More English Language Abuse
May/30/2012 07:22 AM
I found this one on a ham radio group at Yahoo Groups. The person posting this is referring to how long it has taken for a new radio to come to market. This one struck me as very funny.
"Out of patients..... The Icom 208H is well priced and does all the frequencies that the 920 does anyway. End of story…"
If I am reading the above correctly, it seems the guy is a physician because he apparently has run out of patients. I guess he must have cured them all and now has more time for amateur radio.
Maybe next time he'll run out of patience.
;-)
"Out of patients..... The Icom 208H is well priced and does all the frequencies that the 920 does anyway. End of story…"
If I am reading the above correctly, it seems the guy is a physician because he apparently has run out of patients. I guess he must have cured them all and now has more time for amateur radio.
Maybe next time he'll run out of patience.
;-)
Comments
Kenwood D710 APRS Radio
May/26/2012 07:01 AM
If anyone out there is interested in APRS or in Digipeating through the ISS (Space Station), I've added additional information on my APRS Information webpage how I am now using the Kenwood D710 APRS dual-band radio to run on APRS on 144.39 and digipeating through the ISS on 145.825 at the same time using the dual-band function of the D710.
I picked up the D710 at the 2012 Dayton Hamvention from Ham Radio Outlet. What an excellent radio. So if you are interested, click on the APRS Information link on the left side of the page.
Have a safe and enjoyable Memorial Day weekend.
I picked up the D710 at the 2012 Dayton Hamvention from Ham Radio Outlet. What an excellent radio. So if you are interested, click on the APRS Information link on the left side of the page.
Have a safe and enjoyable Memorial Day weekend.
Dayton Hamvention 2012 Recap
May/21/2012 10:10 AM
Another Dayton Hamvention has come and gone. I spent Thursday night thru Saturday afternoon with Rod WI0T and Russ WB8ZCC at the Hamvention. Thursday evening was the usual pre-Dayton drinking festivities. WB8ZCC suffered with a headache on Friday.
The good news is that the weather was great. It was the first Dayton Hamvention in recent memory where is did not rain at some point during the weekend. In fact, the skies were blue and beautiful and temperature in the 80s.
The crowd seemed about the same as last year to me, but then on Monday I was listening to the Dayton DStar repeater and the hams there said that the attendance was up this year to around 25,000 people. That means growth again. Great news for the Hamvention going forward.
Flea market vendors were down again. That's OK since most of the vendors who did come had nothing but junk at premium prices. I suspect a number of them toted the stuff home since they apparently think their junk is worth just a little less than buying something new with a warranty. I just don't understand what people are thinking with these asking prices. Some say it is because of eBay, but I don't believe it. Most of this stuff was junk and most of the stuff on eBay is of decent quality, or at least that is my experience.
In any case I anticipated that there would be a big crowd at the Yaesu booth looking at their new digital handheld radio the FT-1DR/E. To my surprise, there was very little interest and no crowd whatsoever. Just the usual people stopping by to get their free Yaesa hat (by the way, someone told me that in Japanese, Yaesu means "free hat." In any case, when I tried discussing the new digital offering with the Yaesu people, about all they could tell me was that "it is not P25 and not DStar."
From what I can tell the bandwidth is twice as wide as DStar, hence faster data speeds, it has a built-in GPS, and that it is capable of taking and sending very low resolution pictures. Since the handheld cannot display the picture I am not sure what the full benefit is with that function. Furthermore, even if sending it to a base unit allowing them to view it on a PC, the picture is so low in resolution it would not be worth much to me. The radio does attach the position of the radio to the picture so you can return to the place where it was taken. In marketing we would call it flash and trash.
It does allow for a micro SD card to back-up data and store GPS positions just like the current DStar handheld radio the ID-31. It also has digital ARTS, but I have never seen or known anyone to use ARTS on their analog radios.
There is no mention of call-sign routing or being able to use the GPS function to transfer position to the APRS network as there is today with DStar.
You can apparently send Group Short Messages and we all know it is not easy to send messages with the keyboards on anyone's handheld….at least not fast.
It appears that this Yaesu digital radio is really just trying to migrate a commercial technology into ham radio. We all know that DStar from the ground up was designed specifically for amateur radio. So now you have a choice between a technology designed for amateur radio and one designed for commercial users and shoe horned for you. An easy selection in my opinion.
So Yaesu was not selling any of the radios, with little excitement from amateurs, with no one to talk to because of zero Yaesu digital capable repeaters, why would you buy it? Again, I think Yaesu made a big mistake with this direction since DStar is already an established digital standard that works extremely well in spite of Yaesu's attempt to create FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) by saying it is old technology. Don't believe it folks.
Well I had to have some fun with Yaesu and mock their poor decision to go in another digital direction. WI0T, WB8ZCC and I did wear some yellow T-Shirts I had produced prior to the Hamvention that said "DStar, THE Digital Standard for Amateur Radio" on the front and "DStar Accept No Substitutes" on the back. We wore them the entire day on Saturday. People loved it for the most part. A few made negative comments, probably the old hate to change CW forever crowd. We also wore them at the Yaesu booth and stood around talking. Yaesu folks didn't seem to care and since most people passed on taking a look at their new FT-1DR/E, the average ham didn't even get the meaning.
In summary, it looks to me that the Yaesu digital offering is DOA.
On the other hand, DStar is alive and well with tremendous and growing interest at the Hamvention. The DStar gatherings on Thursday and Friday nights were packed with hams. Icom gave a presentation on the history of DStar that was very interesting. It outlined why they selected the Codec and GMSK for the base of DStar. Once you listen to that presentation, it all makes sense.
The DStar education forum was also packed with hams eager to learn about the DStar technology and all that it can offer.
Many of the vendors of DStar equipment had sold most of the on-site DStar inventory by Saturday morning. The ID-31 handhelds were the first to sell-out as that is the latest and greatest easy to use DStar handheld complete with GPS and the entire DStar repeater database. With the GPS, the ID-31 can automatically find and program the radio for the closest repeater. Of course since it has the built-in GPS, it can also send your position to the APRS network. So DStar is growing very rapidly now and just exploding in growth. With close to a thousand world-wide DStar repeaters now and all 50 states covered, it is no wonder the digital excitement is with DStar and not Yaesu.
TenTec showed off the new QRP transceiver and the new QRP amplifier. The amp looks very interesting. The QRP transceiver is missing 12 meters. TenTec said it would not fit. Huh? So Elecraft can bring out a 10 watt QRP radio with 160 meters up to 6 meters in a smaller box and TenTec cannot even get all the HF bands to fit into a larger box. Very puzzling to me.
Alinco showed off their new SDR transceiver. Frankly, it looks like their regular HF transceiver without the panel and with a computer to control it. No comparison to the Flexradio SDR radios.
Flexradio showed off their new and coming new SDR radio. This is aimed towards the money crowd with a price to be around $7,000. Out of my league, but I am sure it is going to be great.
Kenwood showed their new 990 HF radio. Wow, this thing is a monster and rumored to be around $10K list price. Again, for the money crowd, but the radio looked great.
Go to my Dayton Hamvention 2012 Photo Album for pictures of all the new offerings.
The ARRL booth was crazy with activity and helps to create a lot of excitement around ham radio.
W4PC and the Ham Radio Deluxe gang were there to show off what is coming in the new 6.0 release. They had a line of people waiting to pay $60 for support and the next HRD version 6.0 which of course will start the paid subscription model of HRD. HRD is by far the best radio control, multimode and logging program out there supporting all the major radios with one license. I know hams are use to mostly free software. But if we want people to continue to support and develop their software, we're going to have to start paying them to do so. There is nothing more frustrating to me than to use and like a program, only to have the author drop support because it takes up too much of his free time. These guys and gals need to get compensated for their time. Let's support HRD folks.
There were also many vendors selling all those new cheap China radios. Many people were buying the Wouxun, Baofeng, TYT and some other weird name radios. Hey, they're pretty much cheap throw-a-ways. I mean were else can you get a dual band four or five watt handheld with rapid charger for $65 bucks?
So we had a great time and there is so much more to talk about. After all there are hundreds of vendors and I would wear my fingers out typing comments about all of them so I just tried to hit the highlights.
I know gas prices are up, but the trip to Dayton each year is well worth it.
The good news is that the weather was great. It was the first Dayton Hamvention in recent memory where is did not rain at some point during the weekend. In fact, the skies were blue and beautiful and temperature in the 80s.
The crowd seemed about the same as last year to me, but then on Monday I was listening to the Dayton DStar repeater and the hams there said that the attendance was up this year to around 25,000 people. That means growth again. Great news for the Hamvention going forward.
Flea market vendors were down again. That's OK since most of the vendors who did come had nothing but junk at premium prices. I suspect a number of them toted the stuff home since they apparently think their junk is worth just a little less than buying something new with a warranty. I just don't understand what people are thinking with these asking prices. Some say it is because of eBay, but I don't believe it. Most of this stuff was junk and most of the stuff on eBay is of decent quality, or at least that is my experience.
In any case I anticipated that there would be a big crowd at the Yaesu booth looking at their new digital handheld radio the FT-1DR/E. To my surprise, there was very little interest and no crowd whatsoever. Just the usual people stopping by to get their free Yaesa hat (by the way, someone told me that in Japanese, Yaesu means "free hat." In any case, when I tried discussing the new digital offering with the Yaesu people, about all they could tell me was that "it is not P25 and not DStar."
From what I can tell the bandwidth is twice as wide as DStar, hence faster data speeds, it has a built-in GPS, and that it is capable of taking and sending very low resolution pictures. Since the handheld cannot display the picture I am not sure what the full benefit is with that function. Furthermore, even if sending it to a base unit allowing them to view it on a PC, the picture is so low in resolution it would not be worth much to me. The radio does attach the position of the radio to the picture so you can return to the place where it was taken. In marketing we would call it flash and trash.
It does allow for a micro SD card to back-up data and store GPS positions just like the current DStar handheld radio the ID-31. It also has digital ARTS, but I have never seen or known anyone to use ARTS on their analog radios.
There is no mention of call-sign routing or being able to use the GPS function to transfer position to the APRS network as there is today with DStar.
You can apparently send Group Short Messages and we all know it is not easy to send messages with the keyboards on anyone's handheld….at least not fast.
It appears that this Yaesu digital radio is really just trying to migrate a commercial technology into ham radio. We all know that DStar from the ground up was designed specifically for amateur radio. So now you have a choice between a technology designed for amateur radio and one designed for commercial users and shoe horned for you. An easy selection in my opinion.
So Yaesu was not selling any of the radios, with little excitement from amateurs, with no one to talk to because of zero Yaesu digital capable repeaters, why would you buy it? Again, I think Yaesu made a big mistake with this direction since DStar is already an established digital standard that works extremely well in spite of Yaesu's attempt to create FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) by saying it is old technology. Don't believe it folks.
Well I had to have some fun with Yaesu and mock their poor decision to go in another digital direction. WI0T, WB8ZCC and I did wear some yellow T-Shirts I had produced prior to the Hamvention that said "DStar, THE Digital Standard for Amateur Radio" on the front and "DStar Accept No Substitutes" on the back. We wore them the entire day on Saturday. People loved it for the most part. A few made negative comments, probably the old hate to change CW forever crowd. We also wore them at the Yaesu booth and stood around talking. Yaesu folks didn't seem to care and since most people passed on taking a look at their new FT-1DR/E, the average ham didn't even get the meaning.
In summary, it looks to me that the Yaesu digital offering is DOA.
On the other hand, DStar is alive and well with tremendous and growing interest at the Hamvention. The DStar gatherings on Thursday and Friday nights were packed with hams. Icom gave a presentation on the history of DStar that was very interesting. It outlined why they selected the Codec and GMSK for the base of DStar. Once you listen to that presentation, it all makes sense.
The DStar education forum was also packed with hams eager to learn about the DStar technology and all that it can offer.
Many of the vendors of DStar equipment had sold most of the on-site DStar inventory by Saturday morning. The ID-31 handhelds were the first to sell-out as that is the latest and greatest easy to use DStar handheld complete with GPS and the entire DStar repeater database. With the GPS, the ID-31 can automatically find and program the radio for the closest repeater. Of course since it has the built-in GPS, it can also send your position to the APRS network. So DStar is growing very rapidly now and just exploding in growth. With close to a thousand world-wide DStar repeaters now and all 50 states covered, it is no wonder the digital excitement is with DStar and not Yaesu.
TenTec showed off the new QRP transceiver and the new QRP amplifier. The amp looks very interesting. The QRP transceiver is missing 12 meters. TenTec said it would not fit. Huh? So Elecraft can bring out a 10 watt QRP radio with 160 meters up to 6 meters in a smaller box and TenTec cannot even get all the HF bands to fit into a larger box. Very puzzling to me.
Alinco showed off their new SDR transceiver. Frankly, it looks like their regular HF transceiver without the panel and with a computer to control it. No comparison to the Flexradio SDR radios.
Flexradio showed off their new and coming new SDR radio. This is aimed towards the money crowd with a price to be around $7,000. Out of my league, but I am sure it is going to be great.
Kenwood showed their new 990 HF radio. Wow, this thing is a monster and rumored to be around $10K list price. Again, for the money crowd, but the radio looked great.
Go to my Dayton Hamvention 2012 Photo Album for pictures of all the new offerings.
The ARRL booth was crazy with activity and helps to create a lot of excitement around ham radio.
W4PC and the Ham Radio Deluxe gang were there to show off what is coming in the new 6.0 release. They had a line of people waiting to pay $60 for support and the next HRD version 6.0 which of course will start the paid subscription model of HRD. HRD is by far the best radio control, multimode and logging program out there supporting all the major radios with one license. I know hams are use to mostly free software. But if we want people to continue to support and develop their software, we're going to have to start paying them to do so. There is nothing more frustrating to me than to use and like a program, only to have the author drop support because it takes up too much of his free time. These guys and gals need to get compensated for their time. Let's support HRD folks.
There were also many vendors selling all those new cheap China radios. Many people were buying the Wouxun, Baofeng, TYT and some other weird name radios. Hey, they're pretty much cheap throw-a-ways. I mean were else can you get a dual band four or five watt handheld with rapid charger for $65 bucks?
So we had a great time and there is so much more to talk about. After all there are hundreds of vendors and I would wear my fingers out typing comments about all of them so I just tried to hit the highlights.
I know gas prices are up, but the trip to Dayton each year is well worth it.
New Baofeng UV-5R Radio
May/14/2012 07:30 AM
I had been looking at the new Baofeng UV-5R (pronounced either as Mao-Fang or as Bao-Fang - who knows with these Chinese names) UV-5R dual-band VHF/UHF handheld. How can you pass up a 4 watt handheld with charger for under $65 bucks? You cannot, I mean at that price, the darn thing is almost a throw-a-way if it ever breaks.
Believe it or not, I actually ordered and received mine from Amazon.com. About $62 delivered since I have their Prime Service.
Did not take too long to unpack and put it on the air. The first thing was programming the radio. I used the free open-source Chirp software which is much better than the free software Baofeng provides as a download. The radio also used the same programming cable as the Wouxun Chinese radios which I already had.
Once programmed it is somewhat intuitive. The instruction manual is pretty sparse as far as how to program and use the various features.
BTW, the radio is capable of transmitting outside the ham bands and is FCC Part 90 accepted. So you can use this radio for things other than amateur radio.
In any case, I have programmed some of the various amateur repeaters in the area and gave it a try. The first thing I noticed is that is has a built-in time-out-time. It is factory set at 15 second. I kept getting cutoff during conversations so I changed that to 45 seconds pretty quickly.
Audio reports are good and on receive it sounds very good. I even programmed some of the local police/fire frequencies into it to listen and it picked them up very well so the receiver seems to be more than adequate.
The display can change colors based on what the radio is doing. It is factory set to glow orange on transmit, blue when actually receiving a signal, and purple is the squelch is open and there is no signal.
On the charger, there is an LED that flashed quickly between red and green when there is no radio or battery being charged. That is really annoying. There should be no light on the charger when it is not charging in my opinion. It also glow red while charging and green when the battery is charged. You can charge the battery while attached to the radio, or even charge a stand-alone battery.
This is a great radio for a great price. Cheaper than the Wouxuns that everyone seems to be snapping up. For the new Technician wanting to get a new radio when they get their license, for less than $65 this is a great starter radio.
Oh, if you need help with the radio, there is a large group on Yahoo Groups that are there to help with any questions. As I said, the manual is not very good, so the group is your extension of the manual.
Believe it or not, I actually ordered and received mine from Amazon.com. About $62 delivered since I have their Prime Service.
Did not take too long to unpack and put it on the air. The first thing was programming the radio. I used the free open-source Chirp software which is much better than the free software Baofeng provides as a download. The radio also used the same programming cable as the Wouxun Chinese radios which I already had.
Once programmed it is somewhat intuitive. The instruction manual is pretty sparse as far as how to program and use the various features.
BTW, the radio is capable of transmitting outside the ham bands and is FCC Part 90 accepted. So you can use this radio for things other than amateur radio.
In any case, I have programmed some of the various amateur repeaters in the area and gave it a try. The first thing I noticed is that is has a built-in time-out-time. It is factory set at 15 second. I kept getting cutoff during conversations so I changed that to 45 seconds pretty quickly.
Audio reports are good and on receive it sounds very good. I even programmed some of the local police/fire frequencies into it to listen and it picked them up very well so the receiver seems to be more than adequate.
The display can change colors based on what the radio is doing. It is factory set to glow orange on transmit, blue when actually receiving a signal, and purple is the squelch is open and there is no signal.
On the charger, there is an LED that flashed quickly between red and green when there is no radio or battery being charged. That is really annoying. There should be no light on the charger when it is not charging in my opinion. It also glow red while charging and green when the battery is charged. You can charge the battery while attached to the radio, or even charge a stand-alone battery.
This is a great radio for a great price. Cheaper than the Wouxuns that everyone seems to be snapping up. For the new Technician wanting to get a new radio when they get their license, for less than $65 this is a great starter radio.
Oh, if you need help with the radio, there is a large group on Yahoo Groups that are there to help with any questions. As I said, the manual is not very good, so the group is your extension of the manual.
Let It Be Known/Ham Radio Deluxe
May/04/2012 10:41 AM
Let it be known to all hams that today, Friday, May 4th, Rod, WI0T, actually spent money and purchased version 6.0 of Ham Radio Deluxe.
As many of you know, money in Rod's pocket usually never sees the light of day. So today is a historic event.
We are hoping Rod continues to free up cash at the Hamvention in a few weeks. It will surely help stimulate the economy and put the U.S. back on the track to prosperity for sure.
BTW, Ham Radio Deluxe (HRD) is an excellent full-featured radio control (multi brands and models of radios), digital multi-mode and logbook program. To learn more about this incredible program suite, go to:
http://www.hrdsoftwarellc.com/
In my opinion, HRD is a much better value than other paid radio control programs such as the N4PY application since you only have to purchase one license for ALL radios and the license key is not dependent on the individual computer it is installed on. What other programs like N4PY do not offer with their application which HRD does, is the logbook and the digital mode program.
The HRD folks will be at Dayton so stop by and visit their booth.
As many of you know, money in Rod's pocket usually never sees the light of day. So today is a historic event.
We are hoping Rod continues to free up cash at the Hamvention in a few weeks. It will surely help stimulate the economy and put the U.S. back on the track to prosperity for sure.
BTW, Ham Radio Deluxe (HRD) is an excellent full-featured radio control (multi brands and models of radios), digital multi-mode and logbook program. To learn more about this incredible program suite, go to:
http://www.hrdsoftwarellc.com/
In my opinion, HRD is a much better value than other paid radio control programs such as the N4PY application since you only have to purchase one license for ALL radios and the license key is not dependent on the individual computer it is installed on. What other programs like N4PY do not offer with their application which HRD does, is the logbook and the digital mode program.
The HRD folks will be at Dayton so stop by and visit their booth.
Looking forward to Dayton Hamvention 2012!
May/01/2012 12:36 PM
The Dayton Hamvention is just a couple of weeks away. The excitement is building. Seems manufacturers have been holding off on announcing new products instead preferring to make the new stuff public at the Hamvention!
The product pricing is great at Dayton. Anything you could possible want can be bought at the Hamvention.
Plenty of friends to meet, food to eat and alcohol to drink! Three days of fun!
I'll let you know what I saw, bought and saw at Dayton. So visit after the Dayton Hamvention to read my comments and see the pictures.
The product pricing is great at Dayton. Anything you could possible want can be bought at the Hamvention.
Plenty of friends to meet, food to eat and alcohol to drink! Three days of fun!
I'll let you know what I saw, bought and saw at Dayton. So visit after the Dayton Hamvention to read my comments and see the pictures.