Monday, November 26, 2012
AES Promotions
k9aes Check out the radio promotions currently at AES - ow.ly/fyzyfSun, Nov 25 13:23:19 from HootSuite
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CheckMark
I'm going to try out CheckMark - an app for doing location based reminders. I use Siri all the time for time-based reminders - "check the laundry in ten minutes" or "replace the air filters at 6:00 PM on Saturday." I think the location based reminders would be nice as the GPS location acts as filter, so you only get the reminder when you can do something about it - "check for .22lr when at Wal-Mart." If the granularity is good, I might even use it to remind of tasks when I am in a specific building at work.
Two Years of Brick O'Lore
I missed the actual two year anniversary on the 14th, but this is close enough for government work.
Not too much has changed since last year's review.
I still don't have an AR (but I do have two lowers!) or an M&P9. I've not been shooting in a long time.
I rarely even turn on the ham radios - partly because my KG-UVD1P that I was using in the car has died. Anyone know anything about a good, cheap Chinese mobile radio I could buy? (HA!) I did spend a little time with WSPR, but would like to invest some more. I haven't even cracked the book for the Extra Class exam.
I ran a marathon this year. I'm just crazy enough to think about doing another one. The bad news is I would need to start training now for an April race. Ugh.
I'm also getting a lot more involved at church. One week, between services, meetings, and fellowship, we were there four days out of the week.
Between family, exercising, church, work, and blogging; my days tend to be pretty full.
The radio posts are still the most popular, but that doesn't stop me from posting about anything I find interesting or funny. The blog has had 539,362 page views since I started it - around 112,000 in 2011 and 427,000 in 2012. I posted less in 2012 - 727 vs 856 in 2011 for a total of 1,583. SaysUncle is still the single largest referring URL thanks to a story about ninjas (of all things!). Makes me think I should resell radios under a zombie ninja brand.
The most popular post (15,555 views) is about the software for the Baofeng UV-3R Software. Given the endless discussion on the Yahoo groups about how to get the software to work with your Baofeng/Wouxun KG-whatever or UV-xxx, this really isn't a surprise. I think almost all of this traffic is driven via searches.
Given so much of my traffic is via search, the biggest surprise for me this year has been the jump in my RSS subscribers. Last time I checked, I think there were about 8. I could even account for half of those - me, my wife, probably Linoge, etc. I looked and found I have 100 subscribers - wow! I was and am floored. Thanks so much for reading my ramblings. If any of my RSS subscribers would do me a favor, please leave a comment on this post - anonymous is fine. I'm just curious as to how many people actually follow and would read a long post like this one.
Goals for next year... I need to build at least one of the lowers in to an actual rifle. I want to get my Extra Class license. I'd like to run a sub 20 minute 5k.
I will close the same way as I did last year...
Thanks for reading!
Not too much has changed since last year's review.
I still don't have an AR (but I do have two lowers!) or an M&P9. I've not been shooting in a long time.
I rarely even turn on the ham radios - partly because my KG-UVD1P that I was using in the car has died. Anyone know anything about a good, cheap Chinese mobile radio I could buy? (HA!) I did spend a little time with WSPR, but would like to invest some more. I haven't even cracked the book for the Extra Class exam.
I ran a marathon this year. I'm just crazy enough to think about doing another one. The bad news is I would need to start training now for an April race. Ugh.
I'm also getting a lot more involved at church. One week, between services, meetings, and fellowship, we were there four days out of the week.
Between family, exercising, church, work, and blogging; my days tend to be pretty full.
The radio posts are still the most popular, but that doesn't stop me from posting about anything I find interesting or funny. The blog has had 539,362 page views since I started it - around 112,000 in 2011 and 427,000 in 2012. I posted less in 2012 - 727 vs 856 in 2011 for a total of 1,583. SaysUncle is still the single largest referring URL thanks to a story about ninjas (of all things!). Makes me think I should resell radios under a zombie ninja brand.
The most popular post (15,555 views) is about the software for the Baofeng UV-3R Software. Given the endless discussion on the Yahoo groups about how to get the software to work with your Baofeng/Wouxun KG-whatever or UV-xxx, this really isn't a surprise. I think almost all of this traffic is driven via searches.
Given so much of my traffic is via search, the biggest surprise for me this year has been the jump in my RSS subscribers. Last time I checked, I think there were about 8. I could even account for half of those - me, my wife, probably Linoge, etc. I looked and found I have 100 subscribers - wow! I was and am floored. Thanks so much for reading my ramblings. If any of my RSS subscribers would do me a favor, please leave a comment on this post - anonymous is fine. I'm just curious as to how many people actually follow and would read a long post like this one.
Goals for next year... I need to build at least one of the lowers in to an actual rifle. I want to get my Extra Class license. I'd like to run a sub 20 minute 5k.
I will close the same way as I did last year...
Thanks for reading!
Sunday, November 25, 2012
Programming Jargon
Funny programming jargon. Read them and then come back, so the following will make sense.
Some of these are funny to me on a couple of levels. I work with a guy whose written communication can be a little confusing. We call it Yoda Speak. However, his SQL and other logic doesn't suffer from the same aliment, so we can't accuse him of Yoda Conditions.
I'm guilty of Smurf-like Naming Conventions when I get to name objects in our infrastructure, e.g. Knox_Engineering_HP_Laserjet_Series_2.Engineering.Knoxville.TN.USA.NA.Earth.MilkyWay
We have also seen procedures named TEST_Something get promoted to production or as they say protoduction.
Lastly, the mere act of getting up to go ask a question will simulate the rubber duck effect. That happens to me way more than I would like to admit.
Some of these are funny to me on a couple of levels. I work with a guy whose written communication can be a little confusing. We call it Yoda Speak. However, his SQL and other logic doesn't suffer from the same aliment, so we can't accuse him of Yoda Conditions.
I'm guilty of Smurf-like Naming Conventions when I get to name objects in our infrastructure, e.g. Knox_Engineering_HP_Laserjet_Series_2.Engineering.Knoxville.TN.USA.NA.Earth.MilkyWay
We have also seen procedures named TEST_Something get promoted to production or as they say protoduction.
Lastly, the mere act of getting up to go ask a question will simulate the rubber duck effect. That happens to me way more than I would like to admit.
Saturday, November 24, 2012
Wouxun KG-UV920R: KG-UV920P
Hans follows up his day one review of the KG-UV920P with some more information in Part II. He adds some pictures and a wish-list for furthur improvements, but closes with the following comments:
"The strongest point of the Wouxun KG-UV920P is the quality of the receiver. On the frequencies that matter this receiver does what it’s supposed to do. And it better be good – we lost all those RX bands we originally drooled over."
And
"Wouxun finally competes with the big three."
MYT MYT-Q1 and MYT-Q2 - Nate's Research
Mega apologies to Nate!!. He sent me this information a long time ago and I've been trying to dig out of my backlog, so I'm just now getting to it. And since I've been working from newest to oldest, I posted about the MYT yesterday without even making the connection to all of his work that you will see below. On to the radios...
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409Shop have now a new brand - MYT. Looking carefully it looks like these are VHF only with a very simple, single frequency display.
It seems like there are actually two models. First look:
MYTQ1V - comes in Black, Blue, and Yellow - It looks like they borrowed the design of the case from Icom's IC-91A (and also similar to the Puxing PX-325/PX-333, Ronson RT-6100 or TYT's TH-F5). The cost though is lower only $45.50 (compare to the Puxing brand: $59, Ronson's: $65, TYT: $64.50).
MYTQ2V - Yellow only - Looks very much like Ronson RT-966 radio design, and share the unusual spot for the alarm button on the top of the radio (where you Baofeng users are used to find your LED flashlight).
A closer look at the photos reveals two interesting points.
The MYTQ2V has a mini USB data plug, and a non Kenwood style speaker/microphone jack. My guess here is that you will be able to use any standard USB to mini USB data cable to program this radio.
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409Shop have now a new brand - MYT. Looking carefully it looks like these are VHF only with a very simple, single frequency display.
It seems like there are actually two models. First look:
MYTQ1V - comes in Black, Blue, and Yellow - It looks like they borrowed the design of the case from Icom's IC-91A (and also similar to the Puxing PX-325/PX-333, Ronson RT-6100 or TYT's TH-F5). The cost though is lower only $45.50 (compare to the Puxing brand: $59, Ronson's: $65, TYT: $64.50).
MYTQ2V - Yellow only - Looks very much like Ronson RT-966 radio design, and share the unusual spot for the alarm button on the top of the radio (where you Baofeng users are used to find your LED flashlight).
A closer look at the photos reveals two interesting points.
The MYTQ2V has a mini USB data plug, and a non Kenwood style speaker/microphone jack. My guess here is that you will be able to use any standard USB to mini USB data cable to program this radio.
The MYTQ1V has what looks like a standard Kenwood style speaker/microphone/data jacks.
Both radios have a dedicated display light button and a dedicated channel monitor. If you have a Baofeng UV-5R or similarly designed radio, you probably noticed how annoying a combined Lamp\CH.Monitor button can be.
Both radios have 7.4V 1800mAh batteries (Compare to only 1200mAh - 1500mAh)
The big surprise though is that if you look on both radios, the writing next to the display says: VHF/UHF FM TRANSCEIVER. The specs though states only the usual 136-174 MHz.
Being me, I just couldn't accept the discrepancy, and started investigating.
Who are you MYT?
A quick look around shows two web addresses, one that they own: www.myt123.com and an Alibaba sub-domain. The company name is: Fujian Quanzhou MYT Electronics Co., Ltd.
MYT-Q1
MYT-Q2
What did I find?
MYT-Q1 - Actually comes in Black, Blue, Yellow and Red
MYT-Q2 - Actually comes in Black, Blue, Yellow and Green (Brick's note - yes, that horrible green I posted about yesterday.)
The two use different antenna connectors.
It very well may be that there are MYT-Q1 single band radios and MYT-Q2 single band radio, and the same models/cases that are dual band radios as well. There is this picture:
The red MYT-Q1 shows 250.425MHz which is within Thailand's CB-style short range service, you can read more about it here. Here is another picture showing the red radio.
At one place, it says:
Frequency Range: 400-470MHZ, 136-174MHZ, 200-26...
Snd the table below says:
Frequency Range: 136-174MHZ | 400-470MHZ
And another thing at the same page, if you scroll down, you see that only the black radio has an LED flash light on top, while the other colors don't. The black radio on 409Shop does not have the LED flashlight.
You can buy the flashlight version on Aliexpress here: Cost: $37 + Shipping: $26.53 - they do combine shipping, the shipping for two units, for example, is only: $42.42.
Bottom line: It's not clear weather these radios are single/dual or tri-banders. I think that any brand that respects itself should be clear about these things.
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Thanks again to Nate for playing detective and pulling all of this information together. Based on what I read and the price, I'm going to assume these are all single or dual band radios with different versions for different bands to get the representative frequencies of 148, 250, and 403 as show in the picture, and as Nate says, it would be really nice if it stated more plainly. As usual, if anything is incorrect above, it is probably the edits I made.
Both radios have a dedicated display light button and a dedicated channel monitor. If you have a Baofeng UV-5R or similarly designed radio, you probably noticed how annoying a combined Lamp\CH.Monitor button can be.
Both radios have 7.4V 1800mAh batteries (Compare to only 1200mAh - 1500mAh)
The big surprise though is that if you look on both radios, the writing next to the display says: VHF/UHF FM TRANSCEIVER. The specs though states only the usual 136-174 MHz.
Being me, I just couldn't accept the discrepancy, and started investigating.
Who are you MYT?
A quick look around shows two web addresses, one that they own: www.myt123.com and an Alibaba sub-domain. The company name is: Fujian Quanzhou MYT Electronics Co., Ltd.
MYT-Q2
What did I find?
MYT-Q1 - Actually comes in Black, Blue, Yellow and Red
MYT-Q2 - Actually comes in Black, Blue, Yellow and Green (Brick's note - yes, that horrible green I posted about yesterday.)
The two use different antenna connectors.
It very well may be that there are MYT-Q1 single band radios and MYT-Q2 single band radio, and the same models/cases that are dual band radios as well. There is this picture:
The red MYT-Q1 shows 250.425MHz which is within Thailand's CB-style short range service, you can read more about it here. Here is another picture showing the red radio.
At one place, it says:
Frequency Range: 400-470MHZ, 136-174MHZ, 200-26...
Snd the table below says:
Frequency Range: 136-174MHZ | 400-470MHZ
And another thing at the same page, if you scroll down, you see that only the black radio has an LED flash light on top, while the other colors don't. The black radio on 409Shop does not have the LED flashlight.
You can buy the flashlight version on Aliexpress here: Cost: $37 + Shipping: $26.53 - they do combine shipping, the shipping for two units, for example, is only: $42.42.
Bottom line: It's not clear weather these radios are single/dual or tri-banders. I think that any brand that respects itself should be clear about these things.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thanks again to Nate for playing detective and pulling all of this information together. Based on what I read and the price, I'm going to assume these are all single or dual band radios with different versions for different bands to get the representative frequencies of 148, 250, and 403 as show in the picture, and as Nate says, it would be really nice if it stated more plainly. As usual, if anything is incorrect above, it is probably the edits I made.
Friday, November 23, 2012
Prepping
ConanOBrien In a survival situation, you can drink your own urine. Fortunately, my Wi-Fi came back on just as I was filling the can.Wed, Nov 14 19:23:31 from web
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MYT MYT-Q1: Colors
Steve sent me a link to this MYT-Q1. It is noteworthy only for the blinding green color. I suspect it has an extra battery pack just to provide energy for the glowing case.
If that green isn't your cup of tea, then why not send in your Icom IC7200 for a multicam or safety orange paint job. (Links also via Steve.)
If you are actually interested in a MYT radio, Hans posted about the MYT-Q2.
If that green isn't your cup of tea, then why not send in your Icom IC7200 for a multicam or safety orange paint job. (Links also via Steve.)
If you are actually interested in a MYT radio, Hans posted about the MYT-Q2.
Baofeng UV-5R: Truth
This is funny because is it is true...
"Hmmm... To get it to work properly, you need to push [the AAA battery case] in hard until it snapsinto place.
The company that makes the battery cases must also make USB programming cables.
John K3NXU"In case you aren't familiar with the issues, being a body builder is a requirement to make the programming cable work.
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