The above picture is of the newest portable I purchased from Amazon for my travels last fall (2018)
As with all my reviews I do not have a relationship with the company or the reseller and receive no compensation for my comments or blog post. I’m just a user of the product and will comment based on my experience. There are other similar ham radios for sale on Amazon that are more or less expensive, depending on your budget.
Do your own research. These are only my opinions and may not be exactly what you may want or need.
This is the forth installment of blog posts on vandwellers obtaining their Ham Radio Technician License
First Post: Why Ham Radio For Vandwellers?
Second Post: How To Prepare For Ham Radio Technician Exam
Third Post: Where To Take Ham Radio Exam
This post will focus on the next step of finding the right ham radio for you.
I have an example of a friend who got her Technician License and wanted to get a portable ham radio. She went to a local Ham Club and was told that a specific portable would be right for her, as it was easy to program.
As it turns out it might have been the right radio for the guy at the radio club, but it turned out it was not the right radio for her.
The guy giving the advice stays in one place so he doesn’t add frequencies often. My friend moves from place to place so programming new frequencies could be a daily need, in some cases. Programming was not simple or straight forward even with the quick reference instruction sheet. She was not very happy with her purchase.
Another frustration was the fact that her portable didn’t come with Lion battery. She hadn’t purchased a spare battery, so that meant that she needed to recharge her radio each night, even if it the portable’s battery wasn’t depleted. It is not recommended to put the non-Lion battery on charge until the battery was depleted, based on the battery’s chemistry. If it was a Lion battery there would be no concern.
There was also the issue of her lapel microphone. It only had one pin to attach to the radio and it didn’t make a good connection. This resulted in the poor connection shorting out the push to talk button without her knowing it. She would be transmitting as she drove and didn’t know it. The lapel microphone is ice to used in a mobile application rather than havingbto pick up the radio with antenna cable attached.
Anyone would have been frustrated with these results being new to Ham Radio. I tell this story as I’m sure more than one person has been down the road of buying the wrong radio for themselves. The man who gave advice was not ill intended with his recommendation. He had been a Ham Radio operator for many years. He just didn’t know what vandwellers need in a portable Ham Radio.
I recommend the radio I purchased above for the following reasons listed under the Amazon description.
2x 7.4V/1800mAh Batteries
1x Baofeng walkie talkie
1x TIDRADIO NA-771 Antenna
1x Earpiece
1x Speaker mic
1x Desktop charger
1x Belt clip
1x The sling
1x English User's manual
1x Programming Cable
1x Baofeng walkie talkie
1x TIDRADIO NA-771 Antenna
1x Earpiece
1x Speaker mic
1x Desktop charger
1x Belt clip
1x The sling
1x English User's manual
1x Programming Cable
In addition, the radio is small and lightweight. It’s also Dual Band (144 & 440), dual channel monitoring and charger will work on 120v & 12v. It can listen to FM radio band, and has an emergency flashlight is built in.
It also has a feature where you can enter frequencies on the fly without entering them into memory. Since it can have two temporary frequencies, a repeater channel with a transmit and receive frequency can both be put in. This means that your going to take a hike and you want to put the repeater frequencies in for the closest repeater, you only have to type them in and assign any tone coding. It’s quick and easy.
The features and performance is good for the price. For a vandweller, you can use this radio right out of the box by manually programming using the keyboard. You can attach it to a roof mounted antenna. (To be discussed in another blog post). If you have solar you can charge it off solar like me.
There are other factors that you may want to consider when deciding on a portable Ham Radio. The above example is meant to help you on getting the right radio for you the first time. I chose to go with a lower cost radio. For example more expensive radios may have stronger radio cases, more frequencies, and features. Also there are different suppliers of the radios so you should always review supplier and product ratings.
Best wishes finding the right radio for you the first time.
Brent
Brenton MacAloney
KC1KOV
macaloney@hotmail.com
No comments:
Post a Comment