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New Baofeng UV-5R Radio

duffy@wb8nut.com — 2012-05-14T07:30:30-04:00

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.

Let It Be Known/Ham Radio Deluxe

duffy@wb8nut.com — 2012-05-04T10:41:03-04:00

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.

Looking forward to Dayton Hamvention 2012!

duffy@wb8nut.com — 2012-05-01T12:36:43-04:00

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.

More Poor Spelling and English from Hams

duffy@wb8nut.com — 2012-04-30T09:31:51-04:00

Wow, so a ham sent me a note about the new repeater he had set-up. Very nice of him to send a note.

When I went to QRZ.com to look up his call, here is what he had written on his profile page. I have deleted the information from his post that would have identified him. I used the letter "X" in the following post to show what I modified and I also substituted (name) for their actual names.

"MY SELF WITH XX8XXX (name) AND YY8XXX (name).CO SPONCER A REPETER IN THE NORTHERN KY. CINCINNATI OHIO AERA IT IS A OPEN TO ALL REPETER. THE FREQ.IS XXX.XXX TONE XXX.Xhz IT HAS AN AUTO PATCH AND BACKUP POWER SYSTEM. CALL ANY OF US FOR THE AUTO PATCH CODES. PLEASE FELL FREE TO USE THE SYSTEM ANY TIME."

Here is a better way to write this with spelling and gammar corrections:

"(name) XX8XXX, (name) YY8XXX and I co-sponsor a repeater in the Northern Kentucky/Cincinnati, Ohio area. This repeater is open to all amateurs. The frequency is XXX.XXX with a +5 Mhz offset and a XXX.X Hz tone for access. The repeater has an auto-patch and a back-up power system. If you would like to use the auto-patch, please call us for the access codes. Feel free to use the repeater anytime."

Seriously folks, what is the general public going to think about amateur radio and amateur radio operators in general if they read information on our hobby written in horrible English and spelling? Especially when we are talking about the spelling of very basic words such as "area."

I would also like to mention that the use of all caps is the Internet equivalent of yelling. Come on people, learn to use the shift key.

Is the above example representative of the kind of English, spelling and writing skills that they are teaching in our public schools? If so then the future of our country and amateur radio is frightening to me. No wonder the United States is losing its competitive advantage in the world.

CW should not have been the filter. Maybe a test that included the writing of a simple English composition should have been given along with a test on theory and rules.

WAS Digital Modes Only

duffy@wb8nut.com — 2012-03-22T10:10:31-04:00

The ARRL just processed my Worked All States (WAS) Award for two-way communication with all 50 states using digital modes only. That is my third WAS Award.

I have my original award using paper QSLs only, then I did it again this time using only electronic QSLs from Logbook of the World (LoTW), and now WAS using Digital Modes only using all electronic QSLs. Next on the WAS bandwagon will be WAS using just RTTY. Only four states away from that one.

I am also working on DXCC on 10 Meters only. At 89 countries now and have worked enough, just waiting on the QSLs in LoTW to come through. People, please do the uploads to LoTW. It is much easier and cheaper than paper QSLs.

Hams need a course in English

duffy@wb8nut.com — 2012-03-06T08:20:30-05:00

I remember the now settled discussion about CW testing to get a license for amateur radio. Seems many thought that removing CW meant the dumbing down of amateur radio. I'm here to tell you that the CW test requirement had nothing to do with dumbing down amateur radio. Seems it was already here.

Anyone who reads the forum postings on QRZ, eHam, Yahoo Groups and the like should be a bit shocked at the butchering of the English language. People do not seem to know how to spell or the correct usage of words such as "their", "they're" and "there." Some use "and" when they meant "an." One of the latest violations are from people who use "prolly" when they meant to use "probably." I have even read where people use "know" for "now" and vice-versa. I could go on and on.

Seems that the dumbing down occurred long before the dropping of the CW test since many of these posts are from hams that have been licensed for more than 10 years.

What prompted this little rant today was the post I read from a ham who wrote this: "Is it because it's and ICOM pattend?" First, I cannot even figure out what he means by "pattend." The rest of the poor excuse for a sentence is just mess of the English language. So elimination of the CW testing is not dumbing down amateur radio. I think it is our crumbling public school system.

Then there are those who do not know how to use the "Shift" key on the keyboard. They type in all caps which is the Internet equivalent of screaming. Simply put, if you do not know how to properly type, then please don't make postings on the bulletin boards.

Come on hams, we can do better!

The Yaesu Mistake

duffy@wb8nut.com — 2012-01-02T16:20:15-05:00

Happy New Year!

Last week I was getting ready to head down to Atlanta to visit my daughter and her family. Atlanta is a great place to visit, especially if you are into D-Star. Heck, the whole Southeast area of the United States is a D-Star haven. But I digress.

I read a post on the TAPR APRS SIG about Yaesu finally introducing digital radio. It looks like they are going to bring out something that is based on P25. P25 is a digital mode developed for the United States Public Sevices - as in police, fire, government service, etc.

Now Icom introduced D-Star a number of years ago. D-Star was developed for the amateur radio community and developed for an international market. P25 is a digital method developed for the U.S. government market and not a worldwide market and hardly developed for the amateur community. D-Star is a completely open standard. The only thing proprietary is the digital Codec. Not a big deal.

There is a well established and growing D-Star presence throughout the world. So now Yaesu is going to come along and hose things up by introducing something different. What's next, Kenwood coming out with their own digital mode?

Yaesu's actions are nothing short of nuts. Why not go with what is already established and a defacto standard in the amateur community? What are they trying to create, the Beta/VHS war of years ago?

One amateur on the list who will remain nameless commented that he never got D-Star and thought it was stupid. Why? Because if could not interoperate with the U.S. public service systems! Well I have got news for him and everyone else. The police and fire agencies are NEVER going to link their communication systems with amateur systems. Thinking this is nothing but foolish. Each service will stand on its own. So that kind of blows the whole need for one common system for digital. Heck, even in the U.S., the railroads have chosen their own digital system. There is no standard across all services. Each service picks its own standard.

D-Star has become the standard. What a mistake for Yaesu to not have jumped on the D-Star bandwagon. Remember, Yaesu is the same company who went with "Wires" instead of Echolink and IRLP. As a result of that horrible decision, almost no one uses Wires. Yaesu is making another mistake trying to go on its own. This can only benefit Icom.

Here it is! My newest DXCC Award

duffy@wb8nut.com — 2011-12-14T07:46:13-05:00

Received my DXCC All-Phone contacts award a few weeks ago from the ARRL and took it to the framing store to have it framed. Got it back yesterday. The local store does such a great job with the framing.

Second DXCC Award

duffy@wb8nut.com — 2011-11-26T15:40:48-05:00

Just received my certificate for DXCC - Phone. The first DXCC award I received was for mixed contacts back in 2003. This award was for all phone contacts. The next closest award I am close to is DXCC on 10 meters (still need 20 confirmed contacts) and all Digital (still need about 45 confirmed contacts). One thing for sure is that the paper the award comes on now is rather flimsy. The first award from eight years ago had much heavier paper stock.

SD Radios (SDR) and my new Flexradio 1500

duffy@wb8nut.com — 2011-09-25T07:44:29-04:00

I remember when the Flexradio 1500 came out a few years ago. It really interested me and at the introductory price of $599, I almost bought one back then. However, I lost interest when it seemed like forever between the announcement of the 1500 and the eventual shipments started.

My buddy Russ, WB8ZCC, has become very interested in SDR and we used to banter back and forth about SDR and my concern with investing in a radio that was dependent upon a computer. What happens in 20 years when the hardware still works, but the manufacturer does not support the newer operating systems? Second, I just like knobs and a display on the radio.

Well you can imagine Russ' surprise when I told him I ordered a Flexradio 1500! I figured if I could get 10 years out of it then it would not be a bad investment.

I have to tell you that I am rather impressed with this little box. I have used it on SSB, CW, a bunch of digital modes like PSK, JT-65, and Hell, and even used it to receive DRM broadcasts on shortwave. The radio is just fun to use and so far I have not missed the lack of knobs on the radio.

Even with only 5 watts on this radio (the other Flex radios are higher power), this thing is pretty impressive. On SSB with 5 watts, I got a 58 report from a school station in Wyoming. Not to shabby. The Flexradio supplied software is really comprehensive. Through the use of virtual audio cable and virtual comm ports, you can use all sorts of external programs like MixW, HRD, DM-780, FLDigi, etc. and all through one single USB cable. Neat! No more interfaces and multiple USB/Serial cables.

So take a look at Flexradio and if you have the bucks, you might want to dip your toe into the world of SDR with the Flexradio 1500. You can find them at http://flexradio.com

Made it to Dayton after all!

duffy@wb8nut.com — 2011-05-26T15:43:07-04:00

As it turned out, I was able to go to Dayton this year on Friday. Just had to cut it short in order to get back to Cincinnati in time to pack up and head to Atlanta for the weekend. So here are some quick observations.

Vendors in the flea market were down substantially from last year. Still good, but a lot of open spaces. My personal opinion is that the fee for a space is too high for a casual seller. DARA should open those spaces each day of the flea market on a first-come-first-served basis for $20. A small seller cannot make a profit for what DARA currently charges.

I missed the explosion of the sanitary sewer on Saturday. What a mess it must have been. I am sure the smell was not any worse than normal. Hams really need to change their diets!

OK, now for the good stuff. Flexradio was hot and hard to get into their booth to look at their stuff. So I really could not get in to see if there was anything new. Whatever they had was creating a lot of excitement.

Yaesu did not have any hats this year. Something about them getting stuck in customs....yeah, right. Well no hats meant that traffic in their booth was down quite a bit.

TenTec was showing the new Eagle transceiver. Looked nice. Price is too high especially compared to the new Kenwood TS-590S which seems to be very similar in performance.

Icom and Kenwood had their new radios there. Icom booth was crazy as usual and Kenwood picked up on activity.

D-Star was still creating a lot of new excitement. The dedicated D-Star booth was always busy. D-Star is really picking up in popularity. Once you get on it, you don’t want to get off it. D-Star and digital is the future of ham radio.

ARRL was also busy as usual. They have an excellent presence at Dayton.

Byonics had a lot of new items for APRS and continues to generate a lot of excitement. Peak had a lot of reconditioned weather stations to go with the home APRS stations at an excellent price.

Wouxun radios were being snapped up quickly. At $85 to $105 depending on model and vendor, people were buying them like crazy. I heard many vendors sold-out of the Wouxun radios quickly. If you got one, find the KG-UV Commander Software as it is much easier to use than the crappy software from Wouxun.

GRE/Alinco had large booth. The exciting thing there was that they will be bringing out a new 900Mhz/1.2Ghz dual-band handheld. That is great and could help 900 Mhz take off. I noticed a growth in repeaters on that band, I just don’t know what radios people are using to access those repeaters. Well it appear Alinco is coming to the rescue.

Looking forward to next year and being able to spend more time there in 2012.

APRS and Hamvention

duffy@wb8nut.com — 2011-05-19T08:09:02-04:00

I always love this time of year. When all the hams start coming into Dayton, my APRS station map becomes absolutely cluttered with the icons of stations using APRS. It is so cool to see all the hams traveling to Dayton.

Many hams don’t get APRS, but I find it to be a lot of fun and it is always interesting to see who is traveling through the area. Fun stuff with the hobby.

Looks like I will be going to Dayton

duffy@wb8nut.com — 2011-05-19T08:07:08-04:00

Looks like I will be going to Dayton this year after all...if but for a few hours on Friday.

Russ, WB8ZCC and I will be heading up early Friday and coming back mid-afternoon. So it looks like my record of attending Dayton will not be broken.

I will try to post some Dayton pictures on the website for those who may have to miss it this year.

No Dayton Hamvention for me this year...Bummer!

duffy@wb8nut.com — 2011-05-05T10:39:39-04:00

Well it had to happen eventually. My string of going to the Dayton Hamvention was destined to be broken eventually.

I think I have not missed a Hamvention in close to 20 years. Ever since I moved back to Cincinnati from St. Louis I believe I have made every Hamvention. This year though I will be unable to go.

It appears my darling daughter scheduled our grandson’s first birthday party the same day as I usually attend Dayton. Of course I have to make my grandson’s first birthday party.

So no Hamvention for me. No spending a bunch of money on more toys I could do without. No collecting the annual ARRL Hamvention button. No smelling restrooms. No fun with the ham radio friends.

I will miss going this year. See you there next year!

Dayton Hamvention 2011 Possibly a Bust?

duffy@wb8nut.com — 2011-03-22T17:43:33-04:00

It's no secret that most of our radio and associated equipment comes from Japan. With the recent terrible disasters in Japan, I cannot help but wonder what effects it will have on the annual Dayton Hamvention. Usually Dayton pricing is the best pricing of the year, but if radios are now going to be in short supply, why discount them heavily?

Many manufacturers have been without production capabilities for a number of weeks and who knows how long it will take for the country to recover. However, I believe that Kenwood may be immune somewhat from the effects since they do most of their manufacturing in Malaysia and not in Japan.

In any case, amateurs all across the world are praying for our fellow hams and non-hams in Japan for a speedy recovery.

Experimenting with JT65-HF

duffy@wb8nut.com — 2011-03-14T07:24:25-04:00

Just started experimenting with JT-65 HF after reading the QST article. A little different than most soundcard programs and I am able to receive and decode transmissions. Have not transmitted yet, as I am still feeling out how the program works. Looks promising though.

Why buy radios if you are not going to use them?

duffy@wb8nut.com — 2011-02-22T09:21:49-05:00

Each and every year I attend the Dayton Hamvention. I don't think I have missed a year in the past 20 years. I watch people buying new handheld radios like they are going to stop manufacturing them any day now.

Then, when Dayton is all over, the repeaters are relatively silent. What are you people doing with these radios? Just listening to nothing? I don't get it.

Hams are in this hobby to communicate. So why aren't we talking on the repeaters anymore?

Not to mention, when I go to the meetings of my local ham radio club, the room is usually filled with 50 or more people, and you're lucky if you hear even 10 of those people on any of the club repeaters at any time during the week.

Come on people, get on the radio. Talk and make friends. Learn something interesting about others. Communicate something interesting about you. If you are going to be a ham, then act like a ham and use the flipping radios!

SunSpots - Are they back?

duffy@wb8nut.com — 2011-02-19T09:20:06-05:00

I am not on the HF radio every day, but Russ (WB8ZCC) sent out an email yesterday that 10 meters was open. So I turned on the radio and did hear a number of Western Europeans on the air being worked by countless U.S. hams obviously starved for a DX contact.

Maybe after a prolonged wait, Mr. Sun is finally starting to cooperate with us patiently waiting hams. Now I can start working on my endorsement for 200 countries confirmed. Right now as I recall, I am at 118. So with a little help from the Sun, I might be able to get it this cycle.

The New Site - Hope you like it!

duffy@wb8nut.com — 2011-01-31T17:37:05-05:00

I have again updated the WB8NUT website and used a website development program called RapidWeaver. It runs on the Apple Mac. I just bought the Mac in December, 2010 and found this excellent application to create websites. It makes it much easier to maintain and add content in the future. So you can count on the site growing in the future.

Also, some of the Photo Albums are empty right now, but I plan on adding photos to those soon as time permits.

Thanks for visiting and I hope you visit again soon.