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The ANILE-8R was not the first Anytone Tech model I unpacked, but it will be the first to be reviewed thanks to its simplicity.

Baofeng vs Anytone
In terms of design this radio resembles the Baofeng BF-666S/BF-777S/BF-888S series: 16 channels, no thrills no frills, no display – just on/off/volume, a flashlight and a 16-channel selector. Both radios tell you which channel is active by using a speech processor. Based on this the two radios could be regarded as competitors.

I kept my Baofeng BF-666S in spite of its generous amount of flaws: the receiver can be trashed by about any out-of-band signal or mixer product, the oscillator isn’t stable (phase noise, which causes reciprocal mixing), and RX audio sounds raw, unfinished even. TX audio however is fine, battery life is great, and the price (below $20) is hard to beat.

The consequence of Baofeng’s cheap design is that I only can use the radio when I’m far enough away from any RF pollution. As you can imagine I was very curious if the ANILE-8R would outperform the Baofeng or not.

In the box
The radio, antenna, 7.4 Volts 1300 mAh battery, charger, power adapter, headset, small strap, manual.

Build quality
These radios are ideal for outdoor activities, because there’s not much you can break. The Baofeng already did well, but the Anytone feels much sturdier. It’s well built.

Side keys
There are three side keys and you can program them yourself. At default the upper key will switch on the flashlight, the middle one will tell you the remaining battery voltage, and the last one will bypass the squelch (monitor).

Programming options
Scanning, priority channel selection, CTCSS, DCS, and DTMF calling methods (individual or group calls).

Phase noise
The first thing I looked at was phase noise. During instruction evenings I use the Baofeng as the prime example of poor design; all I could hope for was that Anytone did a better job. They did.

The first image shows the Baofeng (notice the wide ‘shoulders’ which shouldn’t be there), the second image is the Anytone. I slightly zoomed in on the Anytone carrier to get a better view.

Harmonics
The Baofeng has no detectable harmonics, the ANILE-8R has one at -57.62 dBm. It’s just short of the -60 dBm I like to see, but nothing to worry about.

TX audio: loud and clear, just excellent. The most memorable quote from a listener was “I can’t tell the difference between this one and your gear at home.”

RX audio: Same story: loud and clear, with no noticeable distortion.

Sensitivity (@ 435 MHz): -125 dBm (@ 50Ω, 12 dB SINAD).

Frequency accuracy of this sample: -26 Hz.

Power output (@435 MHz): 1.2 Watts / 4.2 Watts.

Front-end: good. Unlike the Baofeng, the receiver doesn’t collapse quickly.

Bugs:
I noticed that RX audio muted when I switched on the flashlight. Audio stayed muted while a signal was present. Audio came back after:

• the carrier dropped and returned
• pressing PTT or one of the side keys.

Toggling the flashlight on/off had no influence.

I forwarded the bug to John K3NXU (Miklor) and the owner of Anytone Tech. It didn’t take long before my findings were confirmed. However, a few days later I found an option in the software which caught my eye: “Eliminate Squelch Tail When No CTCSS/DCS Signaling”. The default value was 55.2 Hz. When set to ‘Off’, the strange influence of the flashlight on reception is gone. Problem solved.

Conclusion:
Anytone Tech’s ANILE-8R is a very good radio and can make you forget the Baofeng BF series. Only when I start nitpicking I could make a remark about the belt clip. It didn’t seem to be designed for this radio, as there was quite a gap between the clip and the battery. I solved the problem by bending it a little bit.

Price: $46.99 (Amazon)
More information: Anytone Tech.

Remember that album from Mike Oldfield? A user on YouTube found out that this album contains a hidden and unintentional CW message.

This was caused by a powerful VLF station located next to the recording studio, which interfered with the recording equipment. Because the signal is very weak nobody ever noticed it — until now.

The video below shows you how to receive VLF signals with nothing else than an antenna plugged into the microphone input of your sound card and SDRSharp to make it visible and audible.

The decoding of the the Tubular Bells signal is shown at 9:54.

(via Reddit)

Without much (if any) advertising the Google+ ‘Chinese Ham Radio Equipment‘ community reached a 1000 members today. I intentionally made the community public, so there’s no need for a Google account in order to read there.

The downside of a community becoming larger is spam. Some of it is captured by Google itself and kept in a moderation queue, but some of it slips through and has to be deleted by the moderators. Because the moderators live in different time zones, spam never lives long.

What I still miss a bit there is the interactive part. If the community would be just another URL with the same content, it’s basically pointless. Questions about Chinese ham radio? Ask there, there’s a lot of knowledge and experience there.

Also nice: a carton box.

The carton box didn’t waste much time to cover the distance between the USA and Europe, but took almost the same amount of time to travel from Amsterdam Schiphol airport to my QTH — a one hour drive under the most challenging traffic conditions. Customs took their time…

Icom Inc. has published firmware update E3 for the IC-7100 on their global website. This new firmware has been designed to improve RX audio quality.

The following firmware have been updated:

• CPU M to Version 1.04
• DSP I to Version 1.02

The new firmware can be downloaded here.

I saw it posted to QRP-L and is also appearing on the Web page for QRP Kits, that Doug Hendricks has sold the business. The new owners will be James Bennett and Kathy Long who own Pacific Antenna. For those of you who might not know, Pacific Antenna is the home of the PAC-12 antenna, a very popular portable, lightweight multi-band vertical. The target date for the takeover is April 1st.

It states that Doug will continue on as a consultant, but has decided to fully retire and will no longer be involved in the day-to-day operations of the company.

This is significant news and Doug has long been an advocate of bringing affordable, relatively easy to build kits to the QRP community. He has collaborated with Steve Weber and others in recent years to market such radios as the PFR-3, the Ft. Tuthill transceivers, and many other receivers, tuners, and useful accessories as well as pieces of quality, yet inexpensive test gear.

Best wishes to Doug KI6DS, as he embarks on his retirement. Maybe now he'll get more of a chance to get on the air more and enjoy the hobby he has supported for so many years.

On a similar note, when Dave Benson K1SWL ended his business, Small Wonder Labs a few years ago, it looked like a gloomy day for the QRP world. However, many of Dave's kits have been picked up by QRPMe and now I see Dave post to QRP-L every now and then about radio events that he is actually able to participate in and enjoy.

So we have the best of both worlds in that these long time QRP stalwarts are passing the torch to the next generation of QRP entrepreneurs. Not only are we not losing their life's work, but at the same time, we're actually getting the chance to meet and converse with these QRP icons on the air. Seems to be a win/win situation.

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP - When you care to say the very least!

This article follows up on this one. The title could also be: doing measurements on hand held radios is hard. Actually, some measurements I did in the past might not be so accurate after all.

Measuring in dBm
If you measure in dBm, what I always did, you assume that the device at the other end is 50 Ohms, just like the manufacturer promises you in the specs. Slowly but surely we are finding out that this is not always the case. As a result I might have to switch to microvolt (µV), a method which doesn’t require a perfect 50 Ohms at the other end.

Can’t we just convert it? 0.5 µV @ 50 ohms = -113 dBm, a piece of cake, right? No. You must know the actual impedance of the receiver if you want to convert from dBm to µV. Erik PE1RQF did some measurements on a few hand held radios to find out the true impedance. The outcome was, well, a bit scary.

What this means for us
What this outcome basically means is that generating cold numbers on sensitivity and antenna performance are nice, but don’t tell the whole story, or could be misleading.

• Antennas which prove to be the best performers (RX/TX, VSWR), tested under optimal conditions, are not necessarily the best performers on a specific brand/model of hand held radio.
• There are antennas which aren’t 50 Ohms at all, but could very well outperform everything else on the market because your radio isn’t 50 Ohms either.

Do the test yourself
The best example I can give you is this one: take a Baofeng BF-666S, 777S or 888S, use the stock antenna, and make notes of the performance in the field. Try to hit repeaters which are barely in range. If you have a field strength meter, measure field strength when transmitting.

Remove the stock antenna and replace it by a Nagoya NA-701, NA-771, the $3.79 antenna, or the Baofeng UV-B5 antenna. I tried all of these; just pick whatever 3rd party antenna you have. Repeat the tests.

What happened here is that the short stock antenna was the best of the bunch, all 3rd party antennas had a negative influence on the performance of this specific Baofeng model. The same 3rd party antennas mentioned above did improve the performance of the Baofeng UV-5R, often by a wide margin.

Exception to the rules
The funny thing is that reception suffered greatly too. This is quite uncommon and a sign that hand held radios don’t follow the rules. For example, if you just want to receive on 20 meters and your dipole is 2×6 meters instead of 2×5 meters, you would never notice the difference. With your hand held radio however you will.

Privacy and freedom are constantly traded in for a (often false) sense of security. This has nothing to do with ham radio, you’d probably think, but even our hobby isn’t immune.

Repeaters
Repeaters are only useful if the antennas can be placed high above ground. In the Netherlands we use a number of existing locations, most of which were once used for analog TV and radio. The owners of the towers decided that safety and security will prevail over (safe, terrorist-free) ham radio.

The following systems will be affected:

• ATV repeater PI6ATV, both analog and digital,
• 2 meter repeater PI3UTR,
• D-star repeater PI1UTR,
• DMR repeater PI1UTR,
• RX co-location for the 70cm repeater PI2NOS,
• RX co-location for the 10 meter repeater PI6TEN,
• Four Hamnet access points and links.

There is a chance that the equipment can be relocated to a lower section of the tower while keeping the antennas on the original altitude. Even in the best case scenario the costs of relocating will exceed the minimal financial reserves – good coax cable is expensive, and we would need a lot of it.

I’ll end with this quote: Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. (Benjamin Franklin)