AmateurRadio.com

As the Anytone 10m rig arrived, the different band segments were fine, but I thought it might be fun to reprogram it a little. One thing I was keen to do was to be able to listen (only listen, mind you) lower down on 27MHz ssb. I guessed that activity would be higher there than on 28MHz and that it might provide some useful propagation indicators.

I ordered the programming disk and lead which arrived quickly. However, I had an enormous amount of frustration getting the lead to install on my PC (and actually I tried pretty much every PC in the house). Sometimes the PC would detect it as a COM port and sometimes it wouldn’t. I thought it must be me doing something wrong. However in the end, I talked with Paul in the sales/service department at Nevada and we agreed that I would send it back. I completely expected him to say that it worked fine for him, but happily he declared it a faulty lead. Unfortunately, though they were out of stock so I had to wait for a replacement.

The replacement duly arrived last week and the PC immediately picked up the COM port. I still had to fiddle and faff somewhat as I didn’t realise that my Anytone had v4 software in it rather than v3. Once I ot that sorted out, I was able to retask one of the band segments so that I could listen around 27.555. This works well (on receive!).

And as I hoped, it has already shown that the band is open more often than activity on 28MHz would have us believe. Sadly, I have already heard music and mildly abusive language on there! Not much difference, in case anyone’s feeling smug, to your average DX pileup on the amateur bands.

Positively though, the Anytone has been a real favourite through the summer, listening for Es on 28MHz. With the reprogrammed segment, I’m certain that it will be a great indication of when to put a CQ out on 10m.