AmateurRadio.com

TX Factor, the UK’s first TV show dedicated entirely to amateur radio has launched TXtra, a regular supply of extra features with new and exciting content related to amateur radio and associated technology.

I maybe the only one that still gets excited about all new rig announcements especially Icom D-STAR. There is a new radio that was announced on their website in Japan. I did a little tools translation to pull up everything I could about the new Icom ID-5100.

Osaka Hirano, President: Tsutomu Fukui headquarters) Icom Inc., will be released (20W type), ID-5100D the (50W type) for amateur radio transceiver ID-5100. Of course, digital <D-STAR>, ID-5100 is a vehicle-mounted transceiver that provides an advantageous evolve in operation in the analog mode of conventional.

Here is my full post if you would like to read more about it.

Unboxing the Icom IC-F4161DT

As my wife would say, I am at it again with radios. I just picked up the Icom IC-F4161DT NXDN Radio. If you do not know much about NXDN I would recommend that you check out these few pages:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NXDN

http://www.nxdn-forum.com/

The reason I jumped aboard is that my club NI4CE has taking the leap with our 10 country coverage of repeaters we have started the process of updated them to NXDN. http://www.ni4ce.org/nxdn/

Here is a blurb, but you could read more at their site: Earlier this year, the West Central Florida Group, Inc. made a strategic decision to replace the D-Star digital repeater at Riverview with an industry standard NXDN repeater from ICOM. In addition, the new ICOM FR6000 UHF repeaters now in service at Verna (442.950 MHz) and Holiday (443.450 MHz) also support MIXED mode 25 KHz analog voice and 6.25 KHz NXDN digital communications on demand.

I decided that it was time for me to think about this challenge since I always like to be on the latest technologies and also I love radios ☺ I think we all know that by now if you have read my articles about Ham Radio.

Full post: http://nicktoday.com/unboxing-icom-ic-f4161dt-nxdn-radio/

Let me start with saying that I love having goals and challenging myself in different ways… I came up with a challenge that I didn’t think would be too hard to meet but would be fun and stretch my operating time a little more than I have been on the air in a while. I love DStar and the fact that I live in an Antenna Restricted area makes me try to be more creative than ever on keeping my radio skills high as well as having some fun doing it. 50 States WAS is always one of the first challenges people go after when getting on HF so I thought why not try to do 50 States on DStar and to make it interesting come up with a catchy way to say it so there grew: 50 States in 50 Days. Sounds catchy right? I thought so…

Honestly, it should be a very easy goal to attain from a technology standpoint I mean get on a Reflector and you could pick off 5-6 states on a major reflector in on setting. Also, just linking to 50 repeaters should only take you what a day or two to do if you just rush through it…. Here is what do you haven’t added… Full time job, wife, two kids with full schedules, 4 dogs, 15 other hobbies and the fact that I’m pretty tired at the end of my day!! I have thought about doing this project for a while but I jumped in with both feet tonight with some free time I had tonight….

With that said… Let’s get started!!

March 30 –

• Linked to KI4WXS in the Charlotte area to talk to my friend John – KJ4KJM who I got into the hobby and we had a quick QSO on his way home from work.
• Linked to AA1HD in Vernon Connecticut because I was on a roll at this point and reconnected to one of my oldest (no age but long term) friends in the hobby Fran (W1FJM)
• Linked to AC7O in UT and I got a change to meet Bob – KF7LQS who just got a 91ad and was learning his way around DStar from Logan, UT. Really nice guy and someone you should connect with if your online
• Linked to K3PDR in Philadelphia, PA as my wife happened to be in that area and I LOVE THE FOOD there. After a few calls… K3DS Dennis came back to me while he was putting some finishing touches on his Shack.

Since we have some thunderstorms coming through and tornado warnings in effect I decided to shut down and take the rest of the night off. I’ll be back to my quest tomorrow hopefully…

Full story: Worked all States DSTAR – 50 states in 50 days | NickToday Blog

Icom ID-51

Icom has demonstrated a prototype of its latest dual-band handheld transceiver – the ID-51A. (The European version will be the ID-51E.)

Covering 2m and 70cm, the ID-51 can also receive FM broadcasts and AM short wave radio. It supports D-Star (of course) as well as FM mode, and boasts a large 128×104 pixels display, the largest yet seen on an amateur radio handheld rig.

Like its smaller sibling the UHF-only ID-31, the ID-51A/E has a built-in GPS which can be used for track logging to a micro-SD card. The storage card can also be used to record incoming and outgoing voice traffic. Very useful – not!

Disappointingly though not unexpectedly, this new Icom does not support APRS, though it presumably supports D-Star’s rather lame version, D-PRS.

The ID-51 is being billed as the most technically advanced handheld, though it looks like you will be paying a lot for features – like the GPS and short wave receiver – for which most hams will have little use. I doubt that the large display – never mind the GPS – will do much to extend battery life, though Icom will offer an extended battery pack (at the usual inflated Icom prices no doubt.) However it is nice to see a manufacturer breaking the mould for HT user interfaces which have changed little for the last 20 years.

I’ve always wanted to operate my radio on Solar Power. This was a fun to do project. I can’t wait to bring it to a Field Day Event.

I bought the aluminum from Metals Depot in Kentucky. (link attached)  They have lots of aluminum shapes and parts to choose from. The parts arrived via UPS. It nice to have a good source like this for ham radio projects.http://www.metalsdepot.com/

HQRP is a good company to buy solar panel parts and controlers from. The QRP part of their name is just coincidental to this being a QRP project.  http://hqrp.com/

de AA1IK

Ernest Gregoire

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