Thursday, May 06, 2010

220 MHz solutions

As you've read here before, I have been searching for a 220 MHz solution. For CERT and Emcomm use, 220 MHz is ideal as it is a WAY underutilized band in these parts. I am quite content with my Alinco DJ-V5 144/440 MHz dual bander; but was thinking of selling it in order to purchase the Kenwood Tri-band handheld. Seeing that as a bit cost prohibitive, I then started thinking about purchasing an Alinco 220 MHz monoband HT.

I started discussing this with Tim AB2ZK, one of my fellow VE partners at the test session last night (who also happens to be a Kenwood Tri-band owner). He made me aware that one of the candidates happens to be selling Wouxun Chinese manufactured VHF/UHF handhelds at some really great prices.

So I waited until the session was over and approached him about it. Sure enough, he still had several of the 144/220 MHz models left (in his car); and asked me if I was interested? It turned out that the radio, the KG-UVD-1P (which comes with two antennas and a drop in charger), an extra battery and a programming cable came to quite substantially less than either option I was previously contemplating.




Figuring out some of the basics was quite intuitive and easy and I was able to quickly program in my repeater club's 144 MHz and 220 MHz repeaters. I even managed to figure out how to store them into memory rather easily. What I am not having an easy time figuring out is how to switch from VFO mode to "memory" mode. It's not quite as easy as other handhelds as I don't see any buttons marked as "mem". The manual is pretty good; but not the absolute greatest. The fact that I can be thick as a brick at times doesn't help matters, either. Looks like I'll have to do some Web surfing to see what other Hams have figured out.

72 de Larry W2LJ
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4 comments:

  1. Ethan Harstad10:02 AM

    To switch between Memory and VFO quickly you can press Menu and then TDR. It works both ways but it sadly does not remember which display mode you were in (Channel, Name or Freq+Ch) and will put you into Channel mode when you switch back to memory.

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  2. Larry W2LJ8:41 PM

    Thanks Ethan!

    I also figured out about using Menu 21 to figure out that "CHFREQ" mode is what I would normally think of memory mode in my Alinco HT.

    73 de Larry W2LJ

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  3. KC4ZVW11:06 AM

    So does this radio get a pass/fail grade for using on the 220 side?

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  4. Larry W2LJ7:57 PM

    It definitely gets " a pass". The price is right, it's not hard to program manually and the audio reports I am getting are good.

    We have a rather nice amount of 220 repeaters here in NJ; and I can hit all the local ones with no problem.

    For CERT use, this is a definite winner. If something were to happen to it, it wouldn't be hard to replace, either.

    72 de Larry W2LJ

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