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HRN 269: Bull in a China Shop
HamRadioNow doesn't do 'unboxings', and we don't do product reviews per se, but this time we do both. A new BaoFeng UV 5x3 tri-band handheld (144-220-440) caught his eye, and at about $80 he thought 'why not'. He needed to learn more about this wave of cheap Chinese radios, and very few radios include the 220 band.
The main rap on the Chinese radios is that they're hard to program. Gary finds this one different than the Japanese brands, but not necessarily more difficult. And it programs easily with free Chirp software.
Harmonics have been an issue. This episode includes an interview and demo from ARRL Lab Product Review Engineer Bob Allison WB1GCM from the 2014 Hamvention, where Bob was testing ham's radios on a spectrum analyzer.
There is a lot of video involved in this episode, but also some discussion of the issues, so if you can't get to YouTube, it's probably worth a listen. We'll give it a Radio Rating of C.
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By Gary Pearce KN4AQ, Amateur Radio//Video NewsHamRadioNow doesn't do 'unboxings', and we don't do product reviews per se, but this time we do both. A new BaoFeng UV 5x3 tri-band handheld (144-220-440) caught his eye, and at about $80 he thought 'why not'. He needed to learn more about this wave of cheap Chinese radios, and very few radios include the 220 band.
The main rap on the Chinese radios is that they're hard to program. Gary finds this one different than the Japanese brands, but not necessarily more difficult. And it programs easily with free Chirp software.
Harmonics have been an issue. This episode includes an interview and demo from ARRL Lab Product Review Engineer Bob Allison WB1GCM from the 2014 Hamvention, where Bob was testing ham's radios on a spectrum analyzer.
There is a lot of video involved in this episode, but also some discussion of the issues, so if you can't get to YouTube, it's probably worth a listen. We'll give it a Radio Rating of C.