Added a second System Fusion radio to the shack

I picked up a new (to me) Yaesu FT2D handheld radio to the collection so that I could, in theory, do C4FM without hopping in the truck where my FTM-400DX lives. Unfortunately I'm a bit too far out to hit the radio club's Fusion repeater and haven't figured out how to do so via hotspot (I have a borrowed MMDVM hotspot that I'm playing with).

The FT2D is a nice sturdy radio with a touchscreen. My only gripe with it is that it doesn't include an option, when in memory mode, to show the name of the memory bank rather than the frequency. This is a feature that my dirt cheap Baofeng handhelds have and that my not dirt cheap but still inexpensive TYT DMR handheld has. The FT2D is a fairly expensive piece of kit, so to not have that feature is annoying. Other than that it really is a nice radio -- good sound quality, reasonably easy interface, and Fusion capability.

73, Marc NZ9A

Added a DMR radio to the shack

This week I picked up the TYT MD-UV380 DMR HT to my slowly growing radio collection. There's a learning curve related to DMR and I have just started climbing that curve. This post is to push out a little nugget I learned about hardware issues with programming this radio. I nearly sent the thing back after less than 12 hours because I could not get TYT's CPS software to read from or write to the radio. Instead it would crash whenever I would try. I tried connecting via USB hub and directly into the USB port on my Surface Laptop with no success. I rebooted the PC with no success. The only reference to the issue I found on the web hinted that there was a driver issue on Windows 10. I was about to give up, send the radio back, and purchase a different brand when I decided to try on a different PC, one that had both USB 2 and USB 3. Installed the software on the other PC, plugged into a USB 2 port and viola! So, if you go with this radio you'll need to have a PC with a USB 2 port. Hopefully the company will eventually fix this issue, but who knows?

On to learning about DMR!

73, Marc NZ9A

Ham radio anyone?

Last October I got my amateur radio license, passing the Technician and General class tests. In December, I tested for the highest level of license, the Amateur Extra, passing that exam as well. Since starting down this road I've had a lot of fun, talked with some cool folks and learned quite a bit.

I enjoy picking up the microphone and looking for someone to talk to, whether here in Illinois, somewhere else in the US, or even overseas; however, lately I've been spending most of my time chasing contacts via FT8, a rapid-fire digital communications mode.

That's it for now, just a quick note to start the conversation. I hope to write more in the future about this as well as other stuff.

73, Marc NZ9A