Update on the Baofeng UV-6R

Despite being told I could purchase a new charger on the website of the company I bought the UV-6R from, it never appeared online so I ended up buying a replacement from China via eBay. This meant I was only able to get a few days use out of the radio and it took just over two weeks for the charger to arrive although the charger only cost £2 instead of the quoted £9 from the original seller!

My initial thoughts about the UV-6R being deaf are not strictly true, if you use the radio in an area where there is a lot of nearby RF then it will struggle with simplex operation, rather strangely it doesn’t seem affected when using repeaters!

Range in a built-up area seems to vary, the normal estimate is a mile and a half, I have struggled and managed to be heard at 10 miles, obviously plugging it into something like a co-linear antenna will improve its range.

Rather strangely I used the UV-6R on GB3LT repeater and the other station I was talking to had a listen on the repeater input and he said my audio was better, amazingly the distance was something like 12 miles cross country, so performance just depends on where you are. If you are struggling to be heard then move, find a high spot and you should find a bit of a difference.

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A look back at my days in the Royal Signals

In 1991 I joined 818 Troop, 54 Signal Squadron (Volunteers) Royal Signals at Bedford, this was kinda making a family tradition, my dad had served with 224 Signal Squadron at Woodhouse Eaves in Leicestershire in 1959 so I was keen to join the local TA signals unit.

I actually went on exercise before I had attended basic training at Catterick with 1 Troop, 11 Signals. I have to say those two weeks were a couple of the best of my life!

At Bedford, there were two troops, 818 which was Radio Relay and  754 which operated both Triffid and TEV/TEB, TEV stood for Terminal Equipment Vehicle and contained data communication equipment, teleprinters, telephone exchange switching. They didn’t contain any radio communications equipment. They would be hooked up to another truck referred to as a Triffid which is the same type of vehicle used by radio relay. The TEV and TEB would both tow their own generators. Both TEV and TEB vehicles were based on the Bedford Trucks  4WD MJ chassis.

Radio Relay troops used the Triffid, this was based on a Bedford Trucks 4WD Chassis. the triffid consisted of a radio cabin at the rear whilst between this and the crew cab were two generators, above this was an equipment cage which contained one free-standing Clark SCAM mast, antenna parts, and two Co-ax drums. Another Clark SCAM mast was fitted at the rear.

The radios used in the Triffid varied on who was using them. The Territorial Army used a system called Euromux, which was used by the Belgian Army. The Regular Army used Ptarmigan although one TA Signals regiment was equipped with Ptarmigan.

 

UK/TRC-471 Transportable UHF Radio Relay Equipment (Triffid – Euromux)

 

Frequency range 225-400MHz, 610-690 MHz and 1.35-1.85 GHz by plug-in heads. Operating modes (TDM) BRUIN: 250, 500 Kbits/s, Eurocom: 256, 512 Kbits/s, bit rates selected by mode switch on systems unit. Operating mode (FM/FDM) 12 channels: 300 Hz to 60 KHz, 24 channels 300 Hz : 300Hz/108 KHz, Channel capacity selected by mode switch on systems unit. Power output 225-400 MHz band 10-15 Watts, 610-960 MHz band 8-16 Watts, 1.35-1.85 GHz band 1.07-2.25 Watts. These units can now be brought on the open market, the British Army’s other system Ptarmigan ended up in skips! If you have a Clark SCAM mast then these radios were part of the same kit used on a four-wheel drive Bedford Truck.

Radio Relay Triffid belonging to a Cambridge Radio Relay troop, the vehicles airline is no operational so they are having to raise it using a hand pump!

Winter Hill during Exercise Red Haze

Triffid belonging to 818 Troop, 54 Signal Squadron at Kempston on Winter Hill

Euromux and Ptarmigan are now no longer used by the British Army, in fact, you could find all the Euromux and Triffid kit in sale yards of Government contractors. Ptarmigan ended up in skips and was scrapped.

FV432 – issued to Royal Signals units in Germany

One of the systems that replaced it was called Cormorant, but even this has been scrapped!

Today’s replacement looks like this: Falcon WASP

Activity on 2m and 70cm

So it has been over a year since my last post, to be honest, Amateur Radio has taken a back seat in all that time. The last couple of months my interest has been reawakened and I’ve made a couple of return visits to Bardon Hill, discovered Merryton Low which is halfway between Buxton and Leek. This hill is on the edge of the Peak District and gives good coverage of Cheshire into North Wales, I’ve managed 57.1 miles into GB3MP repeater!

Being only able to work repeaters on my Alinco, added to the fact I’m lucky to get just over an hour out of the battery is becoming a problem. There is a bigger capacity Li-ion battery available but at £30 for the battery and £30 for the battery, in my mind, it isn’t exactly an economical choice when that money could go towards a dual band mobile. I’ve been taking a particular interest in activity on 2m and 70cm bands listening via WebSDR and I have to say there is a lot of activity going on, even on 70cm!

Last week I visited the National Hamfest at Newark, more about that later, and I had a chat with Gary Spiers M0TIG  about the MyDEL AnyTone AT-778V/U 2/70 Dual Band Transceiver. In an ideal world, I would be after something like a Yaesu 857D but that’s pretty much something for next year. A dual band mobile set up would give me a little time to use both 2m and 70cm FM before getting something a little bigger.

What happened next was an impulse buy, I saw a Baofeng UV-6R and thought well it is less than £30 (plus £5 for programming lead), it will get me on 70cm as well as 2m for time being, I can always use it with a dual band antenna when hill topping. 

I then spent a frustrating weekend trying to get it programmed, it seemed to receive but when transmitting it would not open up any repeaters. I took it back to the vendor on Tuesday and they agreed something was wrong, exchanged the radio and made sure it worked on a local 70cm repeater. Now on my Alinco, I have a dual band whip which gives me much better range than the standard rubber duck type antenna it came with. So I bought one to go with the UV-6R.

I again loaded the software from the CHIRP website and used the RepeaterBook website to download the repeaters I wanted. Everything seemed to work. I have tried it out at two hilltop sites and accessing repeaters on both bands is now no problem. I then tried simplex (something I can’t-do with the Alinco) however I can listen to simplex frequencies on the Alinco. The UV-6R was quiet, didn’t seem to hear anything, I checked on the Alinco and found a couple of mobiles on a simplex frequency. The UV-6R wasn’t hearing them. I was convinced it was a programming issue.

Since then I have used several 70cm repeaters with no problems, then one evening I actually found a small net running with one station very local to me. In fact, I could hear everyone even those some 10 miles away. I checked the following day from the same hilltop site, I had my Alinco listening on the 2m calling frequency, and put a call out on the UV-6R, a mobile came back to me about 12 miles away, he reported that my signal and audio was good, and then suggested I tried 70cm, I called a couple of times and heard nothing then went back to 2m, he said he could hear me just as well on 70cm as 2m, it was just I couldn’t hear him. We finished our QSO and another station some 31 miles away

We finished our QSO and another station some 31 miles away called me and said that I had a good signal and audio, just a shame I couldn’t hear him on the UV-6R! From digging around I have discovered this. A lot of different Baofeng models seem to deaf, more so if you connect an external antenna. This answered a question that occurred a couple of weeks ago when I was listening to a SOTA activation in North Wales via WebSDR. The SOTA station had excellent audio and signal, there were plenty of people calling him but he couldn’t hear anyone! I heard a station in Wrexham remark, “it is a common occurrence with SOTA stations at that site!” Whats the betting they are all using Baofengs?

So in conclusion, the UV-6R is ok if you want an HT to work local repeaters, it will work on repeaters if you use a non-standard whip, but you will probably be overloading the radio making it even deafer. So if you are looking for an HT for SOTA then, in my opinion, it is one to avoid.

Maybe I should have just stuck to getting that MyDEL AnyTone AT-778V!

As a footnote to this story, I went to charge the UV-6R this evening and found the charger doesn’t work, took it to bits expecting it to be a loose wire, I actually discovered the circuit board inside had broken! Luckily the vendor has some new chargers in and these are selling for around £9

 

Is there anyone out there?

OK, so I haven’t actually done a lot with Amateur Radio recently, apart from occasionally switching on my handheld and having a listen on the local repeaters which are deathly quite. Admittedly I have heard some people on 2 metres simplex but have wondered if they would hear me? Well, the answer to that one is, you will never know unless you try!

A couple of weeks ago I went for a walk up Bardon Hill in Leicestershire taking my Alinco handie. This is the highest point in the county and is higher than the Chiltern Hills. The site is about two miles west of GB3CF, which is located the other side of the M1 which passes by.

I managed to get into Northampton (GB3TO), Lincoln (GB3LM), Matlock  (GB3IN) and also managed to raise someone in Market Harborough (ok not that far away) via Corby (GB3CO), I also managed to open up GB3VA at about 60 miles distance. As well as the Market Harborough contact there were several mobiles via GB3CF. However, 2 metres seems to extremely quiet. One of my contacts that day explained he thought things were even quieter these days as people were using DSTAR and DMR.

At the weekend I checked the Hack Green web sdr on 4m, 2m, and 70cm. I was hoping there would be some activity on 4m but nothing could be heard, not even a beacon. There were a couple of people using repeaters on the bands. Going down to HF I was surprised by the lack of G & M stations.

You have to ask where is the new blood in Amateur Radio? I dread to think what the average age of an amateur radio operator is!

 

Amateur Radio Balloon goes Transcontinental then Transatlantic

California Near Space Project launched a high altitude amateur radio balloon (callsign K6RPT-12) late Sunday afternoon (Dec 2) from San Jose, CA. As of about Monday 1630Z (8:30 pm PST) it was flying over Chicago, IL about 110,000 feet moving at 200 mph. This flight by Ron Meadows and others of CNSP is another long distance floater.

Last year this team had success with the K6RPT-11 balloon which crossed the United States and the Atlantic crossed a Spain just north of Gibraltar and came down in the Mediterranean between Ibiza and Algeria.

I began following the K6RPT – 12 balloon as it crossed Maine into Canada briefly overflying New Brunswick then crossing the Bay of Funday and then flying out into the Atlantic roughly halfway between Newfoundland and Sable Island, the balloon was finally lost to tracking some 200 miles offshore.

The balloon was filled with hydrogen which is the gas as used by the Hindenburg Airship which caught fire in the 1930’s after crossing the Atlantic from Germany. Most balloons use the non flammable gas Helium.

The tracking equipment was based on the Automatic Packet Reporting System (APRS) is an Amateur Radio based system for real time tactical digital communications of information of immediate value in the local area. It is often connected with Global Positioning System (GPS) as it was in this case.

Data is sent via Amateur Radio to APRS repeaters which is then shown on a google maps based tracking site (http://aprs.fi.com). The system worked well whilst the balloon was over the United States but once it was out of range, there was no way of telling where the balloon was or where it was heading.

An added problem was that the United States and Canada use a different radio frequency in the 2 metre band to European countries so the project was relying on the goodwill of Amateurs in other countries to retune their radios to see if they could pick up signals from the balloon.

Several anxious hours past and this morning two radio amateurs in Spain (one near Marbella and the other near Granada) picked up a signal from the balloon as it approached Morocco from the Atlantic, making landfall near Rabat it was tracked from Spain as it crossed close by the town of Fes. Finally at around 9.30 UTC contact was lost as the balloon headed for the Algerian border in a south easterly direction. Its not known if the Balloon and its payload came down near to it last reported position or continued out of range of receiving stations. APRS unfortunately isn’t used in North Africa.

The project team are hoping to enlist the support of Moroccan radio amateurs in finding the downed balloon.

Intermediate Licence

So last weekend I was up early on both days to be at the Army Cadet Centre in Letchworth where Stevenage & District Amateur Radio Society were holding the final two days training and exam for the Intermediate Licence.

I had already done the first day back on a Saturday in October, the weeks in between had been spent sourcing and making a radio related kit, then spending a good few hours preparing for the exam, either by reading the Intermediate course manual or practising on the Ham Tests website.

Happy to say that everyone who attended passed. I would urged anyone who has a Foundation Licence to up grade. The increased privileges include increase of power to 50w (on most bands) and use of Microwave bands such as 23cm. My next step will be preparing for the Advanced Licence. This will need a slightly different approach as it a major step up on what has been learned already.

HF isn’t the only fruit – Life above 30Mhz

On Thursday evening I went along to Shefford & District Amateur Radio Society where Tim Kirby G4VXE was giving a talk on My World of VHF. Tim writes the regular World of VHF page in the ever popular Practical Wireless magazine.

To be honest he was preaching to the converted with me although I’m not sure I should be surprised when he asked the audience how many used only HF, the majority put their hands up. From some of the conversations I had with other attendees before and after, many viewed operation on 2m repeaters as nothing more than glorified CB radio (in fact they seemed to view VHF as that in general).

I could see attitudes were going to be hard to change. Tim started with the 6m (50Mhz) allocation and went through its peculiarities, including the effects of meteor scatter on these frequencies. Most amateurs these days have access to “Six”  as it is often included with newer HF rigs (If they have a HF rig that is!)

Six has always held a fascination for me and its a band that I have yet to operate on.  Tim then moved onto the 4m (70Mhz) allocation and gave a good representation of how the band performs and the equipment used. 4m suffers from a lack of commercially made equipment with most being limited to Chinese hand-held radios with inefficient antennas or multi mode transverters (more on the latter later!). 4m despite being a small band is gaining in popularity and is slowly spreading around the globe. Tim explained that one station in the United States has obtained a licence to operate a beacon on the band.

It then came to 2 metres, probably one of the most diverse VHF bands for operating modes and interests. 2m is a primary allocation in Amateur radio so the band should be core to operating on Amateur Radio. Tim covered everything from operating on SSB to FM, through EME (Earth-Moon-Earth) and how that had now progressed to using digi modes. Following how meteor scatter affects the band it was then the turn of satellite operation (something that I’m really interested in).

At this point Tim used a photo of Peter Goodhall 2E0SQL using a dual band hand held (2/70) and a hand held crossed element beam whilst accessing satellites (birds as they are known in the States!). This is the great thing about Amateur Radio, with a little thought you do not have to spend a lot of money nor use a lot of operating power to get great results.

As well as satellites there is the International Space Station (ISS) which has Amateur Radio equipment fitted, you can send packet data via the digi repeater on the ISS as it passes overhead. Less often when a suitably qualified Astronaut/Cosmonaut is aboard two way phone contact on FM is possible, although when this occurs it does tend to get rather busy..

Tim then went onto the use of Echolink (analogue) and D-Star (Digital), a lot of people will dismiss these as “not being real amateur radio” the idea that both use the internet (VOIP – Voice Over Internet Protocol) is somehow abhorrent to those who maybe spend their time on HF only but this misses the point. I can be mobile or using a hand held radio and talk through a repeater and make contact with my brother using his hand held in Adelaide in Australia whilst he walks his dogs. Also with APRS you can now link your radio via the internet to show location via GPS and or take part in the CWOPS weather station programme. Your can see APRS activity including D-Star (those who have a GPS capability) on http://aprs.fi/

In the United States most D-Star repeaters are linked by a microwave link in case the internet fails during a major emergency. During the recent Tropical Storm that hit hit most of the east coast the MARS network was in operation on Amateur Radio but in particular on D-Star.

Digital isn’t about buying an expensive radio off the shelf, in fact some repeater keepers are now building back up systems based on old PMR radios, how long is it before someone does the same and home brews a D-star transceiver? Its not as difficult as it may seem.

Finally Tim covered the 70cm band, depending where you may live in the UK, 70 is either hardly used or has very vibrant use. . But the band has the same following on everything I have mentioned with 2 meters.

Did the talk change attitudes? I’m not sure because some views are pretty entrenched, at end of the day Amateur Radio is what you make of it. The spectrum to use is wide so go out and explore.
Thanks for Tim for the talk and Ken Amos G4YRF (chairman of S&DARS) for making me welcome at the club.

The club website can be found at www.sadars.co.uk