IW5EDI Simone – Ham-Radio

Florence HamFest 2013

A new interesting HamFest has been announced from my local ARI club.

The Florence HamFest, is a Flea Market and Ham Radio Convention that will take place on 6 April 2013 in Florence.

Link to english page of the Florence HamFest

During the last year edition, visitors were almost one thousand with 84 expositors.
Along to the flea market, has been reserved a space for local Amateur Radio Associations, including AMSAT, local ARI Sections and some DX Peditions crew like the guys from II0MZ Antartica.

Well this year looks like it will be more ham radio events scheduled, as member of the organization team I’m really pleased to see so much interest and enthusiasm around this event.

If you are interested on joining or simply visiting the HamFest we can reserve you a place to stay in Florence at a reasonable price.
This could be an interesting opportunity to mix ham radio with a Florence Tourist Tour.

Yaesu FT DX 3000 Sherwood Eng. Review

As promised me in November by Rob Sherwood, the new Yaesu FT DX 3000 has been reviewed and added to the world famous Receiver Test Data comparison table.

Table is sorted by dynamic range – narrow spaced, means tat when you are listening to stations with signals close up the one you are focusing, you will hear it better…

According to Rob measurements, the latest Yaesu HF transceiver, considering tha dynamic range values, places right under the entry lever line Kenwood TS-590s measured in donwconversion (20 m) and even the smallest FlexRadio 1500 it’s above it.
This confirm the excellent perfomance / price ratio of the 590′s receiver.

Personally I expected the Yaesu FT DX 3000 for the price being aproximately around 3000 Euros, to have superior receiving performance, considering that the 590 can be found here in Italy at almost half the price and decreading.

Honestly I’m a bit disappointed, since my expectations, reading Yaesu specifications table where much higher. Being a Yaesu Fan.. I expected a receiver performance in line with the price.

Thanks to Rob Sherwood for being in time as promised.. Great job ..as always.

Yaesu FTDX-3000

Also Yaesu present during this period a new product, the Yaesu FT DX 3000, a 100 Watt HF and 50 MHz amateur radio transceiver for the casual dxer and for the contester.

By using new down conversion and sharp edged crystal roofing filter technology, this trasceiver is positioned just under the bigger FT DX 5000.

Along to te FT DX 5000 is the sole Yaesu transceiver with a band scope and full digital display.

Aspect and dimension are very compact.

Price is not yet bee announced.

FTDX 3000 at Dayton by IZ4GWE

New FlexRadio FLEX-6500 and FLEX-6700

Smart SDR - FLex Radio

Rumors were tue about the Flex-6000 Series !
Flex-Radio just announced the new Flex-Radio systems FLEX 6500 and FLEX 6700

FLEX-6500 is an HF only SDR Radio while FLEX-6700 includes 6m band, there is also a FLEX-6700R that includes VHF.

FLEX-6000

More info and brochure can be found at FlexRadio Systems website or at the Dayton H amvention, while for Europeans probably will be possible to have a first look at these two new SDR radios in Friedrichshafen Ham Fest next month

FLEX 6000 Series

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 !

50 MHz International 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

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

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.

New 50MHz Band Plan

Looks like IARU Region 1 has published a new Band Plan for the ham radio six meters band, effective from January 2012.

Download a PDF of the latest
IARU R1 Bandplan 2012

or watch a presentation video at UK Six Meter group web site

QRZ.com new Design

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.