“Croak” said the PC.

Well, it’s coming up on Old Yeller time for my venerable Pentium D box that has been a trusty companion across three moves, and well over a decade of service.

I’ll have to evaluate what I’m currently using it for in the shack, and if possible, replace it with a Raspberry Pi. There may be too many things connected for a Pi to be reasonable though, and don’t go telling me the wonders of USB hubs, m’kay?

 

Juentai JT-6188 – Budget priced, tiny, medium power

I was an early adopter on this new breed of relatively inexpensive Chinese mobile radios that are imported under a few names.

After a few frustrating attempts to program repeater offsets by hand into the unit, a small group of owners worked through it on social media. I did eventually grab a programming cable that works with the 3,5mm jack on the back (which is NOT an external speaker jack, and then discovering that the programming software defaults to Chinese…but has a Chinese menu option for English, I got my local repeaters programmed in. This meant having to calculate the offset for each repeater since the software does not to that by itself.

Happily, these radios are now supported by CHIRP!

 

JT-6188

 

 

Fo Time Podcast Rebranded

Fo Time, The Other Ham Radio Podcast is now:

Ham Radio 360

While this rebranding will insure that some segments of the potential audience are mollified, my personal opinion is that something of the spirit and the reason the podcast is started will be lost. That being said, it’s not my circus, those ain’t my monkeys. Good luck, Cale!

Regardless of the name, the podcast is an excellent resource for new hams, and hams looking to get into other previously unexplored aspects of the hobby.