Category VHF UHF Gear

Dec 8 2017

Quick Review of the QYT KT8900D Mobile

QYT KT8900D Mobile RadioBought a QYT KT8900D (upgraded 2nd gen.) Quad Band receive Dual Band (2 m / 70 cm) transmit mobile radio the other day. Why? I don’t know. Just wanted to see what these Chinese radios are like these days I suppose. I am not using the radio mobile so I am not concerned with the lack of image rejection or other quirks encountered when driving around dense RF fields. If you plan to drive near or in a city, IMHO forget it, this is not the radio for you!

Worked a local 70 cm repeater with it the other day and received a good audio report from several guys.  Guess that’s a promising sign for an inexpensive mobile radio.

Taking the easy way out, I loaded up the frequencies I wanted using CHIRP since I have a subscription to Radio Reference. Once I had the Ham Repeaters, Fire and Ambulance info loaded, I then downloaded the contents of the radio into the factory software.

If you plan to use CHIRP as I did, be sure to follow up with the factory software since it offers a whole bunch of settings in the Options panel not available at all in CHIRP. You will find that the factory software Chinglish conversion good enough to understand  99% of the setup.

The factory software does not seem to permit setting up the radio with name only as a default for the display. As a result, after each upload of the code plug, you do have to manually step through the display if you want to change each of the four displayed frequencies over to names. Accomplishing this is done by hitting the ABCD key and then the V/M key on the front panel.

When the radio is power cycled, the names are displayed. If resetting to names was required during each power cycle the radio would have been returned.

For an $85, knock-around ham shack radio the QYT KT8900D appears to be a good buy.  Should I run into additional issues I will post them here in the future.

Want to know more, visit this link at Amazon.

73 Gary KE2YK

 

Oct 22 2016

Quick Review – Wouxun KG-UV8E Tri Band HT

Wouxun KG-UV8EBought the Wouxun KG-UV8E based on the good experience I had with the KG-UVD1P.

The Color display is very good and rather large for an HT.

The 2600 mAh battery life is exceptionally good and does not drain when powered off as the KG-UVD1P does.

A group of us locals have access to a 1.25 meter repeater and performance on the band is very good even on low power.

The channel / VFO Knob gets tight in spots and the screw holding rubber side cover was so loose it was ready to fall out.

Very loud reception causes the speaker to be distorted.

After purchasing the radio, I found out that there is and E and T version. The difference is that a factory reset of the E version causes the firmware to reboot to Chinese while the T version reboots to English. Of course flipping through the Ching-lish manual will save your day with the E version.

Since I only had an old (pain in the ass) Prolific chipped programming cable I also purchased the Red programming cable. The Red cable was hassle free with Windows 10. No monkeying around with the old drivers from the stone age as is the case with the old Prolific chip. Unlike the expensive RT Systems cables, the red cable was around $15. By the way, the Red cable also works for Baofeng and I’d imagine some Kenwood HT’s as well.

Again no radio is perfect but for the price it was a decent buy for the additional 1.25 meter band. If you are looking for specs or videos, Google it. There is no point in regurgitating the same information that’s already available on countless other Web sites.

Feb 8 2014

Intek KT-980HP: The Power Baofeng

Power Baofeng? What’s is so magical about 8 watts? Has anyone heard of this radio? I have the Baofeng UV-82 which works extremely well for an HT in the $50 dollar range. When reading over the Intek site, it appears the HT only comes with a 220VAC desk charger.

Ham Radio Blog PD0AC

KT-980-1You could call it a Baofeng UV-5R with a punch: the Intek KT-980HP. Rated at 8 Watts output on VHF and 7 Watts on UHF this is arguably the most powerful dual-band HT on the market.

This new radio has been developed by and produced exclusively for Intek. The radio has a newly designed die-cast aluminum front panel, new transmitter circuit design using the powerful RQA0011DNS Silicon N-Channel RF power MOSFET semiconductor. Transmitter power is adjustable at three levels (high / mid / low).

Specifications :

Frequency range VHF: 144-146 MHz (136-174 MHz)
Frequency range UHF: 430-440 MHz (400-470 MHz)
TX power VHF: (8W High, 4W Mid, 1W Low)
TX power UHF: (7W High, 4W Mid, 1W Low) (*)
128 Memory channels
Back lighted LCD Display with selectable color
Dual Band, Dual Frequency, Dual Display
Digital Battery Meter / Digital S/RF Meter
CALL / TOT (Time-Out-Timer) / LOCK
Dial multi-function…

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