Amateur Radio news from Italy

IW5EDI Simone – Ham-Radio

Baofeng UV-5R Review

Posted in Equipment, Featured 3 Comments
BAOFENG UV-5R Review

BAOFENG UV-5R Review

I’ve owned this radio since one month now. I ordered this new model at 409shop.com for 45 Euros including delivery and customs.
I’m also owner of a Baofeng UV-200 and of a kenwood TH-F7E.

This new Baofeng products looks like to be a very robust handheld radio, compared to the other two ones I own. Compared to the previous Baofeng UV-200, the UV-5R is completely different transceiver. Much more sensible, and does not suffer of poor selectivity of the smaller brother. It offer a dual watch feature including the possibility to use FM 88-108 and dual watch, so when noone is talking on VHF I can listen to music or to my preferred broadcasting station.

The battery life is very long, and it last much more the the other ones. When it arrives, the Baofeng UV-5R is bundled with it’s desktop charger that is very fast in recharging.

Headphone pin-out is the Kenwood standard one, and I’ve been able to use a kenwood speaker-microphone that I used previosly with the TH-F7E.

Unfortunatly there are no programming cables available now but i know that is possible to home made them. Memory programming is not very easy, and need to spend some time before understanding that pre-recorded channells need to be deleted before rewrite them, and that you must use the upper VFO to memorize frequencies. I’ve produced a short booklet in Italian to program the Baofeng UV-5R, it’s available here

Bundled dualband antenna looks to work smootly and efficiently on both bands.

That’s my short review on thie chinese dual band ham radio transcever !

Kenwood TS-990S

Posted in Equipment 2 Comments

Kenwood TS 990

Kenwood TS-990

Looks like a new Kenwood transceiver is going to be announced and presented in Dayton next week. The Name should be TS-990 and it will be also presented in HAM RADIO 2012 in Friedrichshafen, Germany (June 22-24), and at Ham Fair 2012 in Tokyo, Japan (August 25-26).

The final release date for the Kenwood TS-990S is however Winter 2012 so don’t expect to use it before Christmass 2012 !

Lot’s of curiosity is around the final TS-990 aspect, since there is no real official picture of the product and what is currently available on the net is commonly considered a fake.

What is sure is that the TS-990 or TS-990S will have a dual TFT display and dual receiver and will be an HF+50MHz top of the Line Kenwood Amateur Radio product.

Links:

  • Kenwood TS-990 – official press release
  • Kenwood TS-990 -current picture

    Price range is expected to be somewhere > 4000 USD

    • 50 MHz International Marathon

    Posted in DXing, Featured Leave a comment
    International 6m marathon

    50 MHz Marathon

    ARI Section of Florence organizes the marathon dedicated to the band of 50 MHz which is open all radio amateurs. From this page you can access your online logs for the management of the marathon. To Join, request your personal userID and password by sending an e-mail to maratona50mhz @ gmail.com containing the following data : CALL, Operator Name, WWLocator and the category of participation.
    The log function is already working, in order to allow users to test it, but log entries will be cleared at the beginning of the marathon.

     

    New Section for 70 Mhz!

    With the introduction of the sperimental period of the 70 Mhz band, ARI sezione di Firenze, created a special section dedicated to this band, inside the the 50Mhz Marathon 2012 edition. The main goal is to collect data of all QSOs done within this band by all radioamateurs taking part to the competition. The final database of QSOs made on the 4 meter band will be collected and sent to the Department of Electrical and Information Engineering of the University of L’Aquila, directed by Piero Tognolatti I0KPT, for further analysis on propagation.
    All those who wish to participate in this initiative, should send an e-mail containing the CALL, NAME, the LOCATOR, and a description of their equipment at maratona50mhz @ gmail . com. Login credentials will be sent all partecipants, in order to be able to enter their QSO data or upload an ADIFlog file. All contactswill be grouped in the modes Voice, CW and Digital. In order to give a bit of competitive spirit to the event will be drawn an automatic classification based on the total QRB of each participant.

     

    For Rules and Updated visit the 50 Mhz Marathon web site

    Gmail goes Morse Code with Gmail Tap

    Posted in Ham Radio 2.0 1 Comment

    With Gmail Tap announced today (April 1st) , Google adapted the Morse Code to the new Tap interface integrating a morse code interpreter into their Gmail App for Android Smartphones.

    At first while reading I did suspected April Fools and so I still believe it could be a joke, but reading comments on play.google.com looks it’s a real announcement…. Let’s see tomorrow. 😉

    Read more on Gmail Tap

    By the way, April fools or not, if you want to use Morse Code to replace your keyboard you can already download an iPhone App, that will do exactly the same, Morse Code Email

     

     

     

    Mercatino ARI Firenze 2012

    Posted in Featured, Ham Radio Events Leave a comment

    Mercatino ARI Firenze 2012

    The second edition of the Flea Market in Florence will take place on Saturday 14 April 2012.

    We  decided to move the location to a larger one this year, since le last one was really too small to host all exibitors.

    We had also to refuse someone due to the fact that only a few tables outside remained… and weather conditons in April, are not so good.

    This year we have a large auditorium, of over 900 sqm with a large parking area, a Restaurant and a Bar.

    We really exepect to stay larger this year !

    In case you visit Tuscany in April, don’t miss this event !

    Further informations can be reached at http://www.arifirenze.it

     

    Ham Radio Repeaters in Italy

    Posted in Featured, HamRadio 7 Comments

    Amateur Radio Repeaters in Italy

    An updated and  complete list of ham radio repeaters in italy, is mantained by IK2ANE  in his website, where you can download the  italian repeaters excel file

    Here is  a subset of Italian Ham Radio Repeaters in Tuscany and in Florence area (FI)

    Nome	Freq	        shift	         tone	Prov.	QRA Loc
R0	145.600,0	-600 kHz	1750	LU	JN53HW
R0a	145.612,5	-600 kHz	 	AR
R1	145.625,0	-600 kHz	 	LI
R1a	145.637,5	-600 kHz		AR	JN53XL
R1a	145.637,5	-600 kHz	 	MS	JN54BC
R2	145.650,0	-600 kHz	1750	GR
R3	145.675,0	-600 kHz	1750	GR	JN53LD
R3a	145.687,5	-600 kHz	79,7	MS	JN54BC
R4	145.700,0	-600 kHz	 	PI	JN53IP
R4a	145.712,5	-600 kHz		GR	JN52SU
R5	145.725,0	-600 kHz	 	PO	JN53OT
R6	145.750,0	-600 kHz	 	FI	JN53SR
R6	145.750,0	-600 kHz	 	MS	JN54BC
R6a	145.762,5	-600 kHz		PO	JN54NA
R7	145.775,0	-600 kHz	 	MS
R7	145.775,0	-600 kHz	 	SI
R7a	145.787,5	-600 kHz	79.7	FI	JN53SR
RU0a	430.012,5	+1.6 MHz		FI
RU1a	430.037,5	+1.6 MHz		AR	JN53TP
RU2	430.050,0	+1.6 MHz	79.7	PI	JN53IQ
RU2a	430.062,5	+1.6 MHz	146.2	FI	JN53SR
RU3	430.075,0	+1.6 MHz	79,7	GR	JN53LD
RU3a	430.087,5	+1.6 MHz		MS	JN54BC
RU4	430.100,0	+1.6 MHz	 	FI	JN53SR
RU4a	430.112,5	+1.6 MHz	79.7 	MS	JN44XF
RU5	430.125,0	+1.6 MHz	 	AR
RU6a	430.162,5	+1.6 MHz		FI	JN53SR
RU8	430.200,0	+1.6 MHz	 	LU	JN53HW
RU9a	430.237,5	+1.6 MHz	 	FI	JN53LR
RU11	430.275,0	+1.6 MHz		FI	JN53QS
RU12	430.300,0	+1.6 MHz		FI	JN53SV
RU13	430.325,0	+1.6 MHz	 	FI	JN53OR
RU13	430.325,0	+1.6 MHz		MS	JN54AB
RU14	430.350,0	+1.6 MHz	 	GR	JN52RU
RU15	430.375,0	+1.6 MHz	88,5	GR	JN52TV
RU20	431.325,0	+1.6 MHz	88.5	AR	JN53XL
RU20	431.325,0	+1.6 MHz	88,5	FI	JN53SR
RU22	431.375,0	+1.6 MHz	88,5	SI	JN52TV
RU24	431.425,0	+1.6 MHz		PT
RU26a	431.487,5	+1.6 MHz		LU	JN53GU
RU27a	431.512,5	+1.6 MHz		AR
RU28	431.525,0	+1.6MHz	 	MS
RU28a	431.537,5	+1.6 MHz		GR

    In the Florence area, a popular repeater is the R6, on 145.750 -600 it is managed by ARI Firenze.

    QRZ.com new Design

    Posted in Featured, Ham Radio 2.0 Leave a comment

    QRZ.com

    Few hours ago QRZ.com published a new design interface.
    They moved from the full wide screen size to the more common 970 pixel wide template. Much more similar to most of the blogs and news web sites.

    One of the main innovations of this interface, is the navigation menu, that using the drop down feature allow a faster access to the numerous QRZ.com features.

    While the Main site template has changes, the Forum template has been unchanged, and this is maybe one of the worst things… a so professional web site, with an huge income in founds, I expect could invest more on usability and web design.

    In any case, the load time looks faster than before.

    500 KHz Beacon by ARI Milano

    Posted in DXing, Featured Leave a comment

    500 KHz Beacon ARI Milano

    ARI Milano obrained last october, for temporary period , the permission to operate on the 500 KHz band to develop experiments.

    After having obtained such permission, ARI Milano home made a vertical antenna with a capacitive toploading , a Transmitter and a Receiver for that band.

    A beacon has been setup with an ERP of 20 mW

    This LF Beacon can be received in CW  as IQ2MI and is followed by QRSS3 including the locato JN45NL

    Tipically during the day the Beacon is turned off, and is turned on only during the night CET.

     

    You can receive the beacon using a QRSS software like ARGO or other Weak Signal software

    More info on this beacon can read at IQ2MI Beacon Page