VA3QV's Weblog

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A new (to me )item in the shack

Posted: 27 Oct 2016 07:21 AM PDT
https://va3qv.wordpress.com/2016/10/...-in-the-shack/


I did a bit of horse trading the other night Â*

Unit on the left is the same style as mine but the one I traded away was
white

My old Netbook (still running windows XP) that was sitting in a box in the
basement. Â*(I had spent more time looking for it in the last week than I
had used it in the last year)Â*

Is now no longer in my portable kit ( it had been replaced by the Samsung
Tablet years before) and in its place is aÂ*lightly used .


BAOFENG GT-3TP Dual band (2m/70cm ) Hand heldÂ*

The new arrival came with the standard desktop charger, box and
manual. Â*Nothing outrageous but it seems to work fine. Â*
It has a 8w output and seeing that I could contact a few more repeaters
than usual from my basement I would think that that statement would be
correct. Â*As it came pre programmed with all the local repeaters ( and some
scanner freqs) its fairly easy to navigate around with. Â*
I have been told that these units areÂ*popular with the ARES/EMCOMM groups
as they have a little more oomph in the output and the cost is low enough
should you damage it the financial hit is fairly low
Â*I agree with the oomph ideabut I dont want to lose a bit of kit no matter
how cheap it is

After taking a quick look at the book of words I am really glad that I only
have to delete the scanner memories and not reprogram the unit.
Back in the day I used to monitor the public service freqs Â*but as the
years go by I got out of that side of the communications hobby

As I really dont do that much VHF/UHF FM work having the added bonus of an
extra 3w of output power will most likely come in handy as I still have not
put my dual band VHF/UHF antenna back on a masting (really should get
around to that) and the radio that goes with the antenna is still waiting
for a power supply (that has enough amps) to arrive. Â*
The last one was lost in the Camper fire and I never got around to
replacing it yet Â*
One of these days Ill get around to it
After a bit of rambling what I mean is that if I had to access a repeater I
would have the booming 8w and the rubber duckie to work with and nothing
else at this time

But the 8w of the handie would be better than the 5w of the FT 817 (which
does cover 2m, 70cm and 6m) in addition to the HF bands
Thats it for now
Lets hope the bands improve in time for the CQ WW SSB Contest this weekend
73bob