Yaesu Musen

KB6NU posts the new logo for Yaesu Musen and K0NR points out that at the same time Yaesu is showing additional commitment to the amateur world with this article on digital enhancements. The full annoucement can be found at KDSanders' site (PDF).

Yaesu Musen

Always interesting to see what happens to the pieces when companies are split into parts:

"According to Vertex Standard President and Chief Executive Officer Jun Hasegawa, effective January1, 2012, Motorola will keep the Vertex Standard Land-Mobile Division, while the amateur, marine and air-band will be under the Yaesu Musen banner."

Shade Tree Mechanics

People have often bemoaned the loss of the "shade tree mechanic." Cars have gotten so complex that you cannot complete a repair without specialized diagnostic computers and an electrical engineering degree. Despite   similar challenges, hams are fighting the good fight when it comes to working on modern radios. I've mentioned various mods to the UV-3R, but Ethan, K8GU, has a great repair story about a VX-3R:

"After however many weeks it has been, a package from Yaesu showed up on my doorstep tonight. After repairing a damaged PCB trace (non trivial on something this small), I was able to replace it. The little black speck in the middle of this photograph is the removed component. For my non-US readers, the US 0.01 USD coin (“Penny”) is about 19 mm in diameter."

While the description is good, a picture (from his web site) is worth a thousand words. Boy howdy is that small!

Via AmateurRadio.com

Yaesu VX-3R Knock-off: The Baofeng UV-3R

The Chinese are at it again. This time we have a knock-off of the Yaesu VX-3R. The VX-3R is a tiny, but full featured 2M/440 HT. At $175, it isn't super expensive, but not exactly cheap either.

Enter the Baofeng UV-3R... it looks a lot like my VX-3R, but you can get three of the UV-3R for the price of the Yaesu.




G4ILO is on top of things again with a great review of this new rig. Some of his key points follow:

"The UV-3R makes [another Chinese radio] look a quality product. This is the first new electronic product I've had that didn't come with a peel-off protective film over the display. The plastic casing is extremely thin and the plastic belt clip that can optionally be attached looks as if it would easily break. To be fair, the flimsiness of the Baofeng may not be due to cheapness but to save weight."

"Confusingly, the rotary switch on top of the radio must be pulled up before it can be rotated."

Note: the VX-3R works this way as well.

"I also checked the strong signal handling performance of the receiver the same way I did recently with my other hand-held transceivers. It was on a par with the VX-8GR and the JMT-227, at the poor end of the spectrum."

Here you can see the UV-3R in all its glory.



For $55 I am willing to roll the dice. When the storms hit last week, my wife was looking for my VX-3R. Unfortunately, I keep that one in my laptop bag. I was contemplating another radio already, so finding this one has tipped the scales. I'm off to eBay.

Ham Radio Deluxe

I ordered a CT-62 CAT cable for the Yaesu FT-817 that my father-in-law has loaned me. The cable arrived today and I got the 817 connected to Ham Radio Deluxe. My cursory review of the HRD application makes me want to play with it some more. It is nice to work on a large screen and have access to simple buttons in the GUI instead of having to navigate through the menus on the rig itself.