What, does it vibrate?

Waaaaaait for it——–
It's IP67 rated in case you drop it over the side of the Love Boat.

 

I wonder if the Tytera MD-390 will have fixed some of the oddball bugs from the MD-380? One notorious one that’s come to light recently is that if you un-key then key up again shortly afterwards, the radio’s transmitter timing slips and it’ll scribble over the opposite timeslot. Sounds like a show stopping bug and I’ve seen it blamed on a bug in the Texas Instruments DSP chip at the heart of the radio, which… I’m not inclined to believe.

Either way, even if it was, it’s not like there haven’t been software workarounds to hardware bugs that work successfully before. Just look at the Linux kernel – it’s got a LOT of fixes for CPU/chipset issues which would otherwise be show stoppers.

All Hail the Bowelfunk

HeartlandPrairie1139notusingconstructionbarHATERS GONNA HATE

SLATER’S GONNA SLATE

I always wished I could hang out at The Max after school, but I never would be able to trust myself not to walk into those railings you see on the left. Dear Eris that looks painful. #fnord
I always wished I could hang out at The Max after school, but I never would be able to trust myself not to walk into those railings you see on the left. Dear Eris that looks painful. #fnord

 

This wonderful chart just showed up from the November issue of QST, confirming in a good size statistical sampling what I’ve suspected for quite some time:

Baofengs are rubbish.

Click to view full size.
Image from the QST article. Apologies to the ARRL for reposting part of their article without permission… but at this point, we just need to stop buying Baofengs and this illustrates the fact well.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is kinda nothing new. On the first model they sent over here, the UV-3R, rumors surfaced early on that the antenna was critical. The antenna’s bandwidth limitations were being used as a harmonic/spurious emission filter. If you used a third party antenna, especially one that’s very broadband like a discone, it’d spew. The UV-5R’s are everywhere now and well, aside from you having about a 70% chance the radio works at all, there’s about a 50% chance it has spurious emissions exceeding FCC standards.

 

Beautiful.

 

You will notice if you look at the chart above that a small sampling (as in, ONE unit each) of Kenwood and Yaesu radios also failed to pass, but I get the feeling those were radios that had soaked up a bit too much puddle water in their years. We hams tend to keep our rigs till they turn to once expensive dust….. then claim they’re STILL wurf way the hell too much.

I think I may still have one UV-5R kicking around somewhere. I haven’t used it in nigh forever, because the last time I did, the receiver started going deaf and shutting down with a crackling sound whenever you moved the radio. It wasn’t a cracked solder joint at the antenna connector (a VERY common problem, historically, on almost all brands of handheld radios). The board was just plain goin’. Either way, after reading this, I’m declaring it to be a [lackluster] receiver only.

At work there’s an ever shrinking bundle of Baofeng/Pofung 888 single band radios that were obtained out of desperation as the old Motorola CP200’s and newer CP185’s all gradually started to fail. They just plain don’t work right. They drift in frequency in mid transmission, emit strange noises, go weak on transmit, or fail to receive. On a side note – funny how the CP200’s lasted over a decade and the CP185’s, now made in China, barely make it beyond three years’ service. I wonder who “Motorola” actually buys them from? Bueller? Bueller? *squelch*

 

Apparently in the 2012 tests, some TYT radios showed up with half of the small sample being bad – interesting to note that they’ve never reappeared. The TYT [Tytera] MD-380 analog/DMR radio is starting to gain a lot of use lately, hopefully they’ve cleaned up their act!

On a side note, boy, Tytera sure never seemed to use their full name OR the same exact font that Hytera uses for their logo until Hytera started really kicking butt with their DMR line. Gee I wonder why they just happened to jump to similar trade dress. 😉

(Comparing the looks of the MD380 to the looks of a Hytera radio, however, is like comparing the looks of a Samsung Galaxy S6 with one of those toy plastic cellphones that’s full of candy.)

Simple and elegant

A small home studio I helped set up.

We sorely miss the multiple busses that we could have with a nicer board than the Mackie — it’ll likely get upgraded. The computer is running SAM Broadcaster, which is a real Swiss Army Knife… It does everything and does it pretty dang well for a small operation.

image

image

360 Systems Instant Replay… There’s nothing quite like it, as easy to use and reliable. Someday I’d love to see 360 come out with a similar box using an ssd or SDHC / Compact Flash media. That’d be beautiful. There are a few generations of this unit. The original and early model 2.0 units use a 50 pin SCSI drive, hard to find now. Later versions switched to PATA / IDE disks and a SATA may run in there with a simple ATA/SATA adapter unit. Even later models added an Ethernet port and a really goofy FTP server (it’s kinda wonky due to being implemented in about NO kilobytes of RAM).

But it’s perfect, either way. Push button, receive sound. So easy to use, and it has a pretty VFD readout which earns it extra cool points in my book.

Congratulations on your FAILURE

The text that says "Catalog Index Page" is just that - text. It is not clickable. It does not lead to an index.
The text that says “Catalog Index Page” is just that – text. It is not clickable. It does not lead to an index.

Congratulations, Tram-Browning Corporation, for having what I can genuinely say is the least usable website I’ve encountered in months.

Click their site, you receive a big splash image and links to open one page of their catalog in a new window. It opens a PDF.

There is no single page catalog PDF.

There is no index.

There is no search.

There is no actual usability.

ARRRGHHH!!! If you’ll excuse me, I’ll be off straightening out a coat hanger and soldering it to an SO-239; this is going to be more productive than trying to use their catalog to order an antenna.

That radio life…

image
I'm either a total badass or insane?

You never truly leave radio, nor does it ever leave you.

It sneaks up when you least expect it.

That XPR6550 may not work anymore and I hope to cheeeeze that I don’t have to strip down and repair an old Harris transmitter while wearing an inflexible leather corset again, but yeah… I seem to be getting offers to do little bits and pieces of radio stuff at times. I definitely do not want to make it by nine to five (more like eight to WTF, eleven?!) thing again but it’s fun once in a while.

For the record it only took a week before my shoulders stopped burning… Ooowwww.

The Hytera PD662

image

This is the silliest possible commentary on a piece of radio equipment.

As part of facility upgrades at work, we’re getting new radios and gradually going from analog to DMR. This is one of the models we’re trying out.

It’s a very solid little radio with a metal chassis exposed on the sides, which will likely take the blow if the radio is dropped. The big color LCD, reminiscent of those on flip and feature phones, is protected behind a thick window that hasn’t managed to get any scratches yet. The radio is ip68 rated to withstand dust, moisture, and 3 foot immersion (oops, puddle!)

image

The speaker is on the back. This may seem odd at first but it’s really practical. When you clip the radio to your belt, this directs the sound right up to your ears. If your hand is behind the radio, it reflects the sound to you. Compared to a Motorola CP185 or CP200, this thing is a screamer. I’ve had to get used to leaving the volume at 50% or lower, as opposed to maximum on the Motorola. There is an automatic ambient volume adjustment called LQO which measures the ambient noise level and automatically boosts the volume level if needed to shout over the noise; the maximum gain added is adjustable in the CPS (Customer Programming Software).

Battery life and rf performance are amazing.

There’s just one thing I don’t like… If I put a hair tie on the clip out always gets lost. I’m starting to think the radio just absorbs them and that’s why I can go two days without charging it. Oh well, it’s all good, it let me put a picture of a corgi begging for pizza on it as a startup image, so I can’t complain about a lost hair tie here and there.

image

DJ Enco in da mix

image
Now now, Auto-DJ, you should know better than to harm your janitor and voice talent.

There are certain songs that whenever I hear them on the radio, I get this crystal clear mental picture of an automation computer just grinding away in a dark, dusty, empty studio.

No Place I’d Rather Be
Anything featuring Pitbull
Blame It On The Night
Anything by Iggy Azalea
Latch (I can’t remember the artist’s name and cannot be bothered to look it up)
Somebody That You Used To Know
Levels by Avicii
Anything by Lorde, Flo Rida, or Robin Thicke

There are more, but these are the ones that practically have me smelling the dust on the console.

SK. Dead from laughter.

This showed up on Facebook and well that was it. I’m doomed. This is a transmitter full of TRI-COLOR FOAMING WAX.

This was posted by Erick Burnstad who undoubtedly has a great story behind it.

Whoever that is in the background is clearly trying hard not to totally lose it… I already have. Forever. I can’t even.

image
Your argument is invalid.

NextRadio – oh look, there’s a radio in there

There’s been a series of ads running on the radio stations here promoting the use of…. Radio.

image

Radio on smartphone devices, specifically.

Fact is, many phones contain an FM radio tuner. On some of these phones there’s an app provided to turn it on and listen. Here’s the stock HTC radio. (RDS supported, but displayed like 10 char at a time… Why??)

One of the other ads they’re running is for NextRadio, an Android app that works on many devices if an app wasn’t provided or if your wireless carrier ripped it out. Open NextRadio and you are provided with a channel list that’s even populated with what’s currently playing, if they have access to that

image

dat

a..

.

Switch the app to basic tuner mode if you want to manually choose the frequency… Auto scan does work properly and it finds the friendly local pirates.

It doesn’t appear to use RDS for the metadata. One interesting thing – unlike the htc radio app which is so laggy it feels as if it’s sending the commands to the radio out for translation to serial data via first class mail to Ochopee, Florida… NextRadio has no noticeable lag.

So as for the important requisite questions…

Do they have ads in the app? Not that I’ve noticed, however if you choose to buy albums via the built in links they probably get a commission. The website mentions it being able to sync visual and interactive content, I haven’t seen this in action yet.

Do they track your listening? Maybe. If so it’d be a pretty useful set of metrics for the sales people at your local radio stations, a hell of a lot more useful than Arbitron. If so, it’s just for aggregate stats.

Or it’s just a fancy radio. I d

image

unno.