Ten Tec 506 Rebel

http://qrper.com/2013/05/ten-tec-introduces-the-model-506-rebel-an-open-source-qrp-transceiver/

It's a 20/40m QRP CW radio. The neat thing though is that the CPU in it is Arduino powered. The whole thing has standard connectors and all kinds of standard, easy to work with, parts. The complete opposite of ridiculously expensive closed systems like the Icom D-Star radios. I think it would have been more fun if it wasn't just CW only. Even something geared more toward digital modes than voice would have been nice. Still, this is a very good direction to go in after tons of radios that are completely closed off (and really fly against Ham radio tradition) or radios that are otherwise built completely without digital components at all.

Not that there's anything against roughing it with the same functionality as radios had 50 years ago for nostalgia... but there will be no innovation if you just do the same thing you've always done. Without innovation, Ham radio is doomed.

Now I'm waiting for a series of radios that include an empty bay for taking things like a Raspberry Pi or Arduinos or whatever you can squeeze in it.

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VV-808 Mobile Transceiver

http://www.dhgate.com/vv-808-mobile-transceiver-10w15w-two-way/p-ff8080813bade0f0013bb685146e05d1.html#s1-1-1

$134 shipped ($65.71 of that is the shipping cost, $68.29 for the radio.)

Found this one talked about in a post on the Baofeng UV5-R mailing list. I'm still not sure if this is single or dual band. The listing says 136-174mhz or 400-470mhz. But the listing also says Dual Reception/Dual Display so that could mean it's dual band or it could mean it monitors two frequencies on one band (by switching between them) and they're counting on the terminology to confuse someone. Anyways, if it is dual band it happens to be the cheapest Chinese radio I've ever seen. If not, it's not that good of a deal. Single band mobiles aren't that expensive.

The radio looks TINY. It's my theory that they put the pcb of a handheld in it and made a beefier amplifier circuit. Not much though, 10W/4W on VHF. Maybe 15W on UHF? Again, ambiguity in the specifications.

Size: 120*85*40mm

Just look at that.

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X1M MKII 20W QRP SSB CW Transceiver

http://www.kightradio.com/X1M-MKII-20-Watt-QRP-SSB-CW-Transceiver_p_319.html

Wow, this looks pretty cool actually. They don't have a price listed yet though. Check out the connections on the back:

• GPS ant.
• IF out
• I&Q out
• ACC1&2 (Hope at least one of these are CAT)
• VGA(!) Probably goes with the color LCD on the front
• ATU
• 12v Power
• Antenna

Note that the front seems to say "HAM Toy" in the corner, how true. 

HF-6M I read somewhere that it was all the way from 160 meters up. Don't know if it has band limits. Hope so but this is Chinese in origin so probably not.

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MSP430 new post on Morse Code in Energia project

http://blog.jamesrhall.com/2013/04/msp430-morse-code-in-energia-part-2.html
Posted on my other blog on my portfolio website.
Now you can set a callsign, or a sentence up on a String variable and the program will take care of the rest.
Supports letters, numbers, space and a couple of punctuation. @ and !

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Elecraft K3/0 and Ham Radio As A Service

I was browsing through the May 2013 issue of QST when this article caught my eye. "RemoteHamRadio Station Network" on page 59. Basically it's a subscription service over the Internet where you pay $2999-$6999 a year to access some so-called mega stations somewhere. The article is vague but includes a url to www.remotehamradio.com

The website has more information. There are 3 stations. The lowest priced plan has a per-minute usage charge and the more expensive plans include a set amount of minutes each month after which you pay the per-minute usage charge. I believe this is to discourage someone from hogging a site and not allowing other people to use it.

The big deal is that part of your subscription includes (it's on a lease!) an Elecraft K3/0.

Picture from official website http://www.elecraft.com/K3-Remote/k3_remote.htm

The Elecraft K3/0 is a remote control for an Elecraft K3 transceiver. It doesn't actually have any RF components inside. It's meant to pair with a standard transceiver and give you the feeling of being there. I'm unsure if you can do so without using the RemoteRig box as well. It's the smaller box sitting on top of the two K3s above. The purpose of that box is to pass control signals and audio between the Remote and the Transceiver boxes and it can also work over the Internet as well.

Prices to buy this stuff at Elecraft directly

Elecraft K3/0 price $695.95

RemoteRig price $499.95

Cable Set for each side $49.95/ea

So roughly $1300+shipping+K3 transceiver to set this up yourself.

That doesn't include the price for amplifiers, antennas and the cost of the location and other overhead for things like power, network connectivity, cooling/heat and so on. The yearly price is very expensive (The top end could be a house payment) but once you figure in all of that stuff it quickly becomes obvious why. Trying to figure out if this is worth it to you really comes down to if you can do it cheaper or not, if you can do it at all or not, if you can get by with less of a system (I think most can, really), and if it gets to be too busy to be worth it for you. I can well imagine someone using all of their monthly allotment of time during a busy contest and that putting others out. Frankly, to me, it really feels like the equipment should be a buy and not a lease. You're already paying well over the purchase price for the equipment they send you even if you pick the lowest priced plan. I'd like to see this addressed with a policy for Bring Your Own Devices giving a lower monthly cost at least, if not a lease converting to a purchase depending on the plan and the length you subscribe as with cellphones.

Makes me want to try to put together something similar using Raspberry Pis though.

Just a disclaimer, my views are my own and don't represent the views of any person or company mentioned in this post. Nothing precludes you from having a home base and one of these services. I'm not even advocating for it, just another aspect of the hobby.

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V689U Chinese Digital Radio

I noticed the teaser for this radio on 409shop's website when I was looking up the current prices for the UV-3R radios. I've actually seen a different radio on Alibaba recently too but my inquiries are ignored or responded to by telling me that radio isn't ready yet.
According to these links:
http://www.brickolore.com/2013/03/409shop-teaser-v689u-digital-radio.html
http://www.brickolore.com/2013/03/v689u-kirisun-s760fp460.html
http://hamgear.wordpress.com/2013/03/13/chinese-digital-radios-theyre-here/
It's similar to, or it is actually this radio made by Kirisun:

http://en.kirisun.com/detail.aspx?id=61&zhu=1&Cyrus=1
I'm not sure though because the Frequency list here doesn't seem very useful for Amateur Radio needs. Another link that I've been to lists it as 400-470Mhz which would be useful and fairly standard actually for Chinese radios. It can do analog FM and digital modulation. All the details I can find on the digital is that it is 4FSK and it can create two 6.25Khz channels in a 12.5Khz frequency space which kinda sounds like TDMA?
It'd be cute if these were firmware reprogrammable and you could do codec2 on whatever chip is inside. I have a feeling it's the same old awful IMBE/AMBE type chips that you can only get through DVSI, like on D-Star. Of course this is coming from China, I guess it's possible they've reverse engineered those codecs and put them on a chip that can be reprogrammed to codec2 one day. That would make this radio more valuable. I just read on the hamgear link that they will be software updateable. So you can add more features, but no idea if that would include the codec or not. I'm guessing not, but we can always hope so.

Word is the pricing is going to be $200. A lot more expensive than other Chinese radios but you have the digital price premium to pay. (And the DVSI tax if it does use the DVSI chips)

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Baofeng UV-3R flashed

Lior is at it again, this time he's working on the Baofeng UV-3R radios. The MCU that runs the radio is flash programmable. Unfortunately the security bits are set so you can't read out the existing firmware first, but you can erase it and insert your own. A group is forming on the Yahoo Groups board to work on making a 100% community made firmware for these radios.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/UV-3R/message/8141 This is the thread talking about the initial experiment. See this Youtube video:


http://groups.yahoo.com/group/UV-3R/message/8158 This is a thread where people are talking about what features they want to have in a community made firmware.
One thing to note, during the tests the PA circuits are turned off so it's outputting very low power. Too bad the radios are FM only, because that would be a good thing for transverters.. Hey, maybe it wouldn't be bad for the SHF stuff?
Could be good for fox hunts too.. Just flash it with a firmware to send the MCW occasionally and then hide it, no extra circuitry required.
These radios are pretty inexpensive at $41 each. I can well imagine quite a few things they could be used for if they are reprogrammed with a new firmware. Of course I have no illusions that the chip is powerful enough to do very complicated things. I am hoping this opens the door to a community who buys these radios for this purpose and then the companies respond to that by making more radios which can be flashed. Especially if they put more powerful chips in them and a few years down the road it's possible to flash codec2 onto one and have a very inexpensive digital radio.
I doubt that's possible with these. Maybe a 1200 baud packet firmware will come out though. Then you'd have a very inexpensive APRS tracker just by adding a GPS.

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