4 ms·

Ham Imports

90 points by thcipriani 3y ago

Aloha 3y ago
I've historically seen bad spectral purity results from the Chinese gear (particularly the stuff intended to be used in Part 90 Service, which was not type accepted). Because of that, I tend to avoid it. For VHF/UHF I tend to go to surplus Part 90 gear - but I've been itching to get into HF, and some of these look like attractive options for that.
jauntywundrkind 3y ago
There's a good amount of SDR equipment in the lists here. I don't have great newfeeds for SDR but I kind of thought it'd gotten a good bit quieter. Interesting to see these very productized counter-examples about. The actual "SDR" listed is indeed a very fancy rtl-sdr, but there's also a radio with a not-too-shabby 130MSPS 16-bit ADC. I'd love some good news sources/feeds for keeping up with SDR. I don't know where I'd go look to keep apace, to hear of new emerging projects & boards.
- edrxty 3y ago
  The sdr situation is rough right now. The typical people who are hams and are buying the bulk of the radios are not the kind of people who are great with computers at anywhere near the level necessary to benefit from SDR. These same people also fight back against regulatory changes that would benefit the strengths of sdr (usually anything bandwidth related). There are products out there but they generally require SWE level expertise to use unless all you want to do is listen to AM/FM. The only one that really has gotten anywhere is the IC-7300 but it's software locked to behave like an old superhet radio but with a waterfall and it famously doesn't allow IQ output because the legacy manufacturers are assholes. Everyone is market segmenting heavily off of firmware features instead of allowing the hardware to be used for custom applications so very few makers are doing interesting things with sdr beyond the rtl-sdr.
  - mikewarot 3y ago
    If you want to play with the intersection of radio and software, get an SDR dongle kit, and put GNU Radio on your laptop to play with it. You'll learn a ton about DSP and the things are fairly amazing, considering the price. Also know that GNU radio can do audio I/O... so you can hear what you output, if you just want to play with sine generators, etc. I managed to build a VOR receiver (flowchart) that correctly gets the bearing (heading?) to my local beacon. It was fun.
    - jauntywundrkind 3y ago
      This has huge appeal to me, but I have no idea what I'd be missing or what weaknesses such a setup would have versus spending hundreds of dollars on a splashy portable radio.
      - mikewarot 3y ago
        The main weakness, in terms of use, is that you're lugging around a laptop with a dongle sticking out of it... which could break. The CPU and I/O over USB speed of modern laptops is amazing. The main technical weakness is that $30 RTLSDR dongles only have 8 Bit ADCs, but then you're down-sampling the heck out of things, so that really doesn't matter, either.
        jauntywundrkind 3y ago
        I carry around laptops anyways so that's less of a concern. I also have played around with using my phone's USB port for USB audio & video recording, and hope for more growth over time in that segment; even smaller an option, with similarly huge CPU & I/O. In my fantasy world, I could plug a SDR into any device & load a webapp with webusb, that under the hood uses webgpu for acceleration. Im going to try to list a couple more limitations. Rtl-sdr notably is Rx only; price goes up a lot I think with tx too. I'm not sure what kind of amplifiers ham radios have (tx only? Rx too?) but at least having a couple W output would be good. And maybe a Rx amplifier, especially if we are talking low bit depth. Other elements in the analog path of ham gear might be filters; I don't know what radios tend to have builtin versus what hams tend to add themselves here, but that seems like another factor. I bought & have barely used a pretty fancy LimeSDR USB device a long time ago (~$300 then, wish they still made it!). I keep meaning to come back & even finally bought a range of antennas for it. I look at stuff like the $1300 LimeRFE front end, & radio products like this submission & wonder what analog stuff is missing, wonder what else a good ham-grade SDR might have that the dongles & higher end SDR might not have. I like the idea of going software based a lot, it seems appealing, but I think I'm missing an understanding of what hardware is important, is still super good to have.
- 8bitsrule 3y ago
  Search the site hackaday.com/ for a lot of articles on 'SDR' and 'software-defined radio' going way back. This site seems to be keeping on top of 'software defined radio news and projects': https://www.rtl-sdr.com/ https://www.rtl-sdr.com/ ... and it has a forum. YTube has some interesting info on what's going on.
w-ll 3y ago
This an affiliate link dump site right? Nothing new of information at all? Even the blog looks like gpt3
- HamImports 3y ago
  No, not at all. It's a database of available models using accurate specs and not just the marketing BS used by Ali Express sellers. Basically a modern RigPix, but solely for Chinese rigs. We do use affiliate links, but only as an alternative to having ads on the site. While most HN readers will probably run an adblocker, most hams probably don't.
b20000 3y ago
i thought, great, finally a place to buy reasonably priced authentic imported prosciutto from italy in bulk or whole leg, but no.
- Aperocky 3y ago
  depend on what you mean by reasonably priced, I thought they always cost about the same (that is, expensive).
  - b20000 3y ago
    not sure but i think distributors in the US add on a stupid high markup that said you can get a leg for 200 bucks on amazon i think i have been thinking of hanging one from the ceiling in our apartment and eat from it when i need a break but my wife won’t let me
- swiftcoder 3y ago
  I thought for a moment that someone finally built out the jamon iberico dropshipping business I've been dreaming of.
  - afandian 3y ago
    I thought I was about to find out what our erstwhile Prime Minister has been doing since leaving office. Maybe she did succeed in Beijing. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qfkSYY3OV-s https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qfkSYY3OV-s
x62Bh7948f 3y ago
There was a more or less visible campaign against Chinese made radios recently in Japan (mostly due to transmitting without a license and also the fact that the transmission itself caused a lot of noise in a wide spectrum. I’m not a ham but I’m interested in radios, so my terminology and what I understood about the “offending” transceivers might not be accurate) The popular Baofeng UV-5R (or a close model/clone) is available at Amazon and Rakuten, but I got cold feet about buying one of the noisy units and be visited by the Radio G Men. The price of Japanese made units is 5 times more, but on the review sites I consulted, they all agree the quality is worth the price (I looked for Yaesu units). Related: Japanese news segment about illegal transceivers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNGSJFSMvlA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNGSJFSMvlA
- ajsnigrutin 3y ago
  Yep, there's a subreddit for baofeng radios on reddit, and probably 3/4 of posters there have no licence at all and just bought the radios because of the combination of being cheap and the ability to get "tactical" variants (camo colored, useless huge antennas, etc.). They usually have no idea how to program the radio (input frequencies/channels) and just use the preset ones which are set to seemingly random frequencies, sometimes even outside of ham bands.
- cdchn 3y ago
  I don't know how it is in Japan with how fervently they defend spurious transmission but in the US we have people doing "key down contests" which is the radio equivalent of "side shows" or / road takeovers and there is barely any enforcement against them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ef6z3MaLOrU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ef6z3MaLOrU
Wronnay 3y ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20230911030028/https://hamimports.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20230911030028/https://hamimport...
HamImports 3y ago
Thanks for posting the link! We're trying to list all of the low cost radios coming out of China and make an accurate DB of all the specs. It can be tricky trying to cut through all the marketing BS, so we're doing our best to only include verified information. We've all seen the "12000w" Baofengs and we wanted a place for hams to see what the real specs are, and compare rigs they might be interested in. Of course these radios are not on the same level as the ones from Icom, Yaesu, etc, but they cost 1/10th of the price in some cases. Reset your expectations and consider that not everyone can afford a StepIR on a 200ft tower, fed with heliax, and an Apache ANAN. There's a lot of innovation happening (especially with HF rigs) and quality is improving all the time. We're adding new radios almost every day, so give us a follow on Twitter to keep up with the latest data: https://twitter.com/HamImports https://twitter.com/HamImports

90 points by thcipriani 3y ago

I've historically seen bad spectral purity results from the Chinese gear (particularly the stuff intended to be used in Part 90 Service, which was not type accepted). Because of that, I tend to avoid it. For VHF/UHF I tend to go to surplus Part 90 gear - but I've been itching to get into HF, and some of these look like attractive options for that.

jauntywundrkind 3y ago

There's a good amount of SDR equipment in the lists here. I don't have great newfeeds for SDR but I kind of thought it'd gotten a good bit quieter. Interesting to see these very productized counter-examples about. The actual "SDR" listed is indeed a very fancy rtl-sdr, but there's also a radio with a not-too-shabby 130MSPS 16-bit ADC. I'd love some good news sources/feeds for keeping up with SDR. I don't know where I'd go look to keep apace, to hear of new emerging projects & boards.

edrxty 3y ago
The sdr situation is rough right now. The typical people who are hams and are buying the bulk of the radios are not the kind of people who are great with computers at anywhere near the level necessary to benefit from SDR. These same people also fight back against regulatory changes that would benefit the strengths of sdr (usually anything bandwidth related). There are products out there but they generally require SWE level expertise to use unless all you want to do is listen to AM/FM. The only one that really has gotten anywhere is the IC-7300 but it's software locked to behave like an old superhet radio but with a waterfall and it famously doesn't allow IQ output because the legacy manufacturers are assholes. Everyone is market segmenting heavily off of firmware features instead of allowing the hardware to be used for custom applications so very few makers are doing interesting things with sdr beyond the rtl-sdr.
- mikewarot 3y ago
  If you want to play with the intersection of radio and software, get an SDR dongle kit, and put GNU Radio on your laptop to play with it. You'll learn a ton about DSP and the things are fairly amazing, considering the price. Also know that GNU radio can do audio I/O... so you can hear what you output, if you just want to play with sine generators, etc. I managed to build a VOR receiver (flowchart) that correctly gets the bearing (heading?) to my local beacon. It was fun.
  - jauntywundrkind 3y ago
    This has huge appeal to me, but I have no idea what I'd be missing or what weaknesses such a setup would have versus spending hundreds of dollars on a splashy portable radio.
    - mikewarot 3y ago
      The main weakness, in terms of use, is that you're lugging around a laptop with a dongle sticking out of it... which could break. The CPU and I/O over USB speed of modern laptops is amazing. The main technical weakness is that $30 RTLSDR dongles only have 8 Bit ADCs, but then you're down-sampling the heck out of things, so that really doesn't matter, either.
      - jauntywundrkind 3y ago
        I carry around laptops anyways so that's less of a concern. I also have played around with using my phone's USB port for USB audio & video recording, and hope for more growth over time in that segment; even smaller an option, with similarly huge CPU & I/O. In my fantasy world, I could plug a SDR into any device & load a webapp with webusb, that under the hood uses webgpu for acceleration. Im going to try to list a couple more limitations. Rtl-sdr notably is Rx only; price goes up a lot I think with tx too. I'm not sure what kind of amplifiers ham radios have (tx only? Rx too?) but at least having a couple W output would be good. And maybe a Rx amplifier, especially if we are talking low bit depth. Other elements in the analog path of ham gear might be filters; I don't know what radios tend to have builtin versus what hams tend to add themselves here, but that seems like another factor. I bought & have barely used a pretty fancy LimeSDR USB device a long time ago (~$300 then, wish they still made it!). I keep meaning to come back & even finally bought a range of antennas for it. I look at stuff like the $1300 LimeRFE front end, & radio products like this submission & wonder what analog stuff is missing, wonder what else a good ham-grade SDR might have that the dongles & higher end SDR might not have. I like the idea of going software based a lot, it seems appealing, but I think I'm missing an understanding of what hardware is important, is still super good to have.
8bitsrule 3y ago
Search the site hackaday.com/ for a lot of articles on 'SDR' and 'software-defined radio' going way back. This site seems to be keeping on top of 'software defined radio news and projects': https://www.rtl-sdr.com/ https://www.rtl-sdr.com/ ... and it has a forum. YTube has some interesting info on what's going on.

w-ll 3y ago

This an affiliate link dump site right? Nothing new of information at all? Even the blog looks like gpt3

HamImports 3y ago
No, not at all. It's a database of available models using accurate specs and not just the marketing BS used by Ali Express sellers. Basically a modern RigPix, but solely for Chinese rigs. We do use affiliate links, but only as an alternative to having ads on the site. While most HN readers will probably run an adblocker, most hams probably don't.

b20000 3y ago

i thought, great, finally a place to buy reasonably priced authentic imported prosciutto from italy in bulk or whole leg, but no.

Aperocky 3y ago
depend on what you mean by reasonably priced, I thought they always cost about the same (that is, expensive).
- b20000 3y ago
  not sure but i think distributors in the US add on a stupid high markup that said you can get a leg for 200 bucks on amazon i think i have been thinking of hanging one from the ceiling in our apartment and eat from it when i need a break but my wife won’t let me
swiftcoder 3y ago
I thought for a moment that someone finally built out the jamon iberico dropshipping business I've been dreaming of.
- afandian 3y ago
  I thought I was about to find out what our erstwhile Prime Minister has been doing since leaving office. Maybe she did succeed in Beijing. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qfkSYY3OV-s https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qfkSYY3OV-s

x62Bh7948f 3y ago

There was a more or less visible campaign against Chinese made radios recently in Japan (mostly due to transmitting without a license and also the fact that the transmission itself caused a lot of noise in a wide spectrum. I’m not a ham but I’m interested in radios, so my terminology and what I understood about the “offending” transceivers might not be accurate) The popular Baofeng UV-5R (or a close model/clone) is available at Amazon and Rakuten, but I got cold feet about buying one of the noisy units and be visited by the Radio G Men. The price of Japanese made units is 5 times more, but on the review sites I consulted, they all agree the quality is worth the price (I looked for Yaesu units). Related: Japanese news segment about illegal transceivers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNGSJFSMvlA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNGSJFSMvlA

ajsnigrutin 3y ago
Yep, there's a subreddit for baofeng radios on reddit, and probably 3/4 of posters there have no licence at all and just bought the radios because of the combination of being cheap and the ability to get "tactical" variants (camo colored, useless huge antennas, etc.). They usually have no idea how to program the radio (input frequencies/channels) and just use the preset ones which are set to seemingly random frequencies, sometimes even outside of ham bands.
cdchn 3y ago
I don't know how it is in Japan with how fervently they defend spurious transmission but in the US we have people doing "key down contests" which is the radio equivalent of "side shows" or / road takeovers and there is barely any enforcement against them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ef6z3MaLOrU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ef6z3MaLOrU

Wronnay 3y ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20230911030028/https://hamimports.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20230911030028/https://hamimport...

HamImports 3y ago

Thanks for posting the link! We're trying to list all of the low cost radios coming out of China and make an accurate DB of all the specs. It can be tricky trying to cut through all the marketing BS, so we're doing our best to only include verified information. We've all seen the "12000w" Baofengs and we wanted a place for hams to see what the real specs are, and compare rigs they might be interested in. Of course these radios are not on the same level as the ones from Icom, Yaesu, etc, but they cost 1/10th of the price in some cases. Reset your expectations and consider that not everyone can afford a StepIR on a 200ft tower, fed with heliax, and an Apache ANAN. There's a lot of innovation happening (especially with HF rigs) and quality is improving all the time. We're adding new radios almost every day, so give us a follow on Twitter to keep up with the latest data: https://twitter.com/HamImports https://twitter.com/HamImports