Just renewed my license for the first time. That means I've had it 10 years. Problems for me:
It's either really hard or really expensive to do basic stuff. Want to get on a repeater and chat? Great, a $20 baofeng radio can do it, but you have to get on the Internet to find the repeater frequency, offset, and tones, and then figure out how to program those into the radio. That either involves tedious button pushing on the radio, or getting a special cable, getting Chirp figured out and working with your laptop and radio and cable, and then figuring out the weird Chirp UI. You finally do all that, and then realize (as others have pointed out) that the conversations on the repeaters are lame.
And then the radio is portable, but you can't charge it with a USB cable like everything else, or put in regular AA batteries. You take it camping and it dies after a day.
Again, this is the most basic ham radio thing to do, lowest level of license required. It's not fun hacking, it's just annoying and discouraging.
The alternative radios to baofeng are literally 10 times the price or more, and it's not clear to me that they make any of that any easier. Gear for HF (longer range) is a hundred times the price or more. I haven't even wanted to go there.
Why isn't there a handheld radio that runs android and has a USB C data/charging port? Connecting to nearby repeaters based on GPS location could be automatic! You'd have all the young hams talking on the repeaters and things would start happening. That would be a radio that would actually be worth a license and a few hundred dollars
The USB-C charging is listed as 'for emergencies only'. I believe the battery is dual-cell and the USB-C port only charges one side which can damage the cell iirc.
It is a really fun, very cheap radio. Use egzumer's firmware and play around with it if you want. Just don't transmit out of the band it's spec'd for from factory. It will spray all over the place.
I just checked it out. It seems it only solves one of the problems I listed. You can charge it with USB-C (not program it or anything else, just charge it).
i think i have a UV-something, but in general quansheng are far superior to baofeng vis a vis reliability, clarity and volume, and durability. When i'm in a machine room working on a repeater i want to be able to hear the radio, even if it falls 16'. on the antenna.
THe only radio i own that's built more like a tank than my oldest quansheng is a motorola from the late 90s (VHF, NFM)
It's either really hard or really expensive to do basic stuff. Want to get on a repeater and chat? Great, a $20 baofeng radio can do it, but you have to get on the Internet to find the repeater frequency, offset, and tones, and then figure out how to program those into the radio. That either involves tedious button pushing on the radio, or getting a special cable, getting Chirp figured out and working with your laptop and radio and cable, and then figuring out the weird Chirp UI. You finally do all that, and then realize (as others have pointed out) that the conversations on the repeaters are lame.
And then the radio is portable, but you can't charge it with a USB cable like everything else, or put in regular AA batteries. You take it camping and it dies after a day.
Again, this is the most basic ham radio thing to do, lowest level of license required. It's not fun hacking, it's just annoying and discouraging.
The alternative radios to baofeng are literally 10 times the price or more, and it's not clear to me that they make any of that any easier. Gear for HF (longer range) is a hundred times the price or more. I haven't even wanted to go there.
Why isn't there a handheld radio that runs android and has a USB C data/charging port? Connecting to nearby repeaters based on GPS location could be automatic! You'd have all the young hams talking on the repeaters and things would start happening. That would be a radio that would actually be worth a license and a few hundred dollars