I first found this radio on a Facebook group and right away I noticed how great it looked. Upon further inspection, this radio was found to basically be a copy of the Yaesu FT-350R dual band radio.
I spent about 2 months making this video. The first part is the unboxing and testing of the radio, where we look at everything in the box with the radio, the radio itself, and put it on the bench to test power output on all 3 bands. The 2nd part shows the radio mounted in my truck, where I ran it for a couple of months in a real-world environment and used it on a daily basis.
The results of the first part of this video are promising, but the 2nd part is very disappointing. Watch the video and let me know if there are any questions.
Did you ever get the APRS running on this radio? If so, your thoughts? Were you able to do APRS and voice at the same time on two different frequencies? The APRS setup of this radio is what is drawing me to it…. any input would be appreciated.
Thank you.
No, I never tried it. I didn’t care for the regular operation of the radio, so I didn’t want to try the extras.
Well if they don’t end up taking it back and fixing it and you would be interested in giving it away I would be willing to take it. Even given the problems you described it may work fine as a dedicated APRS radio though I wouldn’t buy it just for that, but…. if you are going to part with it. 😀
I am going to box it up and probably list it on ebay. I have the GPS unit, programming cable and a couple of other accessories for it, which are all unused. The radio itself works fine, it isn’t broken, I just don’t think the design is very good.