AmateurRadio.com

I mentioned last week that manual programming of the memories of the UV-5R was a step too far, at least for me! At the time I ordered a programming cable from Hong Kong. It’s yet to arrive, but today, I had an idea.

I currently have a programming cable for a Midland CT-790 here. Now that looks to be a clone of a Wouxun radio and I knew that the Baofeng UV-5R was supposed to use the same programming cable as a Wouxun. Would it work, I wondered?

I grabbed the Baofeng UV-5R software from the link on http://www.uv-5r.com and installed it. There was an initial problem, because the programming lead installed itself as COM11 and the UV-5R programming software only went up to COM8. I managed to convince the cable to be COM1 (that takes me back to packet  days, playing with COM1….) and then fired up the software.

What I thought were error messages were in fact not! They are clearly interesting translations. After a couple of false starts, I managed to get the computer to read the UV-5R and download the memories into the programming software. From there, it was relatively straighforward to modify the memories and upload them back into the radio without incident. The UV-5R software is pretty basic, but it’s functional. Don’t expect handholding, but it beats trying to program the radio manually.

Since I had the Midland CT-790 (Wouxun KG-UV1P) here, I was curious about the antennas. I swapped the Midland’s antenna onto the Baofeng. Where I had struggled to blip up GB3UK on 430MHz with the Baofeng antenna, it worked better with the Midland. Same story on GB3WH on 145MHz. So it may be that the UV-5R antenna is worth replacing – although it’s certainly adequate. The Midland antenna is slightly longer and more flexible. The Midland antenna, if fitted on the UV-5R has a slight gap at the base which might not be ideal for longer term use.

All good fun and interesting – remembering this was a radio that cost less than £40. As K0NR comments in his blog on the UV-5R, a rig for the price of a tank of petrol/gas. Way less, for us…..!!

Julian, G4ILO once confessed to being fond of handheld radios. I’m the same! There’s something magic about having a bit of handheld radio kit which can make interesting radio contacts, in some cases around the globe.

When the postman delivered another handheld last week, Julie said, completely in fun, ‘you’ve got quite a few of those now’. And she’s right. Let’s see:

- Icom E92 144/432MHz FM/D-STAR
- Yaesu FT-817 1.8-432MHz All Modes (I sort of don’t *really* class this as a handheld, but technically….)
- Baofeng UV-3R 144/432MHz FM micro transceiver
- Yaesu VX-1 144/432MHz FM micro transceiver (battery not very well!)
- Baofeng UV-5R 144/432MHz FM
- Palstar KH-6 50MHz FM

All except the E-92  and FT-817 have been acquired at quite modest prices over the years, so there’s not an expense thing really.

The trouble is, that strictly speaking, there are a couple more I wouldn’t mind. Something like a Yaesu VX-8GR with APRS/GPS capability built in. That would be fun. And then there’s the Alinco DJ-G7 which does 144/432 and 1296MHz. I’d really like to try 1296MHz! By the way, check out Rob, MW0DNK’s review of the DJ-G7 on his very interesting new blog.

Maybe some consolidation would be good – but they all do different things.Honest!

This weekend is the peak of the Lyrids meteor shower. I had a quick listen on both 50 and 144MHz this morning before breakfast. On 50MHz, I heard my radio neighbour Neil, G4BRK calling CQ JT6M on 50.230. Listened for a few moments and was interested to hear SM4KYN with a few bursts. Not bad as I was just using the vertical antenna. On 144MHz, I looked on 144.370 FSK441 and heard a really excellent burst from EB3DYS. I did call EB3DYS for a couple of periods but heard nothing more after that.

When I was playing around with D-STAR last weekend, I thought the REF001C and REF005A reflectors seemed a bit quiet. I wondered whether people had got fed up and moved on. I didn’t worry too much as I had some nice QSOs.

During the week, I noticed a tweet from the Bromley Repeater Group saying that they had connected up MB6SS, one of their nodes so that they could access the new DCS reflectors. I’d seen a comment about DCS reflectors when I had installed the new version of Win-DV, but hadn’t had a chance to investigate.

A quick Google provided some useful information and I found the following from Kurt DJ0ABR, ‘The main difference (and the advantage) of DCS compared to old reflectors is, that is does not more use the Header-Voice separation. The separate transmission of headers and voice packets makes sense on RF due to the limited bandwidth. But it causes many routing problems in old reflectors. DCS uses a new format and transmits (over the internet) the routing information with every single voice packet. This makes routing much more reliable. Protocol wise there is no header packet, instead each AMBE packet includes a header which adds a lot of resilience and allows you to pick up a QSO mid over. Operation wise: The main differences are that DCS reflectors use channels A to Z and they have names, DCS001 A is world wide, and is permanently linked to the A channels on all other DCS reflectors. A nice touch. The new client code is implemented already in Jonathans gateways, in the Control Center and in a couple of Icom clients. DCS was invented and developed in February by DG1HT, Torsten. I am helping him in debugging and testing. DCS001 runs at a gigabit intenet node in a high school and is currently designed for up to 700 simultaneous QSOs.’

Very interesting. So I did a little research and found that DCS005B was the main UK reflector, though I can see that they are some regional reflectors, for example DCS005W for Wales and the West and DCS005L for the London area. In practice, the new reflectors work well and seem to provide better audio quality than the old-style ‘REF’ reflectors. It’s also nice that you can pick up a QSO half way through an over rather than having to wait for the start of the next transmission.

Activity on the new reflectors can be seen at http://xreflector.net/neu3/ Also, have a look at the DV-RPTR boards which should provide a cheap route for more people to get involved with D-STAR with their existing equipment. This all seems like a positive step in the evolution of D-STAR and pleasing that it is progressing in a more open direction.

Haven’t had a QSO with it yet, but the UV-5R has arrived. Nicely built and looks promising.

Programming the memories manually is, um, interesting. I can program most things but I’ve ordered a programming cable.

The VHF side seems to work better than the UV-3R. I’ve successfully blipped up GB3WH on 2m and GB3TD, GB3DI, GB3UK on 70cms.

Charger looks ok, though I preferred the USB capability on the UV-3R plus. No sign of an earpiece/mike as supplied with the UV-3R which I found useful. I will try the UV-3R earpiece/mike – I’m guessing that will work fine.

More soon as I have time to play.

I haven’t made that many DSTAR QSOs over the winter, but over the last few weeks, as I have been spending a bit more time outside in the garden on a Sunday morning, I have been getting back into the habit of connecting the DVAP access point up to a reflector and having some gentle QSOs as I potter about the back garden, perhaps cleaning out the henhouse or weeding!

This morning, for example, I made a nice QSO with John EA3WR/M in Barcelona and Marc W6IWW/M (returning home after a late night poker game in LA!) as I was clearing out one of our cold frames.

Some months ago, I mentioned that I had been using the Win-DV software from Dutch Star which is still the first choice software that I use with the DVAP. There have been some updates over recent months and the latest version is now 1.5.2 which contains D-RATS support (which I haven’t tried yet) as well as various other updates. It is also nice to have the flexibility of being able to link and unlink reflectors and repeaters via RF which saves coming into the house to the computer and linking from there.

I was browsing around the Ham Radio section of e-Bay the other evening when I came across a Palstar KH-6 going for a modest price. I knew a little about them, having heard that some SOTA participants had used them for activations on 50MHz.

The auction was just ending so I popped in a last minute bid to see what would happen. To my surprise, I won!

The rig arrived yesterday. It seems to work ok and I have done the obligatory across the shack test. Transmitted audio sounded good on the FT847. I put the rig on the external collinear and perhaps not surprisingly the receiver overloaded. However, I could hear the GB3RAL beacon on 50.050.

The challenge, as I have found before is how well such a short aerial will do. However, I’m hoping for some local contacts and perhaps some more distant ones from the top of White Horse Hill or similar summits.

When I was browsing through eBay last night, I was interested to note that a new Baofeng rig, the UV-5R was available. It runs higher power than the UV-3R, has a keypad and looks an interesting evolution. Since the rig was only £38, it didn’t take much thought to order one. I shall look forward to it arriving.

In the meantime, Hans, PD0AC has already received one and is writing up his findings which look interesting.

This evening, as I was driving home, I was reminded of an object lesson in DXing; sometimes it is better to call the weak ones.

As has become customary, I switched on the Anytone AT5555 10m rig and tuned around a little as I headed back from Didcot towards home. The band was going out, but as usual there were some South Americans coming through. LU7DP was loud, working mostly Spanish and Italian stations. A little further down I found CE2WZ also at good strength, working mostly southern Europeans, including my old pal Cedric CT3FT who I couldn’t hear today. I tried calling CE2WZ but he kept CQing. My little signal wasn’t quite enough to get to Chile tonight.

A few kHz further down, I found PU2RJF calling CQ. Betto wasn’t so strong but was coming through ok. He didn’t seem to be getting many callers, so very much tongue-in-cheek I called. To my surprise, he heard me straight away and we had a simple but enjoyable contact.

Fun to remind myself, that although when running low power, it makes sense to call the loud stations, sometimes you should call the weak ones too as they may be running simple stations and will hear you just as well as you hear them.

Obrigado Betto!

As I was driving home last night, I was looking around on 28MHz SSB as I usually do. In addition to the ‘usual’ South Americans that I’ve been hearing for a few weeks there were a couple of fairly weak French stations. This interested me as I suspected I was hearing them via Es propagation. If that’s true, then with any luck we will start to hear more Es on 28MHz and then hear it rising in frequency towards 50MHz and beyond.

This afternoon, in celebration of the gorgeous weather, Julie and I decided to go up White Horse Hill, which is about 10 miles to the south of where we live. Although it was a little misty up there, we had a great time walking, listening to the skylarks, watching the buzzards and picking out some of the local villages. I took my Icom E-92 handheld and had a tune around on 145 and 433MHz. I was particularly pleased to have a nice 145MHz simplex contact with Mike 2E0YYY/P who was on the Long Mynd in Shropshire. I suppose the distance between us was around 80-90 miles.