hi -
A friend told me AES had these at the Orlando hamfest... $100
Wondering if anyone has tried one ?

Wouxun KG-UV3D
http://search.cartserver.com/search/...&go.y=13&go=GO

there is a 2m/440 and a 2m/220 version -

--
/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/
No Good Deed -
Goes Unpunished

"ps56k" wrote in message
...
hi -
A friend told me AES had these at the Orlando hamfest... $100
Wondering if anyone has tried one ?

Wouxun KG-UV3D
http://search.cartserver.com/search/...&go.y=13&go=GO

there is a 2m/440 and a 2m/220 version -

--

some random Google turned up this blog -
http://www.eham.net/reviews/detail/9380?page=2

"ps56k" wrote in message
...
hi -
A friend told me AES had these at the Orlando hamfest... $100
Wondering if anyone has tried one ?

Wouxun KG-UV3D
http://search.cartserver.com/search/...&go.y=13&go=GO

there is a 2m/440 and a 2m/220 version -


I have one and several others in the local club have them. They work very
well , especially for around $ 100 to $ 120.

You do need the programming cable with them. They can be programmed without
it, but it is so much easier to use the computer. If you get the cable,
make sure you push itf something like it is not communicating. If you do
, check the com port and make sure it is really pluged in all the way.

There is a free program from them that will program it, but a beter one for
free is called KG-UV Commander.

They are very popular, especially based on price. However, they
normally do NOT meet specs, though they are sold with the claim that
they do. Often the 2nd harmonic of 2 meters is 10 db or more above
spec. QST found this in a test of one of the many versions.

An organization I know was planning on having some custom units made
up. After several weeks of going back and forth with the manufacturer
and not being able to get a straight answer, they gave up. At least
one picture from their spectrum analyzer was clearly doctored.


--
Alan
WA4SCA

Alan WA4SCA wrote:
They are very popular, especially based on price. However, they
normally do NOT meet specs, though they are sold with the claim that
they do. Often the 2nd harmonic of 2 meters is 10 db or more above
spec. QST found this in a test of one of the many versions.

That wasn't the Woxoun, that was the Baofeng which is a very different
radio made by a very different company.

Even then it was taken out of context.

The Baofeng UV-3R is wide band radio (76-512 mHz) with firmware and
filtering to limit it to reception on the FM broadcast band and reception
and transmission from 136-174 and 400-470 mHz. You can stretch the bands
with software, but the results are not always worth it.

The original radio was shipped as a two band radio with VHF and UHF antennas.

Without an antenna there is a spur at 2x the 2m band, 300mHz. With a 2m
resonant antenna such as the one supplied with the radio or the UHF one,
there is no resonance at 300mHz, and the spur is suppressed.

The problem was noticable if you used a wide band antenna, such as a discone.

The later production units had additional filtering added to prevent this.
That model is no longer made having been replaced with the UV-3R Mark II
and the UV-3R+ (plus) both of which have the filtering.

In either case, buying a Woxoun or a Baofeng, you don't have to worry.

Geoff.

--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, N3OWJ/4X1GM
My high blood pressure medicine reduces my midichlorian count. :-(

Actually, you need to worry in both cases IF you want to be legal.
Your choice.


--
Alan
WA4SCA

"Alan WA4SCA" wrote in message
...
They are very popular, especially based on price. However, they
normally do NOT meet specs, though they are sold with the claim that
they do. Often the 2nd harmonic of 2 meters is 10 db or more above
spec. QST found this in a test of one of the many versions.

An organization I know was planning on having some custom units made
up. After several weeks of going back and forth with the manufacturer
and not being able to get a straight answer, they gave up. At least
one picture from their spectrum analyzer was clearly doctored.



the other freq issue that caught my eye was the PL tones -
since most repeaters around our urban area are all PL encoded,
the xmit tones have to be dead on - in both winter cold & summer hot
weather -

Wouxun KG-UV3D

Pronounced Woo Shun for those who cares.

My personal thoughts and opinions.
Almost one year ago, I was at a ham radio meeting, the reason why I know it was a year ago was because the meeting is held the 3rd Sunday of the month and the last meeting was yesterday.

A fellow ham came to the meeting with his new prize possession radio.
Basically it was about $125.00 at the time for the radio and another $60.00 more or less for the accessories - which he bought nearly all of them.

It had a radio, a microphone, a mobile charger, a wall charger, a antenna adapter, a second battery, a programming cable, the program to program it with your computer and a couple more options I can't remember. Maybe even two different rubber duckie antenna's. $185.00 out the door and shipped to his front door.

I was more interested in the box it came in.
Each and every cubic inch inside of the box was utilized.
Showed that these people were serious about making and selling radios.

A couple of months later, at the first Butler Hamfest, the people who called themselves hams - went in their own little groups and I went by myself.
Not what I would call a particularly friendly bunch - especially when we were all club members.
Anyways the one club member that is more involved then the rest in radio, actually works as a sub contractor for the state - bought one on a whim.
He figured that for $100.00 he couldn't go wrong.

So Steve bought it and took it home and started to play with it.
He put it on the service monitor and he got out the Part 97 / sub part 15 specifications for a hand held amateur radio and also the book which came with the radio and the specifications listed.

His radio, on the same service monitor he uses to test state owned equipment, meets or beats the published report and specifications, along with the specifications listed by the FCC for a device of this type.

As far as durability goes, you would need a second battery.
Battery life is determined by how much you use it.

The only thing I can say, and this is two fold is that the handheld is not going to replace a mobile or base station radio.
Anyone stupid enough to think that a hand held radio is all the radio they need to call themselves hams - is a idiot.
If you had to rely on this radio, as your only source of communications for Ecom - it isn't going to work.

There is a group of people out there right now who actually isn't very smart.
They think that because their cell phone works on much of the same principal and that it is all that they need to communicate that a walkie talkie works on the same principal and that they can save a whole lot of money - vs buying some type of base or mobile radio for several hundred dollars and buying 50 or more feet of good coax and some type of base station antenna and mobile antenna and a power supply and all the items needed to be what I would call a real ham.

Using Greensburg Kansas as a example, when the tornado wiped the town off the map - the cell phones didn't work and the amateur radio repeaters didn't work and there was no electricity and there was no gas station in town to get extra gasoline for their generators and when the batteries in the radios went dead - that was it.

Another example was hurricane Katrina.
When the flood waters wiped out everything, everything quit working.
If you have a 40 - 60 watt radio and some type of antenna and a automotive battery, you can pretty much transmit as long as the battery holds out. Even when the battery goes dead, you can always take a car battery out of a vehicle and replace it and charge it with the vehicle, and if the flooding is severe enough and there is abandoned vehicles - you will always have a supply of automotive batteries and the radio will talk relatively well for 1 - 50 miles depending on terrain.

Is this radio ok for public service events and communicating between hams at a hamfest - of course.
Is it a reliable source of communications for a ecom disaster - never.

As long as this radio is used in the way that it was designed to be used, it will work wonderful, as long as you use it and keep the batteries charged.
If the battery fails - you now have a $100 ornament or will be tied to a umbilical cord - power supply until you replace the battery's.

The bottom line is - there is only so many manufacturers out there that makes ham radio equipment.
Eveytime you buy one of these new radios, you take money out of the pockets of the other manufacturers.
This in turn causes the manufacturers to do one of two things.
Either they can sell their product for less money.
They can figure a way of making it cheaper.
Or they will stop putting money into research and development and eventually when they have to abandon the hand held market, the new kid on the block Wouxon - will raise their price to be as high as or higher then the price of the competitors radios - before the new kid on the block came along.

Each and every time this cycle repeats itself, one of two things is going to happen. Either the ham radio community will come to accept that this is the way it is going to be and just accept that if they want to buy a new radio, they are going to have to lower their standards and buy this piece of crap, or they will have to be willing to pony up more money to buy a Icom or a Kenwood or a Yaesu.

Here is a link for some pictures of Greensburg KS
http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&s...ult_group&sa=X

On 2-20-2012 20:54, Channel Jumper wrote:

Anyways the one club member that is more involved then the rest in
radio, actually works as a sub contractor for the state - bought one on
a whim.
He figured that for $100.00 he couldn't go wrong.

So Steve bought it and took it home and started to play with it.
He put it on the service monitor and he got out the Part 97 / sub part
15 specifications for a hand held amateur radio and also the book which
came with the radio and the specifications listed.

His radio, on the same service monitor he uses to test state owned
equipment, meets or beats the published report and specifications, along
with the specifications listed by the FCC for a device of this type.



Each and every time this cycle repeats itself, one of two things is
going to happen. Either the ham radio community will come to accept
that this is the way it is going to be and just accept that if they want
to buy a new radio, they are going to have to lower their standards and
buy this piece of crap, or they will have to be willing to pony up more
money to buy a Icom or a Kenwood or a Yaesu.



OK, I'm a bit confused. At the top, you say it meets or beats FCC
technical standards then and at the bottom, you say hams would be
lowering their standards buying this "piece of crap". So why is it
junk? Because it wears down a battery in use? So would a mobile or
base radio running on a car battery...

Scott wrote:

OK, I'm a bit confused. At the top, you say it meets or beats FCC
technical standards then and at the bottom, you say hams would be
lowering their standards buying this "piece of crap". So why is it
junk? Because it wears down a battery in use? So would a mobile or
base radio running on a car battery...

I think he was complaining because the early radios (before Part 90
certification) were not quite compliant on 2m in terms of spurious radiation.
In practice they were ok if you used a resonant antenna.

Once they were "cleaned up" for part 90 certification, they were fine.

This is pretty common with Chinese radios, the CW QRP rig sold by both MFJ
and Ten-Tec were the same way. The original radios sold from China as a
kit and later from Canada via eBay also lacked proper filtering.

The radios were three band, the Ten-Tec version is two band, the MFJ version
is single band. Both have improved filtering and are legal in the US.

Note that several of the Japanese companies are using factories in China,
so the difference between a name brand an unknown brand may be very little.

Bottom line, if you bought them from eBay vendors a year ago, you may have
problems, if you buy them today it should be ok.

Geoff.
--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, N3OWJ/4X1GM
My high blood pressure medicine reduces my midichlorian count. :-(