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