Talkpod. Again.

[Blaise]

Hey all, so in a moment of weakness, I snagged the hot new toy, a Talkpod a36 Plus.  The reviews are just about all spot on.  The menus are a goddamn nightmare without a real manual to explain them, but otherwise, it works about as well as several other GMRS HT's I have, but with a super-low price.  Some of the Baofeng options cost more!

I ran into one piece of weirdness, though.  I normally keep a UV-5R with a Nagoya 771G antenna scanning in my office at all times, just to know what's happening in my vicinity, so I thought I'd try using this for the same one afternoon.  It worked just fine, but had trouble picking up some of the more distant sources, so I figured I'd pop the 771G on it for a little boost.  What I discovered was that I couldn't receive anything at all outside of a quarter mile from my desk!

I immediately swapped back to the stock antenna, and it worked just as before.  I retested the 771G on a Baofeng, and *it* worked just fine.

So I guess Nagoya antennae and Talkpod a36 Plus radios are incompatible???

[Blaise]

OK, so it looks like this topic isn't getting much love, but I gotta tell you, this thing has an amazing feature I just found.

One of the action options for the programmable buttons is "PTT-B", which lets you transmit on your displayed B-channel without switching to B as the selected channel!  Since I always keep one channel searching, while the other is set to my family's channel, this makes it super easy to call my kids without having to stop and fiddle with settings. 

It *does* terminate the search on the A channel when I transmit on B, but I'd much rather have to just fiddle to restart that after I'm done than fiddle to stop it and change channels beforehand when I want to talk, then still have to change back and restart after.

This thing just moved from new toy to favorite radio!

[PA141]

Make sure that the connector is seating fully. 

Don't know about the A36, but having both the 771 and 771G they clearly fit differently on my UV5r.  The VHF/UHF 771 cleanly seats into the plastic ring on the 5R, but the bottom of the 771G cover sits about 1/16" above the plastic ring.  I can see the threads of the radio connector and brass nut through the gap.  The 771G works as well, but I could see how it might not mate well with other radios.

I haven't done any direct comparison but the 771 and 771G appear to be similar in receive performance on VHF/UHF/GMRS and are much better than the factory antenna.

-Dual PTT would be nice to see on other radios.

[SteveShannon]

44 minutes ago, PA141 said:

Dual PTT would be nice to see on other radios.

Other radios have it. Just search for “Dual PTT” on the Radioddity site and you’ll see some. 
https://www.radioddity.com/products/radioddity-gt-82?currency=USD&variant=43125797912754&utm_medium=cpc&utm_source=google&utm_campaign=Google Shopping&gclid=Cj0KCQjw0bunBhD9ARIsAAZl0E2cfSPRfVSBZaeE0zi13S3iAiwe8QKltRXp4KMm_VnboRBYm9wpK8kaAmpVEALw_wcB

[PA141]

Thanks for the link Steve.  I should have written: would be nice to see on "more" radios.  Not in the market for any HT's at this time, but it is a nice feature.