Last Saturday, as I was taking a few minute break from pounding brass, Dave W2OIL from the K2ETS club came by and sat down next to me. He handed me a plastic bag and inside was a You Kits HB-1B radio with a bunch of other stuff. Besides the radio was a Bulldog Clip paddle (like the one I have and use) a wall wart, a lithium battery, what appears to be a wire antenna and a printed out QST review of the radio. Dave told me the radio was bequeathed to him from the estate of our late Hudson Associate Division Director, Bill Hudzik W2UDT. Dave wanted me to make sure all was well and in working order.

I got my first chance to play with it Tuesday night and I have to say, i was quite pleased with the opportunity. It appears this one covers 80 through 20 Meters. It took some getting used to. Some of the functions are quite intuitive ,such as changing modes, tuning speeds, etc. Some are not. Luckily I had my phone with me and I was able to Google how to change keyer speeds and how to program in your call sign to get the "auto-calling CQ" function to work.

I had it hooked up to the the Alex Loop at the backyard patio table and did not work anyone. There weren't many POTA stations on at the time and for the one or two that I was able to hear, I was not able to break through the ravenous pile ups before it got dark and I had to go inside for the evening. Before that, however,  I had called CQ manually on 40, 30 and 20 Meters, just so I could see where I was being spotted by the Reverse Beacon Network. Not too shabby!

The Gray Line is a bit deceptive in the screen shot below as I did the look up the day after. For some reason the RBN wasn't working properly on my cell phone when I was actually calling CQ. It wasn't showing any spots. In reality, the Gray Line was much closer to my QTH at the time, and undoubtedly helped with the propagation to Europe.

I promised Dave that I'd bring all this back to him at the club meeting this Friday night. I'm kind of disappointed that I won't get to play with it for too much longer. I was going to take it down to the shack tonight after work, and hook it up to the W3EDP and the Butternut and really give it a whirl, but we're forecasted for thunderstorms this evening.

I had an extra little IBM pouch from a USB CD Drive that I rescued from the recycle pile at work. The drive got recycled, but I kept the pouch as it was only going to be trashed anyway. That will provide ample cushioning and protection for this little radio. It deserves better than a plastic baggie. I'm thinking of stopping off at the grocery store and picking up a plastic kitchen storage box that is big enough to store everything that was in the baggie, and I'll hand it all back to Dave in a nice neat package, along with the printed out manual. Every radio deserves a nice home!

Bottom line? I guess I'm spoiled by my KX3, but this little guy seems to be fun to use, and would probably hold its own at a POTA activation or during a QRP Sprint. I wouldn't mind having one., and it makes me wish my QMX would get here faster!

72 de Larry W2LJ

QRP - When you care to send the very least!

 

Seems like a good deal, right? Not to be a Debbie-Downer, but a friend had a Xiegu G90 which failed. His only recourse is to send it back to China for an out-of-warranty repair. Just something to keep in mind - that as of yet, Xiegu has no US based repair facility of their own, nor have they established a service contract to any third party based in the US. $800 is a good chunk of change with no guaranteed repair service behind it. Just sayin'.

72 de Larry W2LJ

QRP - When you care to send the very least!

I wonder what else will be unveiled at FDIM and Hamvention?

72 de Larry W2LJ

QRP - When you care to send the very least!

Abbot and Costello were a favorite of my childhood, right up there with Laurel and Hardy. I always get a chuckle when I hear Lou Costello tell Bud Abbot, "I've been a baaaaaad boy!".

So what did W2LJ do that's so bad? Depends on your point of view. If you're a brother or sister Ham - nothing! To the uninitiated ..... "What do you need another radio for?"

I buckled under last night and ordered a QMX transceiver from QRP Labs. Not the kit, but a fully assembled-in-the-enclosure-80-to-20 Meter version. I've got too many kits in the pipeline that are waiting to be built. I don't need another. For that matter, I don't need another radio, either! But it's so tiny and can do so much and I've been wanting to get one for so long. I just couldn't sit on the fence any longer and last night I took the plunge. I figured I might as well order one while I'm still working full time. With retirement looming in the not too distant future, purchases like these might not be as easy to justify. I have no idea how long it will take to get here, but I'll wait. Oh, I know that it will be worth the wait!  (Just looked at the waiting list - if I'm lucky maybe September or October).

So in that way, some would say that "I've been a baaaaaad boy!' To which I might reply, "It's a Ham Radio thing ....... you wouldn't understand!"

By the way ....... Happy Marcon's birthday! The ol' boy would be 150 years old today. Better than lifting a glass - get on the air in his honor today! 

And I just stepped out of my office for a second or two to see that today is "Bring Your Kid to Work Day". It was exactly for this "day" back in 2005 that a bunch of us put on a presentation about Amateur Radio at the IEEE in Piscataway, NJ. Talking about "day" was my impetus for starting this blog - going on it's 20th year this year! 

72 de Larry W2LJ

QRP - When you care to send the very least!

I purchased this Baofeng K5 Plus after hearing glowing reports on the nightly Middlesex County Chat Group Net from two local Hams for whom I have deep respect, Marv K2VHW and Dave K2ULF.  $29.00 from Amazon - how could you go wrong? I was ordering a new cordless phone for the house (yes, we still maintain a landline) on Sunday and decided "Why not?" and added it to My Cart. I was surprised as all get out when both the phone and the HT arrived the next afternoon, and I did not pay for expedited shipping!

The main reason I purchased it is because it is a tri-band radio including the 1.25 Meter band - 220 MHz. I do own a dedicated 220 HT, but it's so much more convenient to have all three bands in one radio - no juggling required.  Last night I successfully programmed in the NJ2EM repeater, which is owned and operated by the NJ State Police and is one of our main ways of communicating with them via Amateur Radio on behalf of Middlesex County AUXCOMM. The repeater is down the road a ways - pretty close to Trenton. Even so, I was able to raise the repeater and the S-Meter on the radio was almost full scale as it identified. That's not hard to believe as their antenna is near the top of the old UHF TV Channel 52 tower, which has to be one of the tallest in the state. It truly has statewide coverage, as during  monthly "test nets" I have heard every county in New Jersey check in without difficulty.

I did not purchase a programming cable and had a little trepidation about that. I was relieved to discover that manually entering repeater information is quite intuitive and not complicated at all, and once you've programmed in a memory or two, it gets even easier. When you use CHIRP, it's so easy to fill up memories with repeaters you never frequent, or are perhaps almost dead for the amount of inactivity on them. Manually programming the radio may take a bit more time and effort, but it should eliminate needless frequencies

Another neat thing about the radio is that when you press the "0" key for about three seconds, the most local NOAA weather station will pop on. I used to program that into my hand helds, but it became a nuisance when you go into scan mode and the scanning stops whenever you come to that memory. Another thing that I really like about this HT is that charging can be accomplished via a USB-C port that is located on the battery. I can charge my phone AND my HT from the multi-device charger that we have in our kitchen. Of course, the radio comes with the standard drop-in charger for "conventional" charging as well. I'm sure there are other features that I will come to know and appreciate as I use it more and more. 

There is one thing about this radio that exacerbates my OCD. The "EXIT" button that you press to get out of the menus is actually screened on the key as "EIXT".  I noticed that pretty much right off the bat as my brain went into "What !?!?!: mode. 

72 de Larry W2LJ

QRP - When you care to send the very least!