Nice. You have our blessing to have them design a Arfcom field radio. 2m- 630, SSB FM, 15w, OD Green, Water proof, ATU, sound card, 1 cable digital Interface, blue tooth, LAN, etc...

Also has to have the arfcoms logo etched into the body of the radio. lol

Brings up an interesting idea.  

I wonder if they or another mfg would be willing to consider a bespoke package of this or other similar unit, and what the minimum order qty would be?

I will ask them about it. It does all that already less the ruggedness. I'm thinking of ideas now to make a small pack for it. The power output seems to be that sweet spot for portable. I've made contact with just about anyone I've tried tonight.

Do they have a MARS mod for it?

There is an out of band tx menu option but it doesn't do anything. That's another thing I'm going to ask about.

Also needs an attachable battery box that you can swap out cells. Maybe 21700's.

Cool. I've been looking at options for making an HF backpack. I was narrowing in on the FT-891 or the Xeigu G90. If this unit is as good or better, I'll take a look. But, for me, I need to have the MARS mod on my gear. (Got burned on that in PR and I've since rectified that.)

I am really intrigued by this thing. Would be an awesome upgrade to my "Ham Walker" for sure!

Yea, it would be the perfect size for that.

They fixed the band ranges so now it operates on all the included bands appropriately and also 136-174 and 400-470.

Cool

Any other quirks that still need to be ironed out?

Ok, so this definitely has my attention.

I'm looking for an HF mostly, but wanted potential portability without being a "portable" base rig. I just wanted more power than the typical portables and wanted the scope.

There were plenty of options that got me 75% of what I wanted, but most wound up being kinda high for my budget, this is in the low end of what I was thinking for price and seems to give me almost everything I wanted.

Rugged would be nice, but just "not fragile" is about all I really need. Having VHF in the same unit is definitely a bonus in the portable rig area.

It sounds like everything I care about is now working, assuming the LSB/USB issue is resolved. I'm mostly interested in 40-10m phone.

What's the scoop on the microphone? Easy to upgrade? Proprietary plug?   ETA: Wait, is that really just a 1/8" mic plug? lol guess that's one option.

Does the USB-C connector include an audio adapter and/or CAT control?


Answered my own question by RTFMing.  Yes, USB-C is CAT control.  Still looking for audio. And also audio.


Looks like a pretty good little device.  I'm sure tempted.

If it's like the HS1 (the McHF clone), the one USB cable for CAT/audio is awesome.  One of my favorite features of that radio, just plug it into the PC and switch the radio from Mic input to USB Dig input and away you go on digi modes.

I can't speak to the internal ruggedness but I have had it open and took some pics of the inside. I will upload some later. There are two main boards separated by standoffs and a multitude of various modules. The boards are mounted to a heavy aluminum plate with aluminum front and back ends that slide into one solid extruded aluminum box tube body. The result is a heavy solid feeling device. Heavy antennas on the back don't seem to cause any connector flex. It feels like holding an AR-10 lower, just one solid cold chunk of anodized aluminum.

I only received the new firmware this morning and did a brief test across bands but from what I can tell all HF bands are working normally now and if ALL is selected in the menu the full 136-174 / 400-470 band is there too. I tested it and it works. They warned that selecting ALL could cause an issue but I don't believe it. I think they are scared of being grouped into the Baofeng types and don't want people using it but didn't want to write it out of the firmware. I could be wrong but that's my guess since they hesitated even mentioning it at first until the new FW was out for a little while.

The quirks are mainly just missing features like menu items such as music and what not that aren't there. The main quirk is that there are zero memories, nothing. It will recall the last frequency and settings for each band range but that's it. It sounds to me like they intend or intended to manage all memory by a bluetooth linked app and have that run as the actual memory management brain. A Chinese ham forum mentioned a QQ group with the app stored somewhere for download but I haven't found it. I assume they are working on that still for full customer release.

Power seems to vary and is less than the advertised 30 watts. Again, I need time to test each band fully but it seemed to be about 15-20 watts on high with up to 30 on some bands. I know it worked fine though and I made a few contacts last weekend using a ground mounted vertical 27' tall in the back yard connected with a 25' cable.

The internal tuner seems to work well from what I've tested.

I tested the I/Q data out and it feeds SDRSharp fine if Funcube or Funcube Pro is selected as the receiver. Some have mentioned that with the new firmware remote control has a quirk where a new band selection needs to have the front MENU button pushed after it's selcted to confirm it. Not sure, haven't tried that yet.

The little bluetooth mic still didn't work right last FW revision but I haven't tested it yet with the new version. It had a bad buzz on TX. I looked inside, it and the radio both use a Feasycom serial/audio bluetooth module used in a lots of products. It's either the way the wired the mic into the module or something about the audio out to the radio's modulation I assume. I suppose it could also be an improper gain setting in firmware. There are some mic volume and compression menus that I should try to adjust first before giving up on that.

The bluetooth menu doesn't seem to do anything. It has graphics that indicate a search for devices and choose to pair but nothing happens. The mic and radio seem to be hard coded to eachother.

Would I feel confident that I could pack this out to a remote spot with some wire antennas and get on the air for the weekend. Absolutely! Power drain on receive seems very low. I ran the entire evening off one MBITR battery and still had plenty of power left after making several QSOs on 20 and 40. You could run it off a cell phone charger brick using USB C for receive and switch to the main 12V battery when you decided to transmit if you wanted to really save power or just mainly monitor.

The waterfall is only 48k wide but decent enough width for HF to see what's nearby. Its speed seems to drop by half if any receiver bandwidth other than the widest is selected or if the DSP noise reduction is on but it's not a problem. I prefer that speed anyway so things do go by too fast.

The noise reduction DSP is really pretty good and cuts the harsh SSB open squelch noise down to the typical quiet bubbly sounding DSP noise suppression you have probably heard in other radios. It does clean up the voice well too from the noise.

Overall, now that the frequency ranges are fixed I'm happy. I am definitely going to start working on some sort of frame/pack system to tote it around outside. I need a miniature 1/3 sized Harris PRC117 type of backpack for it. If I could sew like that guy in GD that pakes packs I could think of some neat ideas for it.

One of the biggest reasons i chose the IC-7300 over other radios from the big 3 was one USB cable for CAT and Audio.

As a newer Ham, and a child of the 80's and a 'tech' guy it's strange to me that the big three, particularly Yaesu, still seem to struggle with this.  Add on boxes for everything is just...  weird.

Good to see this works the same.

I thnk it works the same. There is a menu to choose different USB options. I hope it's not one or the other but I haven't explored that area yet. The firmware has strings that mention McHF for whatever that's worth. I did some exploring of the FW contents. There seems to be additional tuning adjustments in there that are not immediately available at the front panel such as specific band transmit power adjustment levels and frequency adjustments etc... I hope they offer a tuner type software that allows access to tweak some of these settings.

Will it transmit on marine SSB freqs?  Manual seems to indicate not but...

No, the ALL doesn't seem to affect HF out of band. The new FW menus have the three ITU regions and then ALL. I haven't tried the other ITU regions yet to see what they do other than just trying ALL. The main menu has a TX out of band menu option but it doesn't seem to do anything to adjust actual out of band capability. I hope they open that up as an option. I was hoping to see full 25-50 capability but it won't transmit there either, just the 10 and 6 ranges.

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Can you expound on the LORA feature?

I stumbled across some videos on YT talking about LORA and guys getting 20+ mile contacts on UHF using milliwatts. Seemed cool but never heard of it

Sorry, I can't. I didn't order the module with mine. It does sound interesting. I wish I had ordered it now but didn't know much about it at the time.

This is odd. I'm hearing better with the HS2, listening to a 20 meter QSO off a 1/4 wave 10 meter groundplane than I am off the IC-7300 using a 27' vertical.

LoRA is a radio tech popular with the arduino crowd.  I've played with it a little bit on some dev boards, but i am very very far from knowledgeable on it.

Think Internet of Things.  Ad-hoc sensor wireless mesh network.  Etc.

https://miliohm.com/how-to-send-sensor-value-using-lora-with-arduino/

https://www.electronics-lab.com/project/introduction-lora-send-data-two-arduino-using-lora/



Have you ever fished with jug lines?  Imagine building a small radio device built into the float which would transmit a signal when it sensed being jerked on, to its' closest neighbor, and so on until the packet hit one close enough to reach the receiver in your house.  all powered off a very low current computer board.

I actually breadboarded up a very simple proof of concept to do that.  Woulda taken quite a bit more effort to get the mesh part working, though.

So, I dug into the firmware to see what ASCII strings there were in there. I saw all the band ranges it can support. I saw reference to 23 cm wich is microwave 1.3 GHz.

It freakin transmits there! I just tested it against a PRO197 scanner set to 1296 MHz.

Nuts!


Crazy secure through obscurity close range comms potential.

Did you swap antennas to see if the difference was the antenna, not the radio? That is the most likely explanation.

No, was just mainly that one guy. It must have been something just right about that one signal.

Wow, I need to get a couple to play around with. Thanks for the explanation. It reminds me of old AX25 packet.

Stumbled across this today.

Any updates?

Not much yet to update. They broke the speech processor in the last update. You have to turn it off to get any normal transmit SSB audio. I asked yesterday about the status of any PC software and was told it's nearing completion. Not sure what it would really do without a memory storage structure in place in the firmware.

It seems that the Chicoms have good intentions, but their firmware updates on ham gear always seems to take forever to sort out.

I wounder if it's the language barrier or if it's just the rush to get something out and not fully testing it.

I think that's a big part of it. They are offering the Android app to beta test but it will only be in Chinese for now until the figure out the English text for it. I wish I had the dev tools I would try to go through and translate by searching for the chars and replacing them. It will be interesting to see what it will and won't do. I assume probably just simple tuning and volume control but who knows.

I remember reading in the manual the cat control is the same as a yeast radio.  817 possibly.


Possible their app is just sending cat commands over Bluetooth?  If so could be easy enough to rig up a proof of concept with any computer running Hamlib and has a Bluetooth adapter.

Yea it's the 817 CAT commands. I'm not sure about BT though. It seems they locked BT to that microphone they offer. I can't get it to see or pair to anything else. I think it's locked in the firmware. That is another thing they are supposed to work on I believe.

I had the radio out again tonight hooked to the vertical in the yard running off an MBITR battery. It really is an ideal survival type rig. The audio processing and sensitivity is impressive for what it is. I was hoping Yolanda from Ailunce would send me the Android app but the time shift seemed to mess things up. By the time I replied with my email it was the weekend and they go silent.

Any updates on this radio?

Nah not really. Sucks they seem to kind of be a fly by night thing. Mine had a line develop on the display and they actually did send me a new display promptly but as for the actual development it has been pretty silent.

It's a damn good SHTF stow in a pack radio for sure though. The tuner works and it covers most everything from 160 meters to 1.3 GHz.

So no more development on the app or firmware upgrades?

I was wrong!

They recently sent me a beta version of the latest. They fixed some thing and added memory channels now. You push and hold a button to toggle between VFO and memory operation. It holds 99 channels. No scan or anything but still a nice feature. They do seem to be working on it actively and are improving things as they go. They also released the remote control documentation which is nice.

Also, they have an SDR application they are working on releasing that is tailored to the unit although you can use SDRSharp or most any other already.

It's a nice little radio. I really enjoy it so far.

They promptly sent me a replacement display for mine for free that developed a crack. That too cracked again. I think something fell on the unit and slightly dented the frame causing a high spot that puts pressure on one spot that is not easily seen. I am purchasing two replacement displays  so I can fix it and have a spare once I find exactly where the bad spot is. I'm thinking of making something that goes over the display window too as a bit of protection since it's so small of a unit and is easy to bump around in a pack or bag.

This radio certainly has my attention. One question, I see separate HF/VHF antenna inputs in some photos, is this an option or just some beta version that never made it into wider production?

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Unfortunatly, no. It only has one antenna connection.

Thanks. Bummer, but not a deal breaker.

They released new firmware and control software. I'm just now getting a chance to use it but so far it's really neat. I can fully remote control the radio and also control the SDR functions. It should allow for remote operation as well if set up on a PC that can be remoted into since it has audio input and output options with drop down selections simlar to SDR#.

Attached File

I am interested on your thoughts, no rush, its neat seeing how things develop.

Oh, there's some APRS functionality too. I don't have the internal GPS module though.

Attached File

The biggest issue seems to be the varying power levels. They are all over the map it seems. I need to put it on the meter again to chart them but I'm sure it can be fixed if they release some sort of tuning software. It has its quirks, no scanning or searching or anything like that but it's definitely packed with features. It does all HF, 6 Meters, VHF, UHF and I was able to get it to transmit on 1.2 GHZ as well. Pretty neat so far. It doesn't draw much current on receive so it should be a great camping and hinking unit. I am going to make a display protector for it though out of some thin lexan. The display seems fragile but that could just be me having some run of bad luck. No others have reported displays breaking.

The software is really neat and packed with features but not nearly complete. I'm not yet able to get the software PTT to work and the built in baseband/audio recorder thorows an exeception. The rest seems pretty solid so far.

Mine showed up today. Ordered in in early December. In spite of asking DHL to call prior to delivery, they didn't.

Imagine my surprise when I saw it sitting on top of my mailbox that's on a highway, a mile from home, as I came back from getting groceries.

Very good impressions out of the box so far. It really is a single-cable digimodes, DC-to-Daylight rig (though power output past HF is pretty low.)

I'm just trying it out on Olivia right now, hopefully I can figure out how the internal APRS works, if it does without GPS.

Also curious to see how it handles SSB on VHF+.

Any thoughts on this vs the Xiegu G90 for portable / QRP / SOTA operation?

I currently have both. I just got the HS2 so I don't have a lot of TX time with it. That said -

For voice or CW, I think the G90 would be easier to use, and probably a little more rugged (but bigger and heavier, if you're hiking up.)

For digital modes the HS2 wins hands down just due to integration. The HS2 is much smaller and lighter as well.

The G90 is basically a voice-only rig so you'll need an interface box, associated cables and then a CAT cable if you want computer control.

G90 uses a "real" microphone (IIRC I think it's Icom compatible) and the HS2 uses a tiny tiny mic with a 1/8" TRS plug.

If you planned to do anything besides HF, the HS2 is going to win there as well. You can pretty much dial any freq you're authorized for up to 1.6 GHz and it will work. I haven't tested the tuners out to see if they're similar ranges, power output etc.

Fairly sure I'll be selling my G90 since I'm a digital mode guy and I like compact equipment where I mostly use a computer to operate it.

Gotta love the deliveries and waiting for a purchase. I ordered humidor drawers when my summer vacation was canceled... 6/21/20, haven't heard a peep, maybe I'll get a surprise some day.

I'm wondering if I should order one of these for another surprise..

Shipping time wasn't too bad -- they had a warning out to order soon in December due to Chinese New Year delaying things.

As far as the wait:

Order confirmed 12/12/20
Order shipped 1/31/2021
Radio in hand 2/5/2021 (possibly delivered on 2/3 or 2/4).

So not quite two months, and most of the delay was on Ailunce's end, probably building another batch.

Mine was $643 all in.