January 5, 2026 • 19 mins
Discover the Radtel RT-950 Pro, a powerful and versatile handheld radio perfect for ham radio enthusiasts, outdoor adventurers, and emergency communications! In this video, we dive deep into the RT-950’s key features, including its dual-band VHF/UHF capabilities, long-lasting battery, rugged design, and advanced programming options. Watch as we test its range, audio clarity, and ease of use in real-world scenarios. Whether you're a beginner or a seasoned radio operator, this review will help you decide if the RT-950 is right for you!
Today's video is sponsored by M&P Coax - save 10% off of all of their products with code HR2CABLES at this link - https://geni.us/hr2cables
Link to Radio - https://geni.us/kc4R
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 of their products with code HR2CABLES at this link - https://geni.us/hr2cables
Link to Radio - https://geni.us/kc4R
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):
Rad Tel RT nine fifty the RT nine to fifty
try band well actually multi band try display multi band radio.
A lot of people have asked me about this since
I did the video. But the Radtael eight eighty G
and the nine to twenty long story short, the eight
eighty G is good.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
That nine twenty is okay, but not as good.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
So I'm interested to see how this nine to fifty
stacks up against the other two models I've made videos
for so far, let's go. I've actually made videos for
a couple other I never released a video. I did
a Radtel model. I want to say it was like
an eight forty or eight hundred, so I don't know.
It's like a year, year and a half ago. And
(00:38):
it was so bad, it was so dirty, it was
so RFI dirty that I sent the video back to
Radtail and I'm like, I can't make a video about
this radio. I can't recommend it. It's terrible. Unless you
want me to make a video that says don't buy
this radio, I'm not making a video. Since then, pretty
much everything I've done for twenty twenty five has been
pretty good. I bought this radio on Amazon. I will
share a link to it in the description blow probably
(01:00):
can't hear it right now, but it's actually receiving APRS beacons. Okay,
I turn their APRS off, but it's still receiving the
APRS squad. So it's got a good but not great
APRS menu. It's try display. It does transmit on two twenty,
and it does receive HF shortwave, medium wave and whatnot.
So let's take a look at the screen real quick.
It's got these two look like PTT buttons here, and
(01:22):
if I keyed up on that right there, I transmit
KC five HTVV transmitting only forty four three nine HAA.
The side button right here is is it looks like
it's a bottom PTT right there, okay, but this one's
actually a PTT. Also, what's I'll show you in a second.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
So if I've got the top band selected right there,
but I key the middle PTT button, it'll key up
on four forty four dot one KC five HWB testing.
And then if I push this button right here on
the side, which does not look like a PTT, it
keys the bottom band two two three five hundred KC
five HWB testing. So it's got try PTTs along the side.
I assume these two and this this one right, here's
(01:57):
how you go into HF and shortwave. So i'll show
that in a second. These are probably programmable.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
I haven't tried to program This is just how it
came out of the box. And that's screen protectors. It's
not a screen protector. That's the overlay that comes on
the screen when you pull it out of the box.
There we go, all right, So tryban, try display, try
PTT buttons on the side there. It does have your
standard Kinwood K connector on the side over here, and
it is buttoned down by this. Looks like you can
(02:24):
flip it down, but you can't. This is a waterproof
rating IP sixty seven or sixty eight, whichever one it is,
and it is you have to take this screw out
to get to it. So this the top of the
radio here. This is of course your volume knob. This
is your channel selector knob. And it's the antenna obviously.
This is the antenna that came with it. It has
a SMA female connection on the antenna and an SMA
mail connection on the radio itself that back in. Yeah,
(02:48):
it's receiving APRS packets right now, but I don't have
APRS turned on. I'm want to show you that in
a second, belt clip goes on. The battery itself has
a USBC charging port on the back of the battery
right there.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
So you want to charge it that way as well.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
So pretty good size battery mini radios are these, It's
about the size is a little bit maybe a little
bit taller than the AD eighty G, so I don't
have my adadag here with me. In fact, I took
it to the hunting least because I'm gonna do some
more videos with it down there. But taller, large screen,
large display, and a good a good heavy feel to it.
So far impressed. Let's go through the APRS menu. I'm
gonna put it on the tiny SA and see what
(03:23):
it looks like, and then we're going to do a
power test with it. So if we go into this
is the menu, and the menu system's pretty good. We
got Fox zone VFO and channel CTCSS and DSS radio set,
APRS set. We're going to go that here in a second,
navigate it through this touchpad here and then user key,
Bluetooth signaling setting, reset and about and then it goes
(03:47):
back to so there's only six icons per menu, two
menus twelve icons, and then are multiple things inside of
each of those icons. We go into APRS set. Here
we can turn APRS off and on. I've got it
off right now, I'm gonna turn on here in a second.
I got GPS turned on. By default, it was off
and everything was set to metric like meters and kilometers
per hour. I went through and reset all those to
(04:07):
standard for a USA becon, set up call sign SSID,
choose path. This was off by default, So I've got
the path is wide one one wide two to one
right now. You can change that obviously user path. I
can do dig digital digital digital here. It's got some
digital settings in here that I don't quite understand. I
(04:27):
assume that's to use through a Brandmeister repeater, but I'm
morgested in using it over regular FM analog APRS as
it works. It's a digital signal, it's not an analog signal,
but it is going over analog FM mode. Okay, repeater
setting and there you can go to repeater setting routing.
You can tell it how to set for the digital
(04:49):
channel repeater. I don't know how that got changed. Now
it's on one forty four three eight. I probably bumped
a button. Okay, go back in here. It's not touchscreen,
so I can't do that. I keep trying to touch
screen it, but it doesn't work. Going here, So settings
in there for using through a Brandmester repeater which has
APRS enabled advanced. You can go in there and do
(05:11):
transmit delay APRS ringer, RX pop up. I've got that
turned on. We're going to see that in a minute.
I've got RX beacon clear so you can clear that
out tn C type. It does have a kiss T
and C and it does have Bluetooth, so I'm going
to probably try to use this with APRS droid in
another video. Put a comment blow if you'd like to
see that factory settings. We can reset the factory from there.
(05:33):
Go back one beacon type under advanced Beacon type is
manual or timing beacon as for for when it becons
my call sign over APRS. And then we're back to
the top. So we've got four six menus there in
the APRS menu. What I don't see, Okay, let me
go ahead and turn this on. I'm going to turn
(05:54):
that on, and we're on one forty four to three nine,
and I think that there's a I saw in here somewhere.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
It's not there.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
No, it's not there either. Okay, it's going to it's
going to transmit APRS on whatever the chosen frequency is.
I didn't see a place in the menu to tell
it to always transmit on a.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
B or C. I didn't see that. Okay.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
What I also don't see, and now APRS is quiet.
What I also don't see is a way too. Okay,
there it is right there, and then it pops up
N five jat dash nine. I've been hearing him this morning,
and then.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
It goes away.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
I don't see a way to go into the message
or the station list. There's not a way. Like on
your Yazu and your Kinwood radios. I can go in
there and I can say what stations have I heard
for the last I don't know, hour or day or
however long it is, and it gives me a list
of those stations. It also gives me a message list
that I can send and receive messages. I don't see
a message list, and I don't see a station list
(07:00):
like the station will pop up here on the screen
for two or three seconds then go away. But I
can't go back to it, or at least if I can,
I can't figure out a way to do it. And
if there is a way to do it, it's not
in this APRS set menu. There might be another menu
in here. I haven't dug real deep into all twelve
of these menus, but it should be. If you have
a message list or a station list, it should be
(07:21):
under the APRS menu, and it's not.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
It's not there.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
So there we go in five jat dash nine Again,
so APRS seems to work, but it seems quite limited
because you're missing a few key elements right there. There's
in eight HRV dash seven. Okay, so you're missing a
few key elements, a few key pieces that you need
to do full APRS capability, which of course is seeing
all the stations you've seen. Because if I see, oh,
(07:46):
I know that guy, but he's five or six down
on the list you want to message him, you should
be able to go into the station list, click on
which one you want a message, and hit message and go.
There doesn't seem to be a way to message with
this thing at all. And again, if it's got a
Bluetooth kiss t and C, which I have not tested yet.
We're not going to do that today. I want to
see how spectral clean and pure this thing is first, okay,
because traditionally, speaking with the exception of the eight to
(08:07):
eighty G, most of the rattails I've tested have been
kind of dirty. The nine to twenty was okay, but
the eight to eighty was better. So I'm going to
test this on the tiny essay and we're going to
put it on the power meter. We're going to see
what it's doing, and then you guys, once again, you guys,
let me know if you would like to see this
connected to my smartphone with APRS droid to do some
APRS Bluetooth T and C messaging. Because APRS droid is
(08:28):
full featured, you can do everything with it. So let's
put it on the tiny SA. Okay, We've got this
set up on the Tinyesa here and I've set it
to one five to two with an ext with a
level of minus forty dB. I'll show you how to
set that on the second one. This radio is advertised
as a tim watt radio, and I'm going to do
a power test on it here in a minute. But
I haven't done that yet. So we're going to do
all our tests today on medium power and go in
(08:50):
here and go to transmit power and go to middle
just like that, cook back, and we're going to up six.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Top five to two. Okay, Okay, so far, so good.
I like that. I like the heck out of that.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
That looks really good.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
Yeah, I do like that.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
Okay, no barbs in the right side over there at all?
Speaker 2 (09:19):
Excellent? Okay, good.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
Now let's go back in here and I'm gonna say
we're gonna go to measure harmonic and I'm gonna say
two two three dot five mega hurts, mega hurts, and
then I'm gonna go back into level and ext gain
and go to minus forty times one, and then I'm
(09:41):
going to go to the middle or no, I'm gonna
go to the bottom band here, because that's where two
two three five is. You could do it from any band,
but I'm gonna do it from here. I'm gonna change
my transmit power to middle. It's probably not a full
ten watts on two twenty, but we'll find that out
here in a minute. Okay, Now we're on two twenty
(10:02):
and I'm gonna say key that there, all right, it's
got a little barb as a second harmonic, which looks
like it's around for forty six. Maybe it's down at
like negative thirty though, it's way down there. So the
(10:23):
number one right there looks good. And then now it's
gone away. I've held it down long enough. It's gone away. Okay,
that's it. I would I would still call that a
clean signal. I would still call that a clean signal.
On the two two three dot five band two for three.
So far, so far, so good. I'm liking what I
see so far. Okay, And again we're on middle power
because because this is a ten wat etenuator here, and
(10:43):
I don't want it to do a little bit overpower.
And realistically, the two two three dot five band is
probably not a full ten wats anyway, Sadly, sadly, it's
probably not a full ten wats anyway. So we're gonna
go back in here and go to I've got this
set on full forty one. Let's just go there, Mega hurtz,
Mega hurtz. And then we're going to go to level
extea minus forty times one, and we're going to go
(11:07):
to the middle band and set it to midpower and
now we're going to transmit right there. All right, it's
(11:28):
taken in a minute to read anything. It's got an
eighth harmonic up there at like two point nine gigahertz,
but it's pretty low, about a minus thirty right now.
And then the single harmonic there on the left, number one,
and that is great.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
I like that. I like the heck out of that.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
So very good, clean looking radio from Radtel, maybe one
of the cleanest ones so far. I don't recall exactly
what the signal looked like on the ADADG. I do
remember it was clean. I don't remember if we tested
two twenty three or not.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
I don't know. I have to go back and watch
my own video.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
But that's a clean signal on three bands for transmitting
from this RT nine fifty g. Good deal so far,
excellent looking quality, a little bit lacking on the APRS menu,
that's okay. Now we're going to put it on the
power meter and see how close it gets to ten wants.
All right, Before we get started here, I want to
remind everybody that today's video is sponsored by Messi and
Plony Coacs Mezzi and Plonies. What I have all of
(12:16):
the radios in my shack wired with there's a small
jumper going from the radio to the meter, and then
on the back of the meter there's Mezzi and Plony
coming out that goes to a dummy load, and then
all of my HF radios in the shack are wired
with MMP coax. You can save a ten percent discount
on everything on their website with the coupon code of
HR two cables. Check out the link of the description
blow from gigaparts. Thank you Mezzimplony for supporting the channel.
(12:37):
So I went through and set all of this too
high back to high power, okay, and I'll go into
one of these and show you here and transmit power there,
and it's on high power. You can see at the
top right there, little out of focus on the radio,
but we're focused on the meter right now. So one
five to two is where we're starting today. That's the
(12:58):
one that's select it at the top. We're gonna hit
transmit and worrit about seven point five watts, about seven
and a half watts on the two meter calling frequency.
So we want to see how close to ten wats
we were getting. And it looks like it's it's not
quite there yet.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
Now I've switched to the middle band for forty one
dot zero. I'm gonna key up again five point eight watts. Okay,
that's pretty good right there. And then I'm gonna switch
to the bottom band two two three dot five O
five because I bumped it. There we go, two two
three dot five hundred. We're gonna key up the bottom
band right there. Bottom band is keyed. Oh wow, look
at that. It says it's transmitting with zero point zero
(13:38):
one watts. Let me make sure I've got the output
power set correctly. Transmit power is set to high right there. Okay,
and we're gonna transmit again two two three dot five hundred.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
Beare it's really not outputting anything at all?
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Okay, Let's switch the top band to two two three
doup five hundred just to check.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
Now I'm on two two three five hundred on the
top band. I'm gonna key up the top PTT button
right there now, same thing, okay, same thing all right.
So this is actually not a triband radio like I
was thinking it was. It's advertised as multiband because it
will receive multi bands on HF and shortwave. The eight
eighty G would transmit on two twenty nine, don't I
(14:20):
don't remember if I did a power test on that
one or not, but we used that one at Montasento
State Park in August of twenty twenty five. One guy
had one of those there and we used it to
transmit on two twenty to do some two twenty FM
simplex activations for.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
PODA, and we also used his radio, one of three
or four radios.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
I vaguely recall checking the eight EIGHTYG on six meters
and the signal was incredibly dirty. Okay, so it's a dirty,
dirty signal. It's not probably not really supposed to transmit
over there. But the reason we saw such a clean
signal on two two three dot five on this radio
because it's not really it's transmitting like one one hundredth
of a watt, one two hundredth of a watt or
two one hundreds of a watt I should say one
to two one hundredths of a watt according to this
(14:56):
meter here. Now, some of you might come along and say, well,
I test on my meter.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
I watts. Okay, so that's one of two things.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
This is a brand new meter and I've tested it
against two or three other meters I have when I
first got it, and it was pretty much right on.
So that's probably a quality control issue coming out of China.
You might get one radio that's solid ten watts, you
might get another one's only five or six seven watts.
Is there a big difference between seven and a half
and ten watts?
Speaker 2 (15:16):
No, there's not.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
You're not going to notice a huge difference with that.
Last thing I'm going to show you today is the
HF menu in this I should have showed you this earlier,
and I kind of forgot. So let's go over here
to the HF menu. Disappointed that this thing will not
transmit on two twenty, or at least not Well, you
could probably have a conversation with a guy standing across
the parking lot from you on two twenty, but you
know it's not going to get out very far. So
if we hit this last button down here, if we
(15:38):
hit this one right here, And at first I thought
this was FM broadcast radio, and I think maybe you
can go to that frequency in that band, but no,
Now you can go in here and I can say
menu modulation, and I can choose from FMAM lower and
upper sideband NCW. Okay, there's no digital modulation. I was
trying to listen over here earlier for or just to
(16:00):
see if I could hear this is the twenty meter
FT eight frequency, and I can't hear anything at all.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
Now.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
We're just on a rubber duck antenna. I mean, there's
nothing special about this antenna. We're not on the outside antent.
I might be able to hear something if I put
it over there on the outside antenna, but I haven't
done that. So we can go here and say, okay,
that's two megaherts. I could say two seven four hundred megahertz.
That's channel forty on CB, and we're on upper sideband
(16:28):
still right now. Right if I say two seven seven
five y five, it's one of those rogue above the
CB channel frequencies that gets used on sideband sometimes. So
it'll go here and it'll listen to these and I
don't think it'll transmit. No, if you hit the transmit button,
it goes back to this menu, so it's received only
on these places. And if you try to go to
(16:50):
I did this is something I noticed at first. Also,
we go back here. Let's say I'm in VFO mode
right now, seven four hundred. It will not go from
the transmitting menu. It will not go to HF or
shortwave from there. So you can receive only with this
menu unless there's a hack out there that I don't
(17:11):
know about, and if so, it's probably gonna be a
pretty poor signal anyway. And it'll transmit from the transmit
menu with two meters and for forty and it will
wonder if it will transmit. I didn't I didn't think
to look this. I'm gonna see if it will transmit
on four six two dot five hundred, which is a
GMRS frequency, or pretty close to a GMRS frequency. Let's
go down here, four six' Two, okay it'll go, there let's. Transmit,
(17:37):
yep it's transmitting THERE wrfk three eleven, Okay so it will.
Transmit because a lot of you will ask me in the,
comments does it? Transmit can you hack? This can you
modify it to go TO? Gmrs it DOES gmrs.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
Out of the.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
Box so there you, go really, clean impressive signal on
two meters and four to forty seventy centimeters on the
amateur radio. Bands full spectrum of receive for shortwave IN
hf up for lower side BAND cw the whole nine.
Yards that's really. Good disappointed it won't transmit more power
on two. TWENTY i was expecting a low power, output
but not one one hundredth of a. Watt so at
(18:10):
least it doesn't bepatch you and say out of. Ban
at least it doesn't do. That so how many of
you carry this? Radio what do you think about? It
how long you been carrying? It and what do you
think about? It have you transmitted somewhere besides two meters
and seventy centimeters on? It and what do you think about?
That put a comment in the comments. Section BLOW i,
THINK i. Said ORIGINALLY i got this On. AMAZON i
was mistaken about. THAT i bought the eight to eighty
(18:30):
On amazon and then since Then radtel's been sending me.
Radios they sent me this. ONE i sent in an
email Saying i'm getting a lot of comments about the nine,
Fifty will you send me one of? Those and they're like,
sure and they did. That so thanks To radtail for
sending me this. Radio this is ONE i might. KEEP
i got rid of my nine TWENTY i didn't like.
IT i still have my eight. EIGHTY i might keep
this one might sell the eighty OR i probably give
the eighty eighty.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
AWAY i don't. KNOW i don't know, Yet but tell
me what you.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
Think which Rad tail model do you carry and? Why
why do you carry? It what do you think about?
It put a comment in the video blow thanks for.
Watching check out these videos, next because this is what
YouTube thinks you want to watch after this one seventy
three
Rad Tel RT nine fifty the RT nine to fifty
try band well actually multi band try display multi band radio.
A lot of people have asked me about this since
I did the video. But the Radtael eight eighty G
and the nine to twenty long story short, the eight
eighty G is good.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
That nine twenty is okay, but not as good.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
So I'm interested to see how this nine to fifty
stacks up against the other two models I've made videos
for so far, let's go. I've actually made videos for
a couple other I never released a video. I did
a Radtel model. I want to say it was like
an eight forty or eight hundred, so I don't know.
It's like a year, year and a half ago. And
(00:38):
it was so bad, it was so dirty, it was
so RFI dirty that I sent the video back to
Radtail and I'm like, I can't make a video about
this radio. I can't recommend it. It's terrible. Unless you
want me to make a video that says don't buy
this radio, I'm not making a video. Since then, pretty
much everything I've done for twenty twenty five has been
pretty good. I bought this radio on Amazon. I will
share a link to it in the description blow probably
(01:00):
can't hear it right now, but it's actually receiving APRS beacons. Okay,
I turn their APRS off, but it's still receiving the
APRS squad. So it's got a good but not great
APRS menu. It's try display. It does transmit on two twenty,
and it does receive HF shortwave, medium wave and whatnot.
So let's take a look at the screen real quick.
It's got these two look like PTT buttons here, and
(01:22):
if I keyed up on that right there, I transmit
KC five HTVV transmitting only forty four three nine HAA.
The side button right here is is it looks like
it's a bottom PTT right there, okay, but this one's
actually a PTT. Also, what's I'll show you in a second.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
So if I've got the top band selected right there,
but I key the middle PTT button, it'll key up
on four forty four dot one KC five HWB testing.
And then if I push this button right here on
the side, which does not look like a PTT, it
keys the bottom band two two three five hundred KC
five HWB testing. So it's got try PTTs along the side.
I assume these two and this this one right, here's
(01:57):
how you go into HF and shortwave. So i'll show
that in a second. These are probably programmable.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
I haven't tried to program This is just how it
came out of the box. And that's screen protectors. It's
not a screen protector. That's the overlay that comes on
the screen when you pull it out of the box.
There we go, all right, So tryban, try display, try
PTT buttons on the side there. It does have your
standard Kinwood K connector on the side over here, and
it is buttoned down by this. Looks like you can
(02:24):
flip it down, but you can't. This is a waterproof
rating IP sixty seven or sixty eight, whichever one it is,
and it is you have to take this screw out
to get to it. So this the top of the
radio here. This is of course your volume knob. This
is your channel selector knob. And it's the antenna obviously.
This is the antenna that came with it. It has
a SMA female connection on the antenna and an SMA
mail connection on the radio itself that back in. Yeah,
(02:48):
it's receiving APRS packets right now, but I don't have
APRS turned on. I'm want to show you that in
a second, belt clip goes on. The battery itself has
a USBC charging port on the back of the battery
right there.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
So you want to charge it that way as well.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
So pretty good size battery mini radios are these, It's
about the size is a little bit maybe a little
bit taller than the AD eighty G, so I don't
have my adadag here with me. In fact, I took
it to the hunting least because I'm gonna do some
more videos with it down there. But taller, large screen,
large display, and a good a good heavy feel to it.
So far impressed. Let's go through the APRS menu. I'm
gonna put it on the tiny SA and see what
(03:23):
it looks like, and then we're going to do a
power test with it. So if we go into this
is the menu, and the menu system's pretty good. We
got Fox zone VFO and channel CTCSS and DSS radio set,
APRS set. We're going to go that here in a second,
navigate it through this touchpad here and then user key,
Bluetooth signaling setting, reset and about and then it goes
(03:47):
back to so there's only six icons per menu, two
menus twelve icons, and then are multiple things inside of
each of those icons. We go into APRS set. Here
we can turn APRS off and on. I've got it
off right now, I'm gonna turn on here in a second.
I got GPS turned on. By default, it was off
and everything was set to metric like meters and kilometers
per hour. I went through and reset all those to
(04:07):
standard for a USA becon, set up call sign SSID,
choose path. This was off by default, So I've got
the path is wide one one wide two to one
right now. You can change that obviously user path. I
can do dig digital digital digital here. It's got some
digital settings in here that I don't quite understand. I
(04:27):
assume that's to use through a Brandmeister repeater, but I'm
morgested in using it over regular FM analog APRS as
it works. It's a digital signal, it's not an analog signal,
but it is going over analog FM mode. Okay, repeater
setting and there you can go to repeater setting routing.
You can tell it how to set for the digital
(04:49):
channel repeater. I don't know how that got changed. Now
it's on one forty four three eight. I probably bumped
a button. Okay, go back in here. It's not touchscreen,
so I can't do that. I keep trying to touch
screen it, but it doesn't work. Going here, So settings
in there for using through a Brandmester repeater which has
APRS enabled advanced. You can go in there and do
(05:11):
transmit delay APRS ringer, RX pop up. I've got that
turned on. We're going to see that in a minute.
I've got RX beacon clear so you can clear that
out tn C type. It does have a kiss T
and C and it does have Bluetooth, so I'm going
to probably try to use this with APRS droid in
another video. Put a comment blow if you'd like to
see that factory settings. We can reset the factory from there.
(05:33):
Go back one beacon type under advanced Beacon type is
manual or timing beacon as for for when it becons
my call sign over APRS. And then we're back to
the top. So we've got four six menus there in
the APRS menu. What I don't see, Okay, let me
go ahead and turn this on. I'm going to turn
(05:54):
that on, and we're on one forty four to three nine,
and I think that there's a I saw in here somewhere.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
It's not there.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
No, it's not there either. Okay, it's going to it's
going to transmit APRS on whatever the chosen frequency is.
I didn't see a place in the menu to tell
it to always transmit on a.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
B or C. I didn't see that. Okay.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
What I also don't see, and now APRS is quiet.
What I also don't see is a way too. Okay,
there it is right there, and then it pops up
N five jat dash nine. I've been hearing him this morning,
and then.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
It goes away.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
I don't see a way to go into the message
or the station list. There's not a way. Like on
your Yazu and your Kinwood radios. I can go in
there and I can say what stations have I heard
for the last I don't know, hour or day or
however long it is, and it gives me a list
of those stations. It also gives me a message list
that I can send and receive messages. I don't see
a message list, and I don't see a station list
(07:00):
like the station will pop up here on the screen
for two or three seconds then go away. But I
can't go back to it, or at least if I can,
I can't figure out a way to do it. And
if there is a way to do it, it's not
in this APRS set menu. There might be another menu
in here. I haven't dug real deep into all twelve
of these menus, but it should be. If you have
a message list or a station list, it should be
(07:21):
under the APRS menu, and it's not.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
It's not there.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
So there we go in five jat dash nine Again,
so APRS seems to work, but it seems quite limited
because you're missing a few key elements right there. There's
in eight HRV dash seven. Okay, so you're missing a
few key elements, a few key pieces that you need
to do full APRS capability, which of course is seeing
all the stations you've seen. Because if I see, oh,
(07:46):
I know that guy, but he's five or six down
on the list you want to message him, you should
be able to go into the station list, click on
which one you want a message, and hit message and go.
There doesn't seem to be a way to message with
this thing at all. And again, if it's got a
Bluetooth kiss t and C, which I have not tested yet.
We're not going to do that today. I want to
see how spectral clean and pure this thing is first, okay,
because traditionally, speaking with the exception of the eight to
(08:07):
eighty G, most of the rattails I've tested have been
kind of dirty. The nine to twenty was okay, but
the eight to eighty was better. So I'm going to
test this on the tiny essay and we're going to
put it on the power meter. We're going to see
what it's doing, and then you guys, once again, you guys,
let me know if you would like to see this
connected to my smartphone with APRS droid to do some
APRS Bluetooth T and C messaging. Because APRS droid is
(08:28):
full featured, you can do everything with it. So let's
put it on the tiny SA. Okay, We've got this
set up on the Tinyesa here and I've set it
to one five to two with an ext with a
level of minus forty dB. I'll show you how to
set that on the second one. This radio is advertised
as a tim watt radio, and I'm going to do
a power test on it here in a minute. But
I haven't done that yet. So we're going to do
all our tests today on medium power and go in
(08:50):
here and go to transmit power and go to middle
just like that, cook back, and we're going to up six.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Top five to two. Okay, Okay, so far, so good.
I like that. I like the heck out of that.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
That looks really good.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
Yeah, I do like that.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
Okay, no barbs in the right side over there at all?
Speaker 2 (09:19):
Excellent? Okay, good.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
Now let's go back in here and I'm gonna say
we're gonna go to measure harmonic and I'm gonna say
two two three dot five mega hurts, mega hurts, and
then I'm gonna go back into level and ext gain
and go to minus forty times one, and then I'm
(09:41):
going to go to the middle or no, I'm gonna
go to the bottom band here, because that's where two
two three five is. You could do it from any band,
but I'm gonna do it from here. I'm gonna change
my transmit power to middle. It's probably not a full
ten watts on two twenty, but we'll find that out
here in a minute. Okay, Now we're on two twenty
(10:02):
and I'm gonna say key that there, all right, it's
got a little barb as a second harmonic, which looks
like it's around for forty six. Maybe it's down at
like negative thirty though, it's way down there. So the
(10:23):
number one right there looks good. And then now it's
gone away. I've held it down long enough. It's gone away. Okay,
that's it. I would I would still call that a
clean signal. I would still call that a clean signal.
On the two two three dot five band two for three.
So far, so far, so good. I'm liking what I
see so far. Okay, And again we're on middle power
because because this is a ten wat etenuator here, and
(10:43):
I don't want it to do a little bit overpower.
And realistically, the two two three dot five band is
probably not a full ten wats anyway, Sadly, sadly, it's
probably not a full ten wats anyway. So we're gonna
go back in here and go to I've got this
set on full forty one. Let's just go there, Mega hurtz,
Mega hurtz. And then we're going to go to level
extea minus forty times one, and we're going to go
(11:07):
to the middle band and set it to midpower and
now we're going to transmit right there. All right, it's
(11:28):
taken in a minute to read anything. It's got an
eighth harmonic up there at like two point nine gigahertz,
but it's pretty low, about a minus thirty right now.
And then the single harmonic there on the left, number one,
and that is great.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
I like that. I like the heck out of that.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
So very good, clean looking radio from Radtel, maybe one
of the cleanest ones so far. I don't recall exactly
what the signal looked like on the ADADG. I do
remember it was clean. I don't remember if we tested
two twenty three or not.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
I don't know. I have to go back and watch
my own video.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
But that's a clean signal on three bands for transmitting
from this RT nine fifty g. Good deal so far,
excellent looking quality, a little bit lacking on the APRS menu,
that's okay. Now we're going to put it on the
power meter and see how close it gets to ten wants.
All right, Before we get started here, I want to
remind everybody that today's video is sponsored by Messi and
Plony Coacs Mezzi and Plonies. What I have all of
(12:16):
the radios in my shack wired with there's a small
jumper going from the radio to the meter, and then
on the back of the meter there's Mezzi and Plony
coming out that goes to a dummy load, and then
all of my HF radios in the shack are wired
with MMP coax. You can save a ten percent discount
on everything on their website with the coupon code of
HR two cables. Check out the link of the description
blow from gigaparts. Thank you Mezzimplony for supporting the channel.
(12:37):
So I went through and set all of this too
high back to high power, okay, and I'll go into
one of these and show you here and transmit power there,
and it's on high power. You can see at the
top right there, little out of focus on the radio,
but we're focused on the meter right now. So one
five to two is where we're starting today. That's the
(12:58):
one that's select it at the top. We're gonna hit
transmit and worrit about seven point five watts, about seven
and a half watts on the two meter calling frequency.
So we want to see how close to ten wats
we were getting. And it looks like it's it's not
quite there yet.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
Now I've switched to the middle band for forty one
dot zero. I'm gonna key up again five point eight watts. Okay,
that's pretty good right there. And then I'm gonna switch
to the bottom band two two three dot five O
five because I bumped it. There we go, two two
three dot five hundred. We're gonna key up the bottom
band right there. Bottom band is keyed. Oh wow, look
at that. It says it's transmitting with zero point zero
(13:38):
one watts. Let me make sure I've got the output
power set correctly. Transmit power is set to high right there. Okay,
and we're gonna transmit again two two three dot five hundred.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
Beare it's really not outputting anything at all?
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Okay, Let's switch the top band to two two three
doup five hundred just to check.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
Now I'm on two two three five hundred on the
top band. I'm gonna key up the top PTT button
right there now, same thing, okay, same thing all right.
So this is actually not a triband radio like I
was thinking it was. It's advertised as multiband because it
will receive multi bands on HF and shortwave. The eight
eighty G would transmit on two twenty nine, don't I
(14:20):
don't remember if I did a power test on that
one or not, but we used that one at Montasento
State Park in August of twenty twenty five. One guy
had one of those there and we used it to
transmit on two twenty to do some two twenty FM
simplex activations for.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
PODA, and we also used his radio, one of three
or four radios.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
I vaguely recall checking the eight EIGHTYG on six meters
and the signal was incredibly dirty. Okay, so it's a dirty,
dirty signal. It's not probably not really supposed to transmit
over there. But the reason we saw such a clean
signal on two two three dot five on this radio
because it's not really it's transmitting like one one hundredth
of a watt, one two hundredth of a watt or
two one hundreds of a watt I should say one
to two one hundredths of a watt according to this
(14:56):
meter here. Now, some of you might come along and say, well,
I test on my meter.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
I watts. Okay, so that's one of two things.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
This is a brand new meter and I've tested it
against two or three other meters I have when I
first got it, and it was pretty much right on.
So that's probably a quality control issue coming out of China.
You might get one radio that's solid ten watts, you
might get another one's only five or six seven watts.
Is there a big difference between seven and a half
and ten watts?
Speaker 2 (15:16):
No, there's not.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
You're not going to notice a huge difference with that.
Last thing I'm going to show you today is the
HF menu in this I should have showed you this earlier,
and I kind of forgot. So let's go over here
to the HF menu. Disappointed that this thing will not
transmit on two twenty, or at least not Well, you
could probably have a conversation with a guy standing across
the parking lot from you on two twenty, but you
know it's not going to get out very far. So
if we hit this last button down here, if we
(15:38):
hit this one right here, And at first I thought
this was FM broadcast radio, and I think maybe you
can go to that frequency in that band, but no,
Now you can go in here and I can say
menu modulation, and I can choose from FMAM lower and
upper sideband NCW. Okay, there's no digital modulation. I was
trying to listen over here earlier for or just to
(16:00):
see if I could hear this is the twenty meter
FT eight frequency, and I can't hear anything at all.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
Now.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
We're just on a rubber duck antenna. I mean, there's
nothing special about this antenna. We're not on the outside antent.
I might be able to hear something if I put
it over there on the outside antenna, but I haven't
done that. So we can go here and say, okay,
that's two megaherts. I could say two seven four hundred megahertz.
That's channel forty on CB, and we're on upper sideband
(16:28):
still right now. Right if I say two seven seven
five y five, it's one of those rogue above the
CB channel frequencies that gets used on sideband sometimes. So
it'll go here and it'll listen to these and I
don't think it'll transmit. No, if you hit the transmit button,
it goes back to this menu, so it's received only
on these places. And if you try to go to
(16:50):
I did this is something I noticed at first. Also,
we go back here. Let's say I'm in VFO mode
right now, seven four hundred. It will not go from
the transmitting menu. It will not go to HF or
shortwave from there. So you can receive only with this
menu unless there's a hack out there that I don't
(17:11):
know about, and if so, it's probably gonna be a
pretty poor signal anyway. And it'll transmit from the transmit
menu with two meters and for forty and it will
wonder if it will transmit. I didn't I didn't think
to look this. I'm gonna see if it will transmit
on four six two dot five hundred, which is a
GMRS frequency, or pretty close to a GMRS frequency. Let's
go down here, four six' Two, okay it'll go, there let's. Transmit,
(17:37):
yep it's transmitting THERE wrfk three eleven, Okay so it will.
Transmit because a lot of you will ask me in the,
comments does it? Transmit can you hack? This can you
modify it to go TO? Gmrs it DOES gmrs.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
Out of the.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
Box so there you, go really, clean impressive signal on
two meters and four to forty seventy centimeters on the
amateur radio. Bands full spectrum of receive for shortwave IN
hf up for lower side BAND cw the whole nine.
Yards that's really. Good disappointed it won't transmit more power
on two. TWENTY i was expecting a low power, output
but not one one hundredth of a. Watt so at
(18:10):
least it doesn't bepatch you and say out of. Ban
at least it doesn't do. That so how many of
you carry this? Radio what do you think about? It
how long you been carrying? It and what do you
think about? It have you transmitted somewhere besides two meters
and seventy centimeters on? It and what do you think about?
That put a comment in the comments. Section BLOW i,
THINK i. Said ORIGINALLY i got this On. AMAZON i
was mistaken about. THAT i bought the eight to eighty
(18:30):
On amazon and then since Then radtel's been sending me.
Radios they sent me this. ONE i sent in an
email Saying i'm getting a lot of comments about the nine,
Fifty will you send me one of? Those and they're like,
sure and they did. That so thanks To radtail for
sending me this. Radio this is ONE i might. KEEP
i got rid of my nine TWENTY i didn't like.
IT i still have my eight. EIGHTY i might keep
this one might sell the eighty OR i probably give
the eighty eighty.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
AWAY i don't. KNOW i don't know, Yet but tell
me what you.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
Think which Rad tail model do you carry and? Why
why do you carry? It what do you think about?
It put a comment in the video blow thanks for.
Watching check out these videos, next because this is what
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