October 11, 2025 • 20 mins
Explore the Radtel RT-880 Multiband Ham Radio in our latest YouTube video! This powerful 10W transceiver features NOAA Weather channels, APRS with GPS, Airband receive, and HF reception, covering FM, SW, MW, LW, and SSB. With 1024 channels, cross-band repeater, and a 2.4-inch color display, it’s ideal for emergency communication, outdoor adventures, and ham radio enthusiasts. Watch our detailed review and demo! #HamRadio #RadtelRT880 #APRS #noaaweatherradio
Today's video is sponsored by M&P Coax - save 10% off of all coax products with code HR2CABLES at this link - https://hr2.li/cables
In this video:
Radtel RT-990G Radio - https://amzn.to/3UJahT0
TinySA - https://amzn.to/3J1GVwH
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/ham-radio-2-0--2042782/support.
Today's video is sponsored by M&P Coax - save 10% off of all coax products with code HR2CABLES at this link - https://hr2.li/cables
In this video:
Radtel RT-990G Radio - https://amzn.to/3UJahT0
TinySA - https://amzn.to/3J1GVwH
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/ham-radio-2-0--2042782/support.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Radtel RT eight eighty. This is a dual band. Its
advertised as a dual band. This is actually a triband radio.
I just keyed up on two two three five hundred.
It is working. It has full HF receive and it
actually transmits on HF two. I transmitted on CB channels.
Just now, let's take a look at this. I picked
(00:24):
this up off of Amazon shortly after I did my
Top seven. I think it was ht's for twenty twenty
five hunder one hundred and fifty dollars. I did that
video a couple of months ago, well, maybe month and
a half ago, something like that. At the time of
this recording, I was traveling a lot for the month
of July and twenty twenty five. This video is being
recorded in August of twenty twenty five, and a lot
(00:45):
of you had commented on several models of Radtel radios
that I should have, that you think I should have
included on that video. Now, let me give a brief
reason as to why I didn't. I have reviewed two
or three, maybe four. I've never you this model. So
we're gonna see what this is gonna do today. We're
gonna put this on the Power meter. We're gonna put
it on the tiny ESA and we're gonna see what
(01:07):
kind of signal it has cleaner otherwise, and we're gonna
see what kind of power it outputs. It advertises to
be a ten watt radio. It advertises itself as dual band,
but I can transmit on two, two, three dot five,
so we're gonna test that as well. The rattail radios
I have reviewed up until today have always been dirty
as far as RFI signal goes, and I don't really
want to put a dirty RFI signaled radio on a
(01:28):
best of list. Now, does that mean you shouldn't buy
it and shouldn't use it? You know what? That's up
to you. I'm not gonna tell you what to do. Okay,
if you want it, if you really like these ratail radios,
then go ahead and buy one. They do work. I've
used mine around the house. I've used it to talk
on the local repeater or this other model that I've
got laying over here somewhere. I've used it several times.
It's fine, but it's dirty. So that's why it's not
(01:50):
on the best of list. But several people had mentioned
this model, the eight RT eight eight zero. And even
though this is advertised as a dual band radio, well
in some places actually advertised as multi band. Now multiband
could mean the fact that it's got the third it
does it is try display like you're seeing right here
on the screen. If we go down here, have that
(02:11):
little arrow on the left there, that's the band that's selected.
And if I key up right there, I'm keying up
on twenty seven oh three five, which is somewhere is
like channel three I think something like that somewhere inside
of the CB radio band now that is on FM.
But the radio will do AM and sideban and other
things as well. So it's advertised as a ten watt
handheld radio on the VHF and uh F bands. Have
(02:33):
no idea what kind of power output it might be doing.
On HF, it's supposed to. It receives FM broadcast band.
It receives short wave from two to thirty megahertz, medium
wave from five twenty to seventeen to ten killer hurts,
and long wave from one fifty three to two seventy
nine kill hurts. So if I was to go here
and go okay, so that's we're in channel mode right now.
(02:56):
Via foam mode right there, okay, zero okay, if you
go as vfo mode and go to zero zero zero
five seven zero, it doesn't like that. So not really
sure how you get down there into the really low stuff.
It probably says the manual, we might take a look
at that tournament. It claims it'll transmit from eighteen to
thirty two megahertz, and of course, uh all throughout the
(03:19):
two meter band which is one thirty six to one
seventy four, and the seventy centimeter and GMRS bands which
is four hundred two five twenty. Now I've got this,
let's just go ahead. And so that's a GMRIS frequency
right there, four six two seven two five okay, So
it is transmitting on four six two dot seven twenty five. Okay.
I actually keyed this radio up and it froze my
(03:41):
overhead camera. So that is not a good sign. Again,
We're gonna do some We're gonna do some testing on
this thing and see how it works. So it'll transmit
on two two three. Let's see if this freezes my
camera again as well, two two three dot five hundred
case five HWB testing. No, No, it seems okay there,
all right, So on four six two. Let's try it again.
(04:03):
I'm just curious. I don't want to freeze my camera,
but here we go four six two seven five WRFK
three to eleven. Might have been a coincidence. We'll see.
We're gonna put this on the tiny SA and c
SO full up and transmit GMRS frequencies. It's got three
VFO channels, as you can clearly see on the display
here twenty four hundred million ampower battery. This is a
two point four inch color screen with triple band monitoring.
(04:26):
Again includes a dual band antenna. This intenna is just
dual band here, but it's compatible with triband flex atenda.
The RhD seven to seven to one S is the
one that they recommend, the radtail version, which is a
trib antenna that'll cover two twenty. So I've got other
couple of the tryband intendas that I like. I like
the Nagoya seven to seven to one tryband although it's
very tall. This radio supports AM upper sideband, lower sideband CW.
(04:50):
It'll receive CW CB frequencies, long wave, medium wave, and
short wave of course single sideband reception. It has GPS
positioning in the rtaight eighty g variant. I'm not sure
what that means. Standalone distance measurement GPS coordinate sharing between
two of these units, so you can share your location
with this unit if your friend has one of these
(05:10):
as well. It has a user to find startup, logo,
prompt messages, and channel names, one key frequency measurement. It
has VOX. It has frequency and spectrum scanning. It has
NOAH weather channels, includes eleven pre program no weather channels. Okay,
good deal. It is USBC chargeable, which you can see
right here. It's how you charge the radio and if
you want to program it with CHIRP. I don't think
(05:32):
this is compatible with chirp yet, but it should be soon.
It always takes chirp a few weeks a couple months
to add a new radio to their inventory of supported
radios after a new radio comes out, so just be
aware of that. That's not a radio thing, that's a
CHIRP thing. They can't support everything. It is a free,
open source project, so it takes them some time to
do stuff. Okay. The audio quality delivers a clear and
(05:54):
crisp audio. We're gonna test that. And the range is
depend dependable performance. It's across variance distances, but again that's
very subject to whatever is between you and the station
next to you. I get that question a lot, how
far will this go? How far will it go? Well,
technically you can talk to the ISS and satellites with it. However,
high up in the sky, the ISS is all right.
(06:17):
I googled it. I googled it because I had to.
I had to google it. The International Space Station orbits
the Earth at an average altitude of approximately two hundred
and fifty miles or four hundred kilometers. This altitude can
vary slightly, ranging from a minimum around two hundred and
thirty miles to a maximum of two hundred and ninety
miles according to this Reddit thread. So there you go. So,
(06:38):
technically speaking, you can talk from one of these handhelds
to the ISS, or to a satellite in space with
a yaggy directional antenna and on five or ten watts.
But the difference is there's nothing in between you and
the ISS when you're doing that. So when you're talking
about when you're standing on Earth and the station, the
other station you're talking to, your friend or colleague or
something is also standing on Earth and you've got tree,
(07:00):
these buildings, elevations, hills, all kinds of stuff, vehicles in
between you and the other station. It greatly affects the
range that these radios will talk, all right. So if
we go through some of the menus here, This is
the menu basic settings in the menu right there, key settings,
key to fine analog settings, channel settings, zone, FM, radio
(07:23):
time management. The heck is that APO? Okay? Time out, timers,
aw timers okay, good. That's the back button right there.
Extended optional GPRS and APRS. This will do APRS. So
it claims APRS on off, currently off right now, station
mode fixed and GPS. Oh okay, so you can you
(07:45):
can set the GPS, or you can set the APRS
to beacon from a specific location. If you don't want
to becon your actual GPS cordace, you can set it
to GPS. If you're out on the road or whatnot.
You can say, hey, tell everybody where I am, or
you can hide your location and put a fixed number
on that right there. Good, okay, beacon set up call
(08:05):
sign SSID. Okay, I think I might Maybe I'll do
another video about APRS. APRS receive Channel Channel A, channel
B channel C, so you can set Channel C to
be on one forty four, three ninety all the time
and just have it on APRS and still have a
full dual band radio. That's cool. Dual band receive radio. Okay,
TX data upload RX data upload, beacon pop pop up
(08:30):
so you can tell it to when you get a beacon,
you can tell it to pop up something on the screen,
or you can turn that off. Okay, this might be
a I might do a second video about this radio
about APRS, because you're starting to see more and more
of these Chinese radios with actual APRS capabilities. I remember
when the first one came out to any Tone eight
seven eight UV two, the UV two had APRS. It
(08:53):
was either transmit or receive only. I don't remember which one.
I want to say it was receive only. And then
the UV two plus, which is their latest and greatest model,
well it's their top of the line model. They have
one that's later in that, the D one six's eight.
That was one of the first radios to ever come
out of trying to to do full open capability transmit
receive messaging with APRS. And we've seen a lot of
(09:15):
different Chinese radios that have done that since then, so
different stuff on that extended options, basic settings, Okay, and
we're back to the top there. So there you go.
That's the menu. You can set this right here is
the Yeah, sixty four to five hundred and twenty megahurts
right there. That's I guess that's where you set like,
I'm not sure what that is. You know, this look
(09:35):
like an FM radio FM broadcast radio meter right there,
but it says sixty four to five hundred and twenty Oh,
it says sixty four to five hundred twenty six hundred
and twenty hertz. No, it doesn't. It says mega hurts. Gosh,
I think you put my glasses on. Sixty four to
six hundred and twenty megahurts right there. So that might be
where your FM radio goes, although it doesn't go up
(09:55):
that high. Maybe it does in other countries. But it
does transmit on two twenty. It does transmit on gmrs
KC five HWB testing on a new radio. That's a
local that's the that's the that's the Uless repeater four
forty two dot nine hundred. When I'm at home and
driving around town and Frank's at home driving around town.
We're often talking to one another on that repeater. There's
(10:17):
two or three other guys to get on there with us,
and so I've I've had that question before. Hey, what
repeater do you monitor? Four four to two dot nine
hundred with the CTCSS tone of one ten dot nine.
That's my most commonly used repeater while I'm at home.
So let's put it on the meter first. I'm gonna
put it on the meter first. We're gonna test the
output power on two meters two twenty four to forty
(10:38):
and gmrs. Then we're gonna go from there. While we're
testing this, we're gonna be using Mezzi and Plony coacs.
Mezzi and Ploonycoaks as the sponsor of today's video. You
can save a ten percent discount on all of their
products with the coupon code of HR two cables at
the link I will leave in the description below, which
is the gigabarts website. There's a full page of Messi
and plonikoaks and other tools and products and connectors. And
(11:00):
just remember you can save ten percent with the code
of HR two cables. Thank you Messi and plenty for
supporting this channel. Okay, this is advertised as a ten
watt radio. I've got all three of the simplex calling
frequencies for two meters on the bottom, four forty in
the middle, and two twenty on the top. Let's see
if I can get that thing to focus or not.
There we go. There's a screen of the radio once
(11:20):
again again two twenty two two three dot five hundred
on top four four two dot nine. Oh that's not
the okay, I need to change that. So that's that's
the repeater I was just talking on. We're gonna put
that on four four six dot zero. That's one of
the simplex calling frequencies for four forty and then of
course one forty six dot five to two at the bottom.
So we're gonna start out on two meters and again
this little indicator right here, this arrow, that's what tells
(11:43):
you which band you're on. So we're down here and
we're gonna click on the PTT. We're getting six point
eight watts out of that band right there. Case five
HDWB testing I did connect to my dummy load. We're
not actually transmitting right now, not into an antenna anyway.
So now we're gonna switch over to the top band.
(12:04):
Which is two two three top five hundred. Okay, I'm
getting no reading at all. When keyed up on two
two three top five hundred, it clearly shows the two
two three dot five hundred in orange right there, and
I am not getting any reading at all on the meter.
I can switch to four to forty six, which is
the middle band right there. We're getting six watts out
of that as well, okay, and then we can go
(12:27):
back to two meters one forty six five to two
almost seven watts out of that. So it tells me
it's transmitting on two two three when I key that up,
but there's no power coming out at all, and I'm
I'm connected to a dummy load which is good from
like fifty to five hundred megahertz, and this meter is
good from fifty to five hundred megahertz. We've got it
(12:48):
switched over to the VHF UHF side right there. This
is my intelletron meter from Gigaparts. Yeah. No, five hundred
and twenty five megahurts is how high it goes. So
we're good there, but it does not show to be
act It acts like it's transmitting, but it's not showing
any power output at all. So there we go, and
we're on high power. The H. There's an H that
(13:11):
you might or might not be able to see on
the right hand side of the screen. It's in green.
Right there. There's an H right here, H there, and
H there. So that's high power on all three bands.
We're getting six and a half to seven watts per
band on a on a radio that's advertised as ten watts,
and we're not getting any output at all on the
two to twenty band. Well, that was disappointing. It's disappointing
(13:34):
that we're not actually getting output on the two twenty two,
two three, five hundred band even though the radio tells
this is transmitting and it is advertised as a triband well,
it's advertised as a multi band radio. This will tell
this is my tiny essay. I got this from RNL Electronics,
and this will absolutely tell me if it's transmitting on
two twenty. So we're gonna do a purity test on
(13:57):
at least on two meters in forty so one two there.
So we're gonna go to measure over here and then
we're gonna go to harmonic and I'm gonna set one
four six stop five to two mega hurts. We're gonna
set it again. For some reason, it requires that mega hurts. Okay, okay,
guess what That is exactly what you want to see.
(14:21):
That is exactly what you want to see. You see
how there's a harmonic right here, one forty six stop
five megahurts and there's no other line vertical lines across
the screen here. That Okay, that's exactly what you want
to see. That is very clean. That is much cleaner
than I expected this rattail radio to be, because I
have tested other radtail radios in the past that were
not cleaned at all. Okay, so good, I'm happy with that.
(14:45):
That's really good. Usually when I've tested other radios in
the past, the four forty band is usually kind of
somewhat a little clean, and the two meter band just
splatters everywhere. So we're gonna see if this one differs
it all. We're gonna We're gonna test. I'm gonna test.
I'm gonna go ahead and test two twenty because nothing
at all will show up on that screen if the
radio is not actually transmitting on two twenty, that screen
(15:06):
won't respond at all. And then I'm gonna test four
four six dot zero, which is the seventy centimeter Ham
radio calling frequency. And I'm gonna test four to six
to two dot something for gmrs. So let's let's check
this out some more a little bit, all right. So
next I'm gonna test two two three dot five. Okay,
so we're gonna go back over here, go back to frequency. No, no,
(15:27):
I'm sorry, go to measure harmonic two two three dot
five and two two three dot five again. And I
didn't show this fart in the camera last time, but
we went to level and we set external e x
T gain to minus forty times one. This is the
(15:47):
instructions I got from the smoking ape when I had
him on the channel that time to teach us all
about the tiny essay. That was a really good video.
I'll link it around here somewhere. So now we're on
two two three dot five and we're gonna key up. Okay,
it's transmitting. It's dirty the negative forty line anything any
The first line should be over negative forty. This is
the negative forty line right about here on the screen.
(16:10):
The first line should be able over negative forty because
that's the frequency that was supposed to be transmitting on
anything over that is harmonics that are out of whack.
Second harmonic right here, which is at four forty six
dot nine according to this chart here is it about
negative twenty. It is transmitting on to twenty. But it's
very low power. It's very low power, so it's it's
(16:31):
like coming in it like I don't know this. This
is not a power meter, but generally speaking, it'll come
in at like ten or twenty dB over over zero.
This is the zero line right here, and that line,
that first line is right underneath the zero, and you
can see it's got a second, a third harmonic creeping
up right there as well. So very low power output,
not enough to read from the intelletron meter over there,
(16:53):
and kind of dirty because it's it's actually transmitting on
three frequency three frequencies at the same time. Let's go
back here, let's go to frequency I know, let's go
to measure harmonic and we're gonna go to four forty
six dot zero, and then we'll go back here and
go to level ext gain minus forty times one and
(17:15):
now we're on the full forty band right there, all
right there, it goes see that one right there, Okay,
So at four forty six dot zero, it's up to
the this is the zero line right here on the meter,
so it's up to about plus twenty on the line.
So that's a good power output. That Again, it's not
a measure of wattage over here, but it is a
measure of signal. And then you had a little one
(17:36):
pop up there that kind of disappeared now, and you
had one that popped up way over here around the
two point nine gig hurtz range way the heck up there.
But overall, I'd say that's a fairly clean signal for
a lesser expensive Chinese radio, especially Radtel, which, like I've said,
I've had issues with in the past. Okay, So now
we're gonna go and I'm gonna say four six two,
(17:57):
and let's just say five to five zero four six
two five five zero, and we're gonna go back frequency. No,
not frequency, I keep wanting to click on frequency, but
it's measure measure harmonic four six two dot five five
megahertz four six two dot five five megahertz. Okay, And
then we're gonna go to level right there ext gain
(18:22):
minus forty times one. We're gonna keep up there. I
expect we'll get probably about the same thing, because if
it's clean on four forty, it should be clean around
four sixty two usually not always, not always. If it's
if it's got proper ham radio filtering in it, then
it would be blocking for sixty two. But this one's
a full up and transmit radio. Whether it should be
(18:45):
or shouldn't be, I'm not saying, I'm just saying it is. Okay,
So you've got, yeah, you got single harmonic here, you
got a little fourth harmonic right there, this's poking its
head up around one point four gigahertz. Uh, it's down
at like negative twenty five, so it's not terrible. But
you've got one one harmonic right there that's up at
around plus twenty. So that's pretty good right there. And
(19:05):
you know, I've seen some radios that have second third,
four fifth harmonics just really really dirty and splattering all
over the band. But this one is not doing that.
This one is not doing that. It seems to be
working pretty much the way it should be. It's not
doing quite ten watts, okay, it's doing almost seven watts
on two meters on four to forty and on four
(19:28):
to sixty two. It's doing very very low power on
two twenty, so that's disappointing. If you want to try
band radio, don't get this one. Okay, that's disappointing that
it's got so much such low power on two twenty.
But it does full receive on HF sideband upper lower
sideband CW. Be able to listen to CW on it.
It has a menu system that looks like it does
full APRS. If you want to see me do an
(19:51):
APRS video about this radio, put a comment below let
me know what you think. I'll put a link to
the radio from Amazon, which is where I got it
in the description blow as well. Thanks for watching today, guys,
Radtel RT eight eighty. This is a dual band. Its
advertised as a dual band. This is actually a triband radio.
I just keyed up on two two three five hundred.
It is working. It has full HF receive and it
actually transmits on HF two. I transmitted on CB channels.
Just now, let's take a look at this. I picked
(00:24):
this up off of Amazon shortly after I did my
Top seven. I think it was ht's for twenty twenty
five hunder one hundred and fifty dollars. I did that
video a couple of months ago, well, maybe month and
a half ago, something like that. At the time of
this recording, I was traveling a lot for the month
of July and twenty twenty five. This video is being
recorded in August of twenty twenty five, and a lot
(00:45):
of you had commented on several models of Radtel radios
that I should have, that you think I should have
included on that video. Now, let me give a brief
reason as to why I didn't. I have reviewed two
or three, maybe four. I've never you this model. So
we're gonna see what this is gonna do today. We're
gonna put this on the Power meter. We're gonna put
it on the tiny ESA and we're gonna see what
(01:07):
kind of signal it has cleaner otherwise, and we're gonna
see what kind of power it outputs. It advertises to
be a ten watt radio. It advertises itself as dual band,
but I can transmit on two, two, three dot five,
so we're gonna test that as well. The rattail radios
I have reviewed up until today have always been dirty
as far as RFI signal goes, and I don't really
want to put a dirty RFI signaled radio on a
(01:28):
best of list. Now, does that mean you shouldn't buy
it and shouldn't use it? You know what? That's up
to you. I'm not gonna tell you what to do. Okay,
if you want it, if you really like these ratail radios,
then go ahead and buy one. They do work. I've
used mine around the house. I've used it to talk
on the local repeater or this other model that I've
got laying over here somewhere. I've used it several times.
It's fine, but it's dirty. So that's why it's not
(01:50):
on the best of list. But several people had mentioned
this model, the eight RT eight eight zero. And even
though this is advertised as a dual band radio, well
in some places actually advertised as multi band. Now multiband
could mean the fact that it's got the third it
does it is try display like you're seeing right here
on the screen. If we go down here, have that
(02:11):
little arrow on the left there, that's the band that's selected.
And if I key up right there, I'm keying up
on twenty seven oh three five, which is somewhere is
like channel three I think something like that somewhere inside
of the CB radio band now that is on FM.
But the radio will do AM and sideban and other
things as well. So it's advertised as a ten watt
handheld radio on the VHF and uh F bands. Have
(02:33):
no idea what kind of power output it might be doing.
On HF, it's supposed to. It receives FM broadcast band.
It receives short wave from two to thirty megahertz, medium
wave from five twenty to seventeen to ten killer hurts,
and long wave from one fifty three to two seventy
nine kill hurts. So if I was to go here
and go okay, so that's we're in channel mode right now.
(02:56):
Via foam mode right there, okay, zero okay, if you
go as vfo mode and go to zero zero zero
five seven zero, it doesn't like that. So not really
sure how you get down there into the really low stuff.
It probably says the manual, we might take a look
at that tournament. It claims it'll transmit from eighteen to
thirty two megahertz, and of course, uh all throughout the
(03:19):
two meter band which is one thirty six to one
seventy four, and the seventy centimeter and GMRS bands which
is four hundred two five twenty. Now I've got this,
let's just go ahead. And so that's a GMRIS frequency
right there, four six two seven two five okay, So
it is transmitting on four six two dot seven twenty five. Okay.
I actually keyed this radio up and it froze my
(03:41):
overhead camera. So that is not a good sign. Again,
We're gonna do some We're gonna do some testing on
this thing and see how it works. So it'll transmit
on two two three. Let's see if this freezes my
camera again as well, two two three dot five hundred
case five HWB testing. No, No, it seems okay there,
all right, So on four six two. Let's try it again.
(04:03):
I'm just curious. I don't want to freeze my camera,
but here we go four six two seven five WRFK
three to eleven. Might have been a coincidence. We'll see.
We're gonna put this on the tiny SA and c
SO full up and transmit GMRS frequencies. It's got three
VFO channels, as you can clearly see on the display
here twenty four hundred million ampower battery. This is a
two point four inch color screen with triple band monitoring.
(04:26):
Again includes a dual band antenna. This intenna is just
dual band here, but it's compatible with triband flex atenda.
The RhD seven to seven to one S is the
one that they recommend, the radtail version, which is a
trib antenna that'll cover two twenty. So I've got other
couple of the tryband intendas that I like. I like
the Nagoya seven to seven to one tryband although it's
very tall. This radio supports AM upper sideband, lower sideband CW.
(04:50):
It'll receive CW CB frequencies, long wave, medium wave, and
short wave of course single sideband reception. It has GPS
positioning in the rtaight eighty g variant. I'm not sure
what that means. Standalone distance measurement GPS coordinate sharing between
two of these units, so you can share your location
with this unit if your friend has one of these
(05:10):
as well. It has a user to find startup, logo,
prompt messages, and channel names, one key frequency measurement. It
has VOX. It has frequency and spectrum scanning. It has
NOAH weather channels, includes eleven pre program no weather channels. Okay,
good deal. It is USBC chargeable, which you can see
right here. It's how you charge the radio and if
you want to program it with CHIRP. I don't think
(05:32):
this is compatible with chirp yet, but it should be soon.
It always takes chirp a few weeks a couple months
to add a new radio to their inventory of supported
radios after a new radio comes out, so just be
aware of that. That's not a radio thing, that's a
CHIRP thing. They can't support everything. It is a free,
open source project, so it takes them some time to
do stuff. Okay. The audio quality delivers a clear and
(05:54):
crisp audio. We're gonna test that. And the range is
depend dependable performance. It's across variance distances, but again that's
very subject to whatever is between you and the station
next to you. I get that question a lot, how
far will this go? How far will it go? Well,
technically you can talk to the ISS and satellites with it. However,
high up in the sky, the ISS is all right.
(06:17):
I googled it. I googled it because I had to.
I had to google it. The International Space Station orbits
the Earth at an average altitude of approximately two hundred
and fifty miles or four hundred kilometers. This altitude can
vary slightly, ranging from a minimum around two hundred and
thirty miles to a maximum of two hundred and ninety
miles according to this Reddit thread. So there you go. So,
(06:38):
technically speaking, you can talk from one of these handhelds
to the ISS, or to a satellite in space with
a yaggy directional antenna and on five or ten watts.
But the difference is there's nothing in between you and
the ISS when you're doing that. So when you're talking
about when you're standing on Earth and the station, the
other station you're talking to, your friend or colleague or
something is also standing on Earth and you've got tree,
(07:00):
these buildings, elevations, hills, all kinds of stuff, vehicles in
between you and the other station. It greatly affects the
range that these radios will talk, all right. So if
we go through some of the menus here, This is
the menu basic settings in the menu right there, key settings,
key to fine analog settings, channel settings, zone, FM, radio
(07:23):
time management. The heck is that APO? Okay? Time out, timers,
aw timers okay, good. That's the back button right there.
Extended optional GPRS and APRS. This will do APRS. So
it claims APRS on off, currently off right now, station
mode fixed and GPS. Oh okay, so you can you
(07:45):
can set the GPS, or you can set the APRS
to beacon from a specific location. If you don't want
to becon your actual GPS cordace, you can set it
to GPS. If you're out on the road or whatnot.
You can say, hey, tell everybody where I am, or
you can hide your location and put a fixed number
on that right there. Good, okay, beacon set up call
(08:05):
sign SSID. Okay, I think I might Maybe I'll do
another video about APRS. APRS receive Channel Channel A, channel
B channel C, so you can set Channel C to
be on one forty four, three ninety all the time
and just have it on APRS and still have a
full dual band radio. That's cool. Dual band receive radio. Okay,
TX data upload RX data upload, beacon pop pop up
(08:30):
so you can tell it to when you get a beacon,
you can tell it to pop up something on the screen,
or you can turn that off. Okay, this might be
a I might do a second video about this radio
about APRS, because you're starting to see more and more
of these Chinese radios with actual APRS capabilities. I remember
when the first one came out to any Tone eight
seven eight UV two, the UV two had APRS. It
(08:53):
was either transmit or receive only. I don't remember which one.
I want to say it was receive only. And then
the UV two plus, which is their latest and greatest model,
well it's their top of the line model. They have
one that's later in that, the D one six's eight.
That was one of the first radios to ever come
out of trying to to do full open capability transmit
receive messaging with APRS. And we've seen a lot of
(09:15):
different Chinese radios that have done that since then, so
different stuff on that extended options, basic settings, Okay, and
we're back to the top there. So there you go.
That's the menu. You can set this right here is
the Yeah, sixty four to five hundred and twenty megahurts
right there. That's I guess that's where you set like,
I'm not sure what that is. You know, this look
(09:35):
like an FM radio FM broadcast radio meter right there,
but it says sixty four to five hundred and twenty Oh,
it says sixty four to five hundred twenty six hundred
and twenty hertz. No, it doesn't. It says mega hurts. Gosh,
I think you put my glasses on. Sixty four to
six hundred and twenty megahurts right there. So that might be
where your FM radio goes, although it doesn't go up
(09:55):
that high. Maybe it does in other countries. But it
does transmit on two twenty. It does transmit on gmrs
KC five HWB testing on a new radio. That's a
local that's the that's the that's the Uless repeater four
forty two dot nine hundred. When I'm at home and
driving around town and Frank's at home driving around town.
We're often talking to one another on that repeater. There's
(10:17):
two or three other guys to get on there with us,
and so I've I've had that question before. Hey, what
repeater do you monitor? Four four to two dot nine
hundred with the CTCSS tone of one ten dot nine.
That's my most commonly used repeater while I'm at home.
So let's put it on the meter first. I'm gonna
put it on the meter first. We're gonna test the
output power on two meters two twenty four to forty
(10:38):
and gmrs. Then we're gonna go from there. While we're
testing this, we're gonna be using Mezzi and Plony coacs.
Mezzi and Ploonycoaks as the sponsor of today's video. You
can save a ten percent discount on all of their
products with the coupon code of HR two cables at
the link I will leave in the description below, which
is the gigabarts website. There's a full page of Messi
and plonikoaks and other tools and products and connectors. And
(11:00):
just remember you can save ten percent with the code
of HR two cables. Thank you Messi and plenty for
supporting this channel. Okay, this is advertised as a ten
watt radio. I've got all three of the simplex calling
frequencies for two meters on the bottom, four forty in
the middle, and two twenty on the top. Let's see
if I can get that thing to focus or not.
There we go. There's a screen of the radio once
(11:20):
again again two twenty two two three dot five hundred
on top four four two dot nine. Oh that's not
the okay, I need to change that. So that's that's
the repeater I was just talking on. We're gonna put
that on four four six dot zero. That's one of
the simplex calling frequencies for four forty and then of
course one forty six dot five to two at the bottom.
So we're gonna start out on two meters and again
this little indicator right here, this arrow, that's what tells
(11:43):
you which band you're on. So we're down here and
we're gonna click on the PTT. We're getting six point
eight watts out of that band right there. Case five
HDWB testing I did connect to my dummy load. We're
not actually transmitting right now, not into an antenna anyway.
So now we're gonna switch over to the top band.
(12:04):
Which is two two three top five hundred. Okay, I'm
getting no reading at all. When keyed up on two
two three top five hundred, it clearly shows the two
two three dot five hundred in orange right there, and
I am not getting any reading at all on the meter.
I can switch to four to forty six, which is
the middle band right there. We're getting six watts out
of that as well, okay, and then we can go
(12:27):
back to two meters one forty six five to two
almost seven watts out of that. So it tells me
it's transmitting on two two three when I key that up,
but there's no power coming out at all, and I'm
I'm connected to a dummy load which is good from
like fifty to five hundred megahertz, and this meter is
good from fifty to five hundred megahertz. We've got it
(12:48):
switched over to the VHF UHF side right there. This
is my intelletron meter from Gigaparts. Yeah. No, five hundred
and twenty five megahurts is how high it goes. So
we're good there, but it does not show to be
act It acts like it's transmitting, but it's not showing
any power output at all. So there we go, and
we're on high power. The H. There's an H that
(13:11):
you might or might not be able to see on
the right hand side of the screen. It's in green.
Right there. There's an H right here, H there, and
H there. So that's high power on all three bands.
We're getting six and a half to seven watts per
band on a on a radio that's advertised as ten watts,
and we're not getting any output at all on the
two to twenty band. Well, that was disappointing. It's disappointing
(13:34):
that we're not actually getting output on the two twenty two,
two three, five hundred band even though the radio tells
this is transmitting and it is advertised as a triband well,
it's advertised as a multi band radio. This will tell
this is my tiny essay. I got this from RNL Electronics,
and this will absolutely tell me if it's transmitting on
two twenty. So we're gonna do a purity test on
(13:57):
at least on two meters in forty so one two there.
So we're gonna go to measure over here and then
we're gonna go to harmonic and I'm gonna set one
four six stop five to two mega hurts. We're gonna
set it again. For some reason, it requires that mega hurts. Okay, okay,
guess what That is exactly what you want to see.
(14:21):
That is exactly what you want to see. You see
how there's a harmonic right here, one forty six stop
five megahurts and there's no other line vertical lines across
the screen here. That Okay, that's exactly what you want
to see. That is very clean. That is much cleaner
than I expected this rattail radio to be, because I
have tested other radtail radios in the past that were
not cleaned at all. Okay, so good, I'm happy with that.
(14:45):
That's really good. Usually when I've tested other radios in
the past, the four forty band is usually kind of
somewhat a little clean, and the two meter band just
splatters everywhere. So we're gonna see if this one differs
it all. We're gonna We're gonna test. I'm gonna test.
I'm gonna go ahead and test two twenty because nothing
at all will show up on that screen if the
radio is not actually transmitting on two twenty, that screen
(15:06):
won't respond at all. And then I'm gonna test four
four six dot zero, which is the seventy centimeter Ham
radio calling frequency. And I'm gonna test four to six
to two dot something for gmrs. So let's let's check
this out some more a little bit, all right. So
next I'm gonna test two two three dot five. Okay,
so we're gonna go back over here, go back to frequency. No, no,
(15:27):
I'm sorry, go to measure harmonic two two three dot
five and two two three dot five again. And I
didn't show this fart in the camera last time, but
we went to level and we set external e x
T gain to minus forty times one. This is the
(15:47):
instructions I got from the smoking ape when I had
him on the channel that time to teach us all
about the tiny essay. That was a really good video.
I'll link it around here somewhere. So now we're on
two two three dot five and we're gonna key up. Okay,
it's transmitting. It's dirty the negative forty line anything any
The first line should be over negative forty. This is
the negative forty line right about here on the screen.
(16:10):
The first line should be able over negative forty because
that's the frequency that was supposed to be transmitting on
anything over that is harmonics that are out of whack.
Second harmonic right here, which is at four forty six
dot nine according to this chart here is it about
negative twenty. It is transmitting on to twenty. But it's
very low power. It's very low power, so it's it's
(16:31):
like coming in it like I don't know this. This
is not a power meter, but generally speaking, it'll come
in at like ten or twenty dB over over zero.
This is the zero line right here, and that line,
that first line is right underneath the zero, and you
can see it's got a second, a third harmonic creeping
up right there as well. So very low power output,
not enough to read from the intelletron meter over there,
(16:53):
and kind of dirty because it's it's actually transmitting on
three frequency three frequencies at the same time. Let's go
back here, let's go to frequency I know, let's go
to measure harmonic and we're gonna go to four forty
six dot zero, and then we'll go back here and
go to level ext gain minus forty times one and
(17:15):
now we're on the full forty band right there, all
right there, it goes see that one right there, Okay,
So at four forty six dot zero, it's up to
the this is the zero line right here on the meter,
so it's up to about plus twenty on the line.
So that's a good power output. That Again, it's not
a measure of wattage over here, but it is a
measure of signal. And then you had a little one
(17:36):
pop up there that kind of disappeared now, and you
had one that popped up way over here around the
two point nine gig hurtz range way the heck up there.
But overall, I'd say that's a fairly clean signal for
a lesser expensive Chinese radio, especially Radtel, which, like I've said,
I've had issues with in the past. Okay, So now
we're gonna go and I'm gonna say four six two,
(17:57):
and let's just say five to five zero four six
two five five zero, and we're gonna go back frequency. No,
not frequency, I keep wanting to click on frequency, but
it's measure measure harmonic four six two dot five five
megahertz four six two dot five five megahertz. Okay, And
then we're gonna go to level right there ext gain
(18:22):
minus forty times one. We're gonna keep up there. I
expect we'll get probably about the same thing, because if
it's clean on four forty, it should be clean around
four sixty two usually not always, not always. If it's
if it's got proper ham radio filtering in it, then
it would be blocking for sixty two. But this one's
a full up and transmit radio. Whether it should be
(18:45):
or shouldn't be, I'm not saying, I'm just saying it is. Okay,
So you've got, yeah, you got single harmonic here, you
got a little fourth harmonic right there, this's poking its
head up around one point four gigahertz. Uh, it's down
at like negative twenty five, so it's not terrible. But
you've got one one harmonic right there that's up at
around plus twenty. So that's pretty good right there. And
(19:05):
you know, I've seen some radios that have second third,
four fifth harmonics just really really dirty and splattering all
over the band. But this one is not doing that.
This one is not doing that. It seems to be
working pretty much the way it should be. It's not
doing quite ten watts, okay, it's doing almost seven watts
on two meters on four to forty and on four
(19:28):
to sixty two. It's doing very very low power on
two twenty, so that's disappointing. If you want to try
band radio, don't get this one. Okay, that's disappointing that
it's got so much such low power on two twenty.
But it does full receive on HF sideband upper lower
sideband CW. Be able to listen to CW on it.
It has a menu system that looks like it does
full APRS. If you want to see me do an
(19:51):
APRS video about this radio, put a comment below let
me know what you think. I'll put a link to
the radio from Amazon, which is where I got it
in the description blow as well. Thanks for watching today, guys,
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