All Activity

I LOVE MakerWorld!! It's one of my favorite places to find creations to print for myself! The items in my shop are originals, only because I don't want to use other creators works and sell them as my own. You're right, 3D printers are getting cheaper, and currently the FlashForge 5M Pro is $449 online, and there's a third party company selling an addon AMS for a few hundred dollars, if AMS is something needed. I've got both the FF 5M Pro & BambuLab P1S with AMS, and love both! One was quite a bit more expensive than the other.

I created a 30% off coupon code available at checkout for you, or anyone else looking to buy one this week! MYGMRS is the code and shipping is free! If my math is mathing correctly ha ha, it comes out to $11.34 prior to tax. Let me know if you have any questions! I'm working on a few more projects, including desktop cradles for portable radios. If there's something you'd like to see in my shop, drop me a line!

Wow that’s a load of useless info. I had to stop reading. Just too much!!! In the end does it work of not? I do know it’s not a gmrs radio so what do I care.

There’s a very high probability that he has everything unlisted because he doesn’t want to allow anyone else on it. That’s his prerogative. Stalking him probably won’t make him more amenable to allowing you to use it.

Intro: I called this review a newbie’s review because the Choyong LC90 is the first Internet radio I have ever used. None of my previous radios (Malahit DSP3, Belka DX Max, Tecsun PL-990, ATS120Pro) had any Internet capability, so for me this was a double discovery, the discovery of the Choyong LC90 itself and of Internet radio in general. The closest I ever came to using Internet radio was to use the excellent “ShortWave” application for GNU/Linux (which uses the “Radio Browser” online database), which I like very much and which I will compare to the LC90 to try to answer a simple question: what is the point of an Internet radio when pretty much any modern communication device can stream radio music anyway? Does that LC90 add anything of value to the existing software solutions? I did watch several videos on YouTube about the LC90, and I read a few reviews and I was still unconvinced. So I emailed Choyong and asked them 4 questions about what their radio could or could not do, I got a detailed reply very quickly. I was impressed, and so I decided to offer Choyong to use me as a tester. While reading about that radio online, many mentioned the huge improvement the new firmware version (4.7 ) had over the previous one, so I decided to also purchase a LC90M (or “mini” with the older firmware version 4.6) to compare the two radio and, most importantly, see what the new firmware did or did not fix, improve or add. I was not disappointed to say the least, so in the past weeks I have been testing both devices (though here I will focus on the LC90 with firmware 4.7) and I decided to write a review by a newbie and (mainly) for other newbies who might not be sure if the LC90 is worth their money or not. You will find that review below. ------- Hardware: The hardware is superb, the sound is excellent, the buttons well-positioned and easy to use. Here my point of comparison is, obviously, the Tecsun PL-990. Externally, the radios look similar, the LC90 is a little bit bigger and has a much more advanced color screen which can even be seen in direct sunlight. Opening the box and looking at the radio for the first time, I immediately had a strong feeling of “this is high end radio”. It literally “radiates” quality! The radio ships in a quite beautiful box and Choyong also offers an optional bag which is almost the same as the one the Tecsun PL-990 ships and which I recommend you purchase if you get the LC90. Some users have complained that the external antenna and/or jack ports are too close to the turning knobs, but I disagree (the reason for this configuration is that the LC90 has a real speaker cabinet to improve the sound, so this seems a good call to me). Still, including a small and cheap adapter (to SMA and BNC) would appease those who have a problem. I do regret that that radio does not have a support in the back allowing it to be placed in a 45 degree angle like, again, the Tecsun PL-990. This is both a “desktop radio” and a “travel radio” (it might well be the ideal travel radio – see below) and in that latter capacity, it really would benefit from such a little kick out stand in the back. Volume wise and sound wise I compared the Choyong LC90 to the Tecsun PL-990 and I would argue that they both have absolutely superb sound. That is a 10 out of 10 for both radios. Firmware: The two card slots at the bottom work well, though I only tested the TF but not the SIM card. The TF card (maximum 32GB, mine came with a 16GB SD card which is more than enough) can be used to store music and then use the LC90 as an mp3 player. Including a TF card was a very good idea. Without it, some users would have to wait to update the firmware which can be frustrating when something does not “work out of the box”. One problem in the TF menu is that while it does show the folders on the SD card, it does not show the various songs inside the folder. I am confident that this will be easy to correct in future firmware options The SIM card can be used to stream directly to the radios from 4G celltowers, the radio even supports eSIM cards! By the way, Choyong has a very useful YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/@choyongradio) where, amongst many other helpful videos, the use of an eSIM is explained: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEwrt5Hy1nQ. Since I had never even heard of eSIMs, I found that info most helpful. I did not test a SIM or an eSIM card but I did use my cellphone as a hotspot and, the bandwidth used is not a problem at all: in spite of my cellphone showing only 2 bars, this did not slow down the radio. Thus in order to work properly the LC90 does not need a fast data connection or a lot of bandwidth. Speaking of connectivity, I had zero problems. I think that it is worth mentioning here the reason for the comparatively slow connection process at bootup: each time the radio powers up, not only does it connect to the local WiFi like any other device, it also queries the Choyong database in China to download the list of radios available. Also, it appears that the initial bootup does not download the entire database, but only part of it and then you have to search through the many thousands (40+k, I think) radio stations, the unit sometimes seems to need a few seconds to reconnect to the Choyong servers and download the next packet of data. I personally find this reasonable and it does not bother me. I can only think of two ways to accelerate this process: 1) a full database download, but that would possibly require an increase in the data storage capacity of the unit or 2) create “mirrors” for the Choyong database in a few locations, say in the USA, EU, Russia and Brazil. Since I have no idea of the bandwidth needed to deal with incoming connections this might or might not be a good idea. The only bug/feature is the erroneous message “network error” when, in reality, the radio is downloading data from the servers. Speaking of bugs, I also got a few “your dataplan is over” (or something alone these lines), but a few quick presses on the “c” (as in cancel) button took care of that. I generally like the menu system (much improved from 4.6 to 4.7) even if some of the subcategories are confusing (music, news, national stations, etc.) and even if some radios have duplicate entries (see below). Now I am going to mention my first major complaint: the radio lists in the menu are not arranged alphabetically. In fact, I don’t see any order of any kind, so when I go to Europe→Russia→ Music I can have up to 600 stations to browse through and their order makes no sense to me. Keep in mind that each (virtual) “page” in the menu has only 4 lines for 4 entries max. So in order to scan through the 600 music stations one must flip through 150 “pages”! And since during the scrolling through searches, the radio must download more stations from the server, this further slows down the search. Also, some menus are not “wrap around” meaning that if you are on line 1 of page 1 you cannot rotate the knob “upwards” and get to the 4th entry on page 600. It might be simpler to classify all the stations by alphabetically by country and then alphabetically by station name, especially if a faster knob rotating speed can be added in the next firmware (slowly station by station, faster page by page, even faster +50 or something along these lines) This might be due to the fact that each user can not only go to the (very well made!) website to manage one radio’s stations (including the capability of using several radios and synchronizing them). This process is very well designed: you create an account, then you upload a specific number code (which you can find in the “settings” section) and that identifies your specific radio(s) to the server. However, since not all uploading users will enter the streaming data of the station they want to add in exactly the same way, this results in both inconsistencies and duplicates. Also, some stations are clearly deliberately misidentified. Say, a station which claims to be Russian or Iranian is, in reality, a propaganda outlet engaged in classical PSYOPs while impersonating the very country they try to subvert. Frankly, unless somebody (or maybe an IA) goes with a fine comb through each uploaded stream data, this will be very hard to counter-act. So yes, even GITMO is listed under “Cuba”. I do want to stress however, that this might be the lesser of two evils because if anybody (especially an AI) gets to rearrange entries or even remove duplicates that person (or AI) will essentially have the power of censorship, so maybe the current “chaos” is the price to pay for true diversity of opinions? The selection of stations currently offered is simply huge, even exotic countries and territories are represented. Of course, some streams appear “dead” but that can be explained by at least two reasons 1) the station is not streaming and 2) the user made a mistake entering the station info. Finally, local governments can block specific stations. Speaking of AI and firmwares. Many people noted that the voice to text recognition on the firmware 4.6 was bad. True, it is truly awful and, frankly, useless. I am happy to report that firmware 4.7 is a huge improvement since it includes ChatGPT’s voice recognition which, while not perfect, is very good and is a massive improvement over firmware 4.6. I have tested the speech search in several languages (English, Russian, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and Dutch) and some languages are better than others, but all in all this pretty works well. By the way, the very well made (and even backlit!) keyboard does not have characters, so you cannot enter a search by name, and I hope that future firmware version will include this feature. Still, if you cannot use voice recognition, cannot use characters on a keyboard and if you don’t feel like doom-scrolling through many hundreds of stations, you always have the options of doing your searches on the Choyong website and then simply press one button to 1) make your addition available to all Choyong users and 2) immediately add that station to your device(s) with a click of a button. This all works very well. Here is a YouTube video which shows how all this works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ewf4OXfY98. Alternatively, this Choyong video shows how to do that with any cellphone: https://youtu.be/-f5l8MiUeEo. Before looking into FM/SW/MV/LW/SSB performances, I would like to revisit the issue which kept me for so long from getting this (or any other) Internet radio: What is the point of an Internet radio anyway? For me, this was my biggest surprise. I was quite happy streaming my favorite radio station on my cellphone (via browser) or on my computers (via the Shortwave app mentioned above) and I was quite dubious about the very concept of shelling out money to get a piece of hardware which would do no more than my software already could do? Boy was I mistaken! So, for those who have the same doubts, I want to include a few words about why such a device actually makes perfectly good sense even if you can stream online stations in many other ways. I will list what surprised (and impressed) me most on this device: The immense selection of radios. Yes, yes, I know, I can go to several websites and find all sorts of radios streaming. But now I can very quickly search for truly exotic stations which I would never ever hear on SW (say the station Rincòn Gaucho from Argentina or Ataman FM from Russia). In practical terms, if in the past I used to listen to maybe 5-6 radio stations, now my “favorite list” includes well over 60 entries from all over the world Next, even in its current state (firmware 4.7) the radio management is very well organized. Online streaming is fine for a few stations, but if you want to quickly find out what the news out of, say, Malaysia or Equatorial Guinea you can do that is seconds. Furthermore, Choyong has made a risky but superb choice by allowing not only search by country, it also allows search by region but also by “music” stations “news” stations, “podcast” stations and even “other stations”. You can also search through an excellent list of sixty (!) tags which are too many to list, suffice to say that 1) they cover a lot 2) they are still not quite logically organized, but over time, this will probably be fixed in future firmwares. There are also three buttons for “music”, “podcast” and “news” on the keyboard. Confusing? A little. Redundant? Not really, it is simply a different path to finding more stations. Sound: The radio comes with three internal speakers, a real speaker cabinet and a sound that no cellphone or laptop will ever match. The entire listening experience is totally different. Mobility: can you quickly toss your cellphone or laptop into a bag, or bring them to another room? Would you bring you laptop or even a decent speaker to a hike? Last, but most definitely not least, does your cellphone or laptop come with FM/SW/MW/LW/SSB? As far as I know, the Choyong is the first and still only company to offer a top of the line Internet radio with a huge growth potential and world class hardware combined with a full (and quite good, see below) “regular” radio! So now let’s look at the “real” radio inside the LC90: First, a note: I did all my testing and comparisons using the telescopic antenna, I did not use any external antennas at all as this would massively complicate comparisons. Performance on FM: My first impression of the FM mode was overall pretty good. Not only that, but the RDS works very well and displays lots of useful info. The sound quality is superb, the scan option quick and easy. Having said that, the sensitivity is average at best. Still, the FM reception would probably be good enough for most users. The LC90 won’t beat a Qodosen DX-286 in terms of sensitivity or a Belka in selectivity, but that was never a goal for Choyong. Thus even the Tecsun PL-900 beats the LC90 on FM. This, however, changes with SW: Performance on SW in AM and SSB modes: I was very impressed with the ATS in SW which returned the same number of stations as my Tecsun PL-990 (albeit some stations were different). I did notice that sometimes the ATS already stores a nearby frequency and also the correct one. So, say, if the frequency 12330 is detected but the sound is not perfect, the next stored station is already 12335, which is that stations correct frequency. Maybe the selectivity is not “narrow” enough? When I searched manually I found the SW performance rock solid. I personally did not hear any “birdies”. I did hear a silence when turning the frequency button, and I am not sure if this is due to the hardware only storing specific frequencies or due to a tuning mute, but I really do not like that and I hope that future firmware updates will resolve this The band width control works very smoothly and effectively. To my surprise, I found that the SSB performance was very decent, and the fine tuning knob worked very well. Again, it is not in the same league as a hyper-specialized Belka DX Max, but it a very solid performer on SSB, which is very impressive (that only applies to the 4.7 firmware version). Performance on MW/LW: Frankly, I only quickly tested these wavelengths because I am not interested in them (listening to MW or LW in Florida is not the most thrilling experience to say the least). I read several reviews who say that the performance of the LC90 on MW/LW got somewhat better with the 4.7 firmware, but since I have nothing to compare this to, I decided to skip this entirely. Performance in the Bluetooth mode: I had no problems connecting my phone and streaming music from my phone to the radio. When connecting an external BT device the sounds is excellent and the connection solid. However, I did not find a way to stream from the radio to another, bigger, Bluetooth speaker. Bottom line – is the LC90 for you or not? Clearly, the LC90 is not a DXing radio. It was never intended as such anyway. A a Toyota Landcruiser is a great off-road car, but would be a terrible Formula 1 racing car. Likewise, a real F1 car would be terrible off-road and you could not even have a passenger or go shopping with it. I think that the LC90 is like a Toyota Land Cruiser: extremely good at some things (in our case Internet Radio where the LC90 truly shines), very good at some other things (SW, radio station management, discovering new stations, etc.), good at other things (FM), decent in some aspects (TF music, SSB) and not the very best in some specific niches (MW, LW). What a consumer needs to look at is not one hyper-specialized feature, but at the value of the full package, and from that point of you the LC90 truly is an exceptionally good radio! Wishes for the future: A totally reworked user manual. The current one is good, but it leaves too much guessing for the users, especially those new to radios and Internet streaming. I know that Choyong has a very good YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/@choyongradio)with tons of information, but a lot of people will never find it, or like it very much (especially the older generation). Besides, the LC90 has so many undocumented options and features (and the LC100 will probably have more) that a real, printed, user manual would really be helpful for a lot of people. I think that Choyong should commission a new, detailed, high quality manual in Chinese and then have it translated to English, Russian and Spanish (around 45% of the world's population speaks at least one of these four languages). That being said, I would definitely keep and continue to develop the YouTube channel as there are definitely users who would prefer that. I would also include a QR code to the channel and the Choyong website in the user manual. Now for a few more assorted wishes for the future: The ability to record and store ideally, the way the ShortWave app does: it constantly and automatically stores 10 different songs and give you the time of, well, 10 songs to make a decision: do I want to keep this or not? This is much better than simply pressing a “record” button and simply record all that comes through the speaker (including half as song you like because you missed the beginning or, if you press “stop” too late, have another song “attached” to the one you liked) if song #10 is not recorded, it is then purged and the entire stack moves down by one – very convenient design!). This way you always miss the first song you tune to (unless you catch the very beginning) but after than, you never lose a song you want to keep. A waterfall display on that superb color screen would be absolutely terrific. The podcasts menu does not offer the option to chose a specific podcast date. As best I can tell, you only get the latest podcast you selected, but there is no way to listen to past shows. The handbag is very nice and I would include it with every radio sold along with SMA and BNC adapters. I find the shutdown confusing. By rotating the volume button the radio goes into sleeping more and a press of the red button starts the radio. But I have not find a combination of buttons to avoid an accidental switch-on (say in a suitcase). I think that the LC90 needs a double-press or some other kind of mechanism to truly lock the radio. Adding the capability to stream directly to an external (fullsize) Bluetooth speaker stereo or even a car speaker would be great. Something to consider: either a remote control or an Android/iOS/HarmonyOS app making it possible to change stations, modes, etc. That is definitely not needed, but some users might really like it (C. Crane offers it on their CC WiFi 3 Internet Radio) Include the possibility to use ATS in the USB/LSB modes. Improve the SW selectivity in AM mode. Eliminate the tuning mute on SW. On the Choyong website page “create new (station)” to manually add radio streams, include the option to check (or not) whether the radio stream includes commercial interruptions or not.

Obviously to ask for permissions to use it.

Thank You

This means it’s an open repeater and no request is required. Follow any rules they have and enjoy.

I apologize if this is a dumb question but I have noticed a few repeaters in my area that are listed as open and have the needed tones listed however the access request is disabled by owner. My question because I do not want to do the wrong thing is does this mean the owner does not want any one to request access as in don’t use this repeater? Or is this an open repeater that can be used without requesting access? Thanks in advance

Hahaha . Sure do. I spend my sundays putting 1000s of these units up so I can track all the local gmrs traffic around the valley. I know when wrxr123 is getting gas, or when wwyr345 is taking his grand kids to get ice cream. One day wrop567 said he was south bound when he was really north bound. I don’t know if he is just getting older or he was lying to me. It still haunts me wondering if he was lying to me. I also found out that my son stopped for a snack one day and did not tell me. I really would have loved a taco that day. Tracking radio users is my favorite pointless waste of time thing to do.

I was able to play around with the CRFS RFeye nodes recently. Usually, another division of the company handles this, but I was out with former military units I was once a member of.....seeing how this can detect FRS/GMRS/MURS and potential use for Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) detection (around airports in this case). Was fun putting GMRS radios into people's hands and having the system track their transmissions around an area. These were Motorola XPR6550 and XPR7550e handhelds. Attached is what a typical node looks like. We had three set up so the system could triangulate position. I then sent a "curveball" by transmitting from Motorola DTR410 Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum (FHSS) radios. I could sense them, get a rough bearing and distance, but could not "lock" onto them due to the frequency hopping aspect (902-928 MHz Industrial, Scientific, and Medical [ISM] band). Anyone else use this system or something else for finding location of radio transmissions (APRS is common and also useful)?

Why would anyone want to communicate in this fashion? What does this accomplish? If it is for privacy, you only have two options, 1) encrypt the channel and don't give out the key code to anyone; or 2) stay off the air

For manual programming of my Baofengs (UV variations) with the keypad, I know that unless I hear "Saving Memory," this channel number already has data assigned to it --- and that this assigned/occupying data must be deleted before any new data will be reliably saved. I no longer try to update any occupied channel---I simply delete the channel and program anew for that channel number. To manually create a channel memory, using the keypad menu, I enter/ define everything I want from the keypad menu options (including tones) before saving the channel memory. Again, If I don't hear "Saving Memory," ... I don't have a reliable saved channel. Hope this helps someone. Best Regards!

Damn!! I'm ready. The hell with PL-259s, its time to eat. Let's go all the way in our journey to clog our arteries and get some hot out of the fryer funnel cakes.

Seriously, why not? They are not that much different to install than PL-259. In fact with these M&P connectors you don’t even need solder:

I prefer beignets.

Maybe the repeater owner passed away and no one surviving knows anything about this site?

Agreed, and I could replace a pl259 in the field with a soldering iron and a sharp knife. I personally could not do that with an N type.

In only two characteristics is the PL-259/SO-239 system slightly better than the N connector: ubiquity and durability. A person can break an N connector, but it requires a certain carelessness. By ubiquity, I mean that I think I could find a PL-259 and SO-239 connector anywhere in the world. I don’t have the same level of confidence in the N connector anywhere. However, in every other conceivable characteristic, the N connector is superior, especially for UHF.

So yes this will work just fine with 2 radios. When you add a 3rd+ it won’t work and you would need to go to the same tx and rx tone. As for others hearing you. If they don’t have tones set yes they can here everything your saying. Tones keep other people out of your conversation they do not make it so others can’t hear you. No tones here’s everything.

I’d still prefer a good ol’ pl259 connector myself. And just replace it at 3 year intervals. The 259’s hold up for years and years on some of the toughest heavy equipment in horrid conditions and transmit cb just fine.

I haven’t successfully been able to change any privacy tones in channel mode on a uv5g pro. Hella frustrating. My uv5g’s won’t save anything I set into them from the keypad menu. I have heard deleting the channel, going to vfo, typing in the freq and entering the tones, then saving this vfo info into the save channel slot it can be done via radio keypad. . . Just heads up if maybe you’re trying to do it through the actual channel menu on the radio not in software.

Yes, using cross tones/codes will work that way. I don’t know of any benefits to doing that, but yes. Anybody nearby, listening on 462.550 with no tones or codes, can hear anything that is transmitted by either radio.

I don't understand what you are trying to accomplish with cross codes. No transmission is private unless it is encrypted. As you stated, anyone. not having a receiver code will receive and understand what is being sent. The only way to have a true, private conversation is either with two tin cans connected with string or on cell phones. NOTHING is private in shared spectrum.