Beginner’s Corner March 2014
By David Harden, KJ4CMY
BaoFeng Radios Revisited.
I had the opportunity to work at the dog show at the Atlanta Expo Center in January. It is a good fundraiser for GARS and Gwinnett ARES, as well as a good opportunity to “play radio” and get some experience. There is another one in August, and new hams are greatly encouraged to come out and help. The work is easy, and being with fellow hams is a lot of fun
While there, I got to see the BaoFeng HTs we discussed last month. One ham I worked with had a bit of difficulty programming his BaoFeng to the repeater we were using. He did not have the instructions (earlier noted as confusing), but after a fashion, he was able to program the offset and the PL tone. It worked ok. Another ham had one, but he did not advise new hams to purchase this radio, because of the problems associated with it. If all you can afford is one of the BaoFeng, be advised of the diffucuitles using this radio.
ICOM Radios for Beginners
I received an e-mail from Ray Novak, N9JA , the Division Manager – Amateur and Receiver Products for ICOM, concerning their HTs for beginners. His comments are below.
Most will consider an entry level radio being a VHF, as most portable activity can be found on VHF due to the number of VHF repeaters along with VHF’s propagation characteristics being much better than UHFs.
While there are the inexpensive Chinese options available, we offer the IC-V80 Sport, and the V80 HD. While the radios are the same, the differences in the Sport and HD are the accessories packaged with them. The Sport comes with the AA alkaline case while the HD has the High Capacity Li-Ion battery and the Rapid Charger. The Rapid Charger has a 110VAC wall wart, but will also operate off 12VDC.
If you find yourself needing both VHF and UHF, we have the IC-T70A. The ‘T70A has both a Sport and a HD version like the IC-V80 series. You can check your favorite dealer’s website for pricing information.
Amateur Radio’s YouTube star, Randy Hall, K7AGE, has created a series of videos showing operation of the IC-V80 Sport. Below are the links to the videos on the Icom YouTube Channel for these videos:
Part 1: Getting started on 2m FM
Part 2: IC-V80 Basics
Part 3: Repeater Operations
We’ll look at other brands that new hams might like in a later column.
73 de David Harden, KJ4CMY