GOT MY GENERAL!!!!

[WRYS709]

8 minutes ago, Northcutt114 said:

That's a pricey radio [7300]. Does it work outside? 

Yes! Amazingly many use them for POTA!

[Northcutt114]

2 minutes ago, WRYS709 said:

Yes! Amazingly many use them for POTA!

Ain't no way I'm taking a $1,000 dollar radio outside on a picnic table. That's a nice, inside "where it gets dusted and cleaned" radio.

But then again, I watched a guy the other day pull into a park with his 100w mobile station and a screwdriver antenna on his bumper. He activated the park and never left his vehicle. Different strokes I guess.

Currently putting together a SOTA kit. You can't do that from your car!

 

[TNFrank]

I'm going to play on 10M, 12M and 15M with the QT80 for a while and I have that little QRP 5w coming that'll do 8 HF bands. From what I understand lower frequencies travel closer so maybe I can get some closer POTA contacts on 40M and 80M. 

 

[Northcutt114]

30 minutes ago, TNFrank said:

I'm going to play on 10M, 12M and 15M with the QT80 for a while and I have that little QRP 5w coming that'll do 8 HF bands. From what I understand lower frequencies travel closer so maybe I can get some closer POTA contacts on 40M and 80M. 

 

That's a really helpful video. Especially the part about which band bends most upon refraction. It helps me understand why, on 10m, I can't hear anybody near me. 40 and 20m are going to be fun.

[SteveShannon]

1 hour ago, Northcutt114 said:

Ain't no way I'm taking a $1,000 dollar radio outside on a picnic table. That's a nice, inside "where it gets dusted and cleaned" radio.

I predict your attitude will change. Most of us at say something like that at some point in time and then change our mind as we get further into the hobby. 
Take a look at the relatively new Yaesu FT-1X Optima. $1900 and built for portability. 

[TNFrank]

No different than someone who drives a $125k Car on the street or takes a $2500 O/U out for dove season. Sometimes it's nice to treat yourself by using something "expensive" in your hobby. 

[WRYS709]

7 hours ago, TNFrank said:

I'm going to play on 10M, 12M and 15M with the QT80 for a while and I have that little QRP 5w coming that'll do 8 HF bands.

Which QRP rig? All modes?

[Northcutt114]

10 hours ago, SteveShannon said:

I predict your attitude will change. Most of us at say something like that at some point in time and then change our mind as we get further into the hobby. 
Take a look at the relatively new Yaesu FT-1X Optima. $1900 and built for portability. 

Yeah, I've seen the FT-1X. It really is a kind of, all in one for all the things radio. QRP rig with battery. 100W base hooked to a power supply. All the bands. It's a shack-in-a-box-POTA-SOTA do it all Swiss Army knife, I guess.

Maybe I should rephrase, it's not so much that the Icom is expensive as it is that - for me - it is clearly designed to be a shack radio, hooked to a power supply. I guess it's a camping vs glamping argument. People do both and enjoy both, but glamping isn't for me.

 

[TNFrank]

4 hours ago, WRYS709 said:

Which QRP rig? All modes?

This one.

 

[SteveShannon]

21 minutes ago, Northcutt114 said:

Yeah, I've seen the FT-1X. It really is a kind of, all in one for all the things radio. QRP rig with battery. 100W base hooked to a power supply. All the bands. It's a shack-in-a-box-POTA-SOTA do it all Swiss Army knife, I guess.

Maybe I should rephrase, it's not so much that the Icom is expensive as it is that - for me - it is clearly designed to be a shack radio, hooked to a power supply. I guess it's a camping vs glamping argument. People do both and enjoy both, but glamping isn't for me.

 

I understand.  The sharp square corners on a large sheet metal case don’t scream portable or rugged.  I don’t take my ftdx10 either, but I would the FT-1x.

[Lscott]

12 hours ago, Northcutt114 said:

Ain't no way I'm taking a $1,000 dollar radio outside on a picnic table. That's a nice, inside "where it gets dusted and cleaned" radio.

A lot of the newer analog/digital Ham HT's are $500 plus. I paid over $650 for my Kenwood TH-D74A, which I've almost have never used. The TH-D75A is even more. Not due to the expense but because D-Star isn't that popular around here now. Far more stuff on DMR and C4FM. 

I've been carrying my NX-1300DUK5 radio around more, does FM/DMR. It's a $300 to $400 plus radio depending on what option are activated in it. If I was worried about the price what would be the point of buying an HT if it never left the house?

If Kenwood had made the TH-D75A an FM/DMR radio I would have paid the price. I told that to the Kenwood rep at the Dayton Hamvention a few years back when they announced the radio. The rep said they told Kenwood Japan the same, but they had no interest in doing it.

[Northcutt114]

9 minutes ago, Lscott said:

A lot of the newer analog/digital Ham HT's are $500 plus. I paid over $650 for my Kenwood TH-D74A, which I've almost have never used. The TH-D75A is even more. Not due to the expense but because D-Star isn't that popular around here now. Far more stuff on DMR and C4FM. 

I've been carrying my NX-1300DUK5 radio around more, does FM/DMR. It's a $300 to $400 plus radio depending on what option are activated in it. If I was worried about the price what would be the point of buying an HT if it never left the house?

If Kenwood had made the TH-D75A an FM/DMR radio I would have paid the price. I told that to the Kenwood rep at the Dayton Hamvention a few years back when they announced the radio. The rep said they told Kenwood Japan the same, but they had no interest in doing it.

Your point is understood, but especially that Icom 7300...it just doesn't look like it should be outside. The case on it reminds me of the PC case I built my first 486 desktop in. 

Also, I haven't spent more than $100 on an HT in my life. I can not imagine paying more for an HT than for my G90. Can not imagine.

 

[SteveShannon]

39 minutes ago, TNFrank said:

This one.

 

That looks like it will be a lot of fun!  For the price you can do a lot, yet it’s inexpensive enough that it won’t keep you from buying the next new radio.

I bought one of the kits to build a (Tr)uSDX but I haven’t built it yet. When I went to Amazon to see the radio you posted, I found the case for it. So now I have to decide, should I order the case and build the radio kit or give away the kit and move on.  I guess I can always give it away after I build it if I don’t like it.

[SteveShannon]

4 minutes ago, Northcutt114 said:

Also, I haven't spent more than $100 on an HT in my life. I can not imagine paying more for an HT than for my G90. Can not imagine.

There’s a bit of an arc to this ham radio hobby.  People join and they say “I only need one radio”.  Pretty soon they have two, then four, etc.

Likewise, they say I can’t imagine spending that much on a radio.  If their financial situation supports it (and often even if not) the threshold moves higher, then higher.  Eventually, old, alone, and unable to move further than the shack, but with money in the bank, the ham buys the $9,000 radio he or she said they’d never buy and an 80 foot tower with a rotator and beam antenna. 

[Northcutt114]

12 minutes ago, SteveShannon said:

There’s a bit of an arc to this ham radio hobby.  People join and they say “I only need one radio”.  Pretty soon they have two, then four, etc.

Likewise, they say I can’t imagine spending that much on a radio.  If their financial situation supports it (and often even if not) the threshold moves higher, then higher.  Eventually, old, alone, and unable to move further than the shack, but with money in the bank, the ham buys the $9,000 radio he or she said they’d never buy and an 80 foot tower with a rotator and beam antenna. 

You're probably right for some...but I suspect that will not be my arc. I already have more radios than I can easily count. HT's stored in various go bags, the house, the RV, a few on my desk. A mobile in the Jeep. A base in the house. The G90.

The plan is to get our children into adulthood and then travel full time in the RV.

But your point is taken. 

[Lscott]

32 minutes ago, Northcutt114 said:

Also, I haven't spent more than $100 on an HT in my life. I can not imagine paying more for an HT than for my G90. Can not imagine.

My first HT after I got my Tech ticket was a Kenwood TH-G71A dual band. That cost me around $350 at the time, 25 to 30 years back. 

I use to cringe when looking at used digital HT's over $100. Now that I've purchased a bunch it doesn't bother me so much any more. I still watch the price however.

Once you break the threshold it looks a lot different. While the CCR's look enticing based on price, once you used a robust commercial HT you start to notice the difference in performance. In some usage cases it might be slight, in others its the difference between usable and junk.

[Northcutt114]

7 minutes ago, Lscott said:

Once you break the threshold it looks a lot different. While the CCR's look enticing based on price, once you used a robust commercial HT you start to notice the difference in performance. In some usage cases it might be slight, in others its the difference between usable and junk.

What would you say, in your experience, is the "difference in performance?" Because for the life of me, I can't find one. Vocationally I use a Motorola Commercial grade radio five days a week. If I was blindfolded and someone else operated the radio for me, I don't know that I'd noticed the difference between it and any of the sub $100 radios on my desk at home.

 

[TNFrank]

The QRP was $103+shipping and I had credit from a return so I figured what the heck, I'd give it a try especially after seeing a couple reviews that were positive. I'm not expecting much from 3-5watts but it'll let me play a bit on 20M and 40M just to see what's out there.  It's probably make a decent little POTA/Backpack radio too.

If I added up all the money I have into HTs I could have probably bought a good HF radio but at the time I never really thought about HF. Now that I've dipped my toe into the HF world I find VHF/UHF to be so limiting because of it's lack of range that it's almost boring to me. When I can talk to folks on the East Coast or even as far away as Barbados or Hawaii with my 10M but can't Simplex someone 3 miles away on 2M/70cm it makes me think why even bother. HF is so much more fun. That's why I want my General now, so I have more HF to play with. 

[Lscott]

18 minutes ago, Northcutt114 said:

What would you say, in your experience, is the "difference in performance?" Because for the life of me, I can't find one. Vocationally I use a Motorola Commercial grade radio five days a week. If I was blindfolded and someone else operated the radio for me, I don't know that I'd noticed the difference between it and any of the sub $100 radios on my desk at home.

 

It's mostly the receiver section.

Many of the CCR's suffer from de-sense issues. That's where the radio looses sensitivity in high RF level environments. People report they have trouble receiving distant faint stations on the cheap radios while the ones with better receivers are able to hear them. 

Another issue is lack of sufficient selectivity. In this situation strong stations "bleed over" into adjacent frequencies. For example I have a TYT TH-8600 mobile. A distance fire department dispatch transmitter shows up on several channels on GMRS, the licensed frequency isn't close to the channels affected. Then to really drive home the point that transmitter is on UHF. I've even picked up some weak signals from it on VHF!!! Of course I only paid about $100 for it. For that kind of money even the Chinese aren't going to spend a lot of engineering effort on the receiver's front end. 

Then we have the bandwidth problem. The cheap radios do narrow-band, like for FRS, by reducing the FM deviation from 5KHz to around 2.5KHz, BUT compensate for the reduced audio level by doubling the audio gain. What you likely miss, without looking at the schematic to examine the electrical design, the manufacture saved money by using the same wide-band IF filter for both Narrow and Wide band operation. That basically defeats the whole point of narrow-band.

I think you get the idea. In radio the most important part of any radio is the receiver. If you can't hear the other station then all the transmit power in the world on your end won't fix it.

[Northcutt114]

13 minutes ago, Lscott said:

It's mostly the receiver section.

Many of the CCR's suffer from de-sense issues. That's where the radio looses sensitivity in high RF level environments. People report they have trouble receiving distant faint stations on the cheap radios while the ones with better receivers are able to hear them. 

Another issue is lack of sufficient selectivity. In this situation strong stations "bleed over" into adjacent frequencies. For example I have a TYT TH-8600 mobile. A distance fire department dispatch transmitter shows up on several channels on GMRS, the licensed frequency isn't close to the channels affected. Then to really drive home the point that transmitter is on UHF. I've even picked up some weak signals from it on VHF!!! Of course I only paid about $100 for it. For that kind of money even the Chinese aren't going to spend a lot of engineering effort on the receiver's front end. 

Then we have the bandwidth problem. The cheap radios do narrow-band, like for FRS, by reducing the FM deviation from 5KHz to around 2.5KHz, BUT compensate for the reduced audio level by doubling the audio gain. What you likely miss, without looking at the schematic to examine the electrical design, the manufacture saved money by using the same wide-band IF filter for both Narrow and Wide band operation. That basically defeats the whole point of narrow-band.

I think you get the idea. In radio the most important part of any radio is the receiver. If you can't hear the other station then all the transmit power in the world on your end won't fix it.

I appreciate the detailed answer. I've heard most of that before. Maybe it's just my use case, but I've never experienced any of that before. For me - again, my use case - UHF and VHF are really just about local, line of sight comms. And I didn't get into amateur radio for that. GMRS, FRS, MURS - for me - are almost interchangeable in terms of their use case; GMRS being the exception because it does repeaters.

So for me, HT's are really just working within 2 miles of each other on simplex. I have several on my desk at home that talk to a repeater some 40 miles away and they work just fine. I borrowed a friend's Yaesu VX-6R...primarily because I thought it looked cool. After a week of using it, couldn't tell a lick of difference between it and the three other CCR's next to it. Except that it does 220...but that's a dead band where I live.

Anyhow. I do appreciate the response. Thanks!

 

[WRYS709]

34 minutes ago, TNFrank said:

Now that I've dipped my toe into the HF world I find VHF/UHF to be so limiting because of it's lack of range that it's almost boring to me. When I can talk to folks on the East Coast or even as far away as Barbados or Hawaii with my 10M but can't Simplex someone 3 miles away on 2M/70cm it makes me think why even bother. HF is so much more fun. That's why I want my General now, so I have more HF to play with. 

Shhhhhh! You'll give away the secret...

So far all of my 7 POTA Activations have been QRP; and they all want to talk to ME!  

Maybe next week, I will wire up the 100 watt amplifier, too; and use it for more than an antenna tuner!

[WRYS709]

5 hours ago, TNFrank said:

This one.

 

I must admit: so far I have been having so much fun with QRP since Radioddity offered me the Xiegu G106 for only $150 more than the $49 Raddy MultiFunction Backpack I initially wanted to purchase!

And to make matters worse, I went to their website yesterday and out of the blue ordered one of these to replace my MFJ “Bencher” keyer that has been falling apart and not used for over 20 years:

[WRYZ926]

I've heard good things about the XIegu keys. Like any brand, they will need some adjustments to suit you.

[TNFrank]

I would love to learn CW but my brain just doesn't work that way. 

4 more POTA contacts to add to my Hunting List. 

[Lscott]

4 hours ago, Northcutt114 said:

I've heard most of that before. Maybe it's just my use case, but I've never experienced any of that before.

You could be one of the lucky ones.

A poster, who used to be a frequent presence here, remarked he had issues with a few CCR's with de-sense. He lived a short distance from a couple of high power TV, or was it AM, transmitters. He claimed the cheap radios couldn't communicate over a mile or two when around those commercial stations. His Motorola XPR7550's seemed to work just fine in the same area. 

I personally had a 500 watt VHF paging transmitter about 4 to 5 miles from me, where I use to live, and it would mess with my Kenwood dual band HT on 2M. It definitely wasn't a CCR. The paging transmitter was on top of a 30 some story office building. My radio just couldn't deal with the RF signal strength. Fortunately after a year or so that paging system was deactivated, PERMANENTLY.

YMMV.