to buy gear and go hiking to some high ridgeline. There is a strange allure to backpack radio to me.
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Oct 28, 2018 23:23
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Trabisnikof posted:You made me think, what’s the coolest backpacking setup possible? Basically I want excuses to buy gear and go hiking to some high ridgeline. There is a strange allure to backpack radio to me. Are you already involved with SOTA? Most of the SOTA guys I know are running things like the Elecraft KX3 and KX2 or 817s. Because everything is QRP for the most part, most of these guys are doing CW, but there is some SSB activity on HF and SSB and FM on Vhf and up. There's even some digi mode activity as you can run FLDigi on android or small low powered windows and linux machines, and i think there's even some software for iOS as well. The people I know doing it are mostly using single band wire antennas with crappie poles as supports. Sotabeams makes a line of lightweight wire antennas and some other gear for mountain topping. KG0AT has done some articles in QST about doing SOTA activations with his goats as pack animals hitting the 14k+ peaks in Colorado. If you want tacticool, it seems like there's always a guy at every hamfest with a ex military PRC 47 or PRC 320 backpack radio with like a 14 ft whip attached. I've never used one, but hear they are a bit of a pain, and don't do LSB unless you modify it. I've never used one, looks like a pain in the rear end to me but theres some dedicated military radio guys out there who use nothing but them.
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Oct 29, 2018 02:24
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drat double post
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Oct 29, 2018 02:25
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Just FYI the longer bands are on fire tonight, a ton of people are participating in a CQ DX event. You can listen in on https://www.websdr.org if you don't have an HF rig of your own.
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Oct 29, 2018 02:28
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Trabisnikof posted:You made me think, what’s the coolest backpacking setup possible? Basically I want excuses to buy gear and go hiking to some high ridgeline. There is a strange allure to backpack radio to me. it took me a year of searching but this year i picked up an icom 703, an MFJ Big Stick that i bolted up to a big telescope tripod, and an 8300 mAh Li-Ion pack. For digital stuff i have a little thinkpad x201 12" that i bought a new 9cell for, it'll run fldigi or wsjt for about 8-9 hours with the screen dimmed a bit. Terrible fun. I also built a modular off-center dipole setup with 22, 44 and 88 foot wires and a 4:1 balun, i can use either 22+44 feet for a 40m and up dipole, or 44+88 for a 75 and up dipole. Haven't had a chance to really test it much yet though.
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Oct 29, 2018 03:14
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Thanks for the suggestions! That icom unit looks particularly dope.
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Oct 29, 2018 10:14
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I'm pretty sure it's the favorite radio i've ever owned. Has the same receiver section as my icom 746, 1/10th the size, 10 strong watts out, and if I turn off the backlight the thing draws like 275 mA on receive. i can play literally all day on that battery pack. the first weekend I got it i worked 11 states and 2 provinces on SSB with a vertical. Oh and it's got a built in autotuner that so far I haven't managed to stump. Tunes up my 80m doublet on every band I want (yes even 160), and uses latching relays there so power draw stays low. the only thing that sucks is that it uses the now-discontinued-and-unobtainium Icom 706 remote head cable, so if I want to pop the head off and run it remote, i'm looking at spending like $179 on ebay for a piece of wire with two weird connectors. sigh
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Oct 29, 2018 16:51
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When i am using my KX3 i experience some strange noise at certain thresholds. Why does 1 khz have so much effect on noise floor??
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Nov 4, 2018 09:44
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filters get switched in and out, it's not an uncommon thing. my ic-746 does the same thing on the transition from 3699 to 3700 khz
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Nov 4, 2018 18:57
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Hi thread. A few weeks ago I attended pacificon, passed the technicians test and found this Yaesu ft-727r at the swap meet. Since it was gonna take 2 ish weeks for the fcc to issue a callsign it would be a great project to convert the battery from Ni-Cad to Lithium-Ion. I liberated the original housing of its nicads, 18650s were just a hair too big, so a new enclosure was to be designed and 3d printed. 18500s would work, but I don't have those on hand. Since the original low-battery indicator is now useless since the battery technology is being changed, a new battery indicator is to be added. The charge barrel jack is being moved from the base to the side so that it can be used on the charger without having to hold it.  Finished housing in cad..  Test piece for the mounting slide  charge controller bracket and the enclosure housing.   It's not terribly pretty in here as I ran into several issues with the cheap charge controllers (surprised?). The led charge indicators are simple and work via reverse biased zener diodes.   Original ni-cad capacity was 500mAh, new capacity is 8400mAh. It's wired in series as a 3S configuration running 9-12 volts. The radio uses 1350mAh in UHF mode to transmit, 150mAh to receive. In a perfect situation it'll net a little over six hours transmit time and 56 hours receive time.
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Nov 4, 2018 20:07
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jesus CHRIST effort. that old beauty is worth it though. woooooooow
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Nov 4, 2018 20:30
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That's some of the coolest poo poo I've seen in this thread in a long time. I bet you could hawk a couple of these at a hamfest if you cleaned them up a bit!
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Nov 4, 2018 21:50
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Jonny 290 posted:filters get switched in and out, it's not an uncommon thing. my ic-746 does the same thing on the transition from 3699 to 3700 khz Thats probably it. Its in very specific frequencies so its not a big deal but my rfi ocd was acting up. cursedshitbox posted:Original ni-cad capacity was 500mAh, new capacity is 8400mAh. It's wired in series as a 3S configuration running 9-12 volts. The radio uses 1350mAh in UHF mode to transmit, 150mAh to receive. In a perfect situation it'll net a little over six hours transmit time and 56 hours receive time. 
Big Mackson fucked around with this message at 13:23 on Nov 5, 2018 |
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Nov 5, 2018 13:21
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Wow good job, crazy energy storage. Did you put a usb out on it so you can charge your phone off all those ions? 
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Nov 7, 2018 10:19
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Tired : Buying baofengs on amazon Wired: Buying a pallet of kilowatt HF amplifiers on alibaba Totally Reasonable fucked around with this message at 01:51 on Nov 13, 2018 |
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Nov 13, 2018 01:49
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I am getting a Zodiac P-6002 and i was wondering what way there is to change frequency since it is just outside the CB band :/
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Nov 19, 2018 15:53
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Michael Jackson posted:I am getting a Zodiac P-6002 and i was wondering what way there is to change frequency since it is just outside the CB band :/ It would not be legal in basically any jurisdiction to modify that radio in to the CB band. As a general rule modified radio transmitters are only allowed in amateur bands. Fortunately being just above CB also means it's just below the amateur 10 meter band (28-29.7MHz) so the process would be similar to go that way.
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Nov 19, 2018 17:57
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Michael Jackson posted:I am getting a Zodiac P-6002 and i was wondering what way there is to change frequency since it is just outside the CB band :/ [edit] Yep, 6 channels on that model, so crystal for each channel. JointHorse fucked around with this message at 22:48 on Nov 19, 2018 |
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Nov 19, 2018 22:40
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I have the radio now and its imported by Bjørn Dich Røstad. It says on the back that the frequency range is 26.965-27.225. Maybe it was modded to conform to Norways cb band :/
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Nov 21, 2018 18:48
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There's a good chance the radio was sold as a CB radio then IMO. If the importer/dealer installed the crystals for CB and tuned it they would also have adjusted the power etc. compared to a hypothetical commercial use case that might want something else. From what I know back when CB was used a lot in Norway the authorities would mainly just check that radios only transmitted on the allocated channels and that the output power was within spec.
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Nov 21, 2018 19:06
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longview posted:There's a good chance the radio was sold as a CB radio then IMO. I have a fully usable AM radio but its useless in this age.  edit: Maybe i could rig microphone and speaker with signalink usb and do some digital mode stuff Big Mackson fucked around with this message at 19:12 on Nov 21, 2018 |
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Nov 21, 2018 19:10
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Does anybody know what this port is and the specs for it? For some reason its difficult to find information about ca. 40 year old radios :/
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Nov 22, 2018 18:06
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Michael Jackson posted:Does anybody know what this port is and the specs for it? For some reason its difficult to find information about ca. 40 year old radios :/ Looks like a pretty standard speakermic connector.
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Nov 22, 2018 18:58
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Motronic posted:Looks like a pretty standard speakermic connector. hmmm, is it some sort of DIN type? edit: oh boy, the frequency drift over the years on this bad boy is insanse. Big Mackson fucked around with this message at 19:28 on Nov 22, 2018 |
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Nov 22, 2018 19:10
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Definitely looks like a DIN connector, they were pretty common for all kinds of things including speaker-mics back then - at least for European made equipment.
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Nov 23, 2018 10:42
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