My radio finally arrived. 3 days of shipping after 8 days to restock. I can't fuss considering what I paid for the radio, just the accessories, and no cost for shipping. Gigaparts Customer service was great. Battery is charging now, I'm downloading the programming software. NOTE: if you don't already have a two-pin programming cable from another radio set , be sure to order one with your radio... I did buy the battery that charges by USB-C cable for the car, just because. I hope to try the radio out tonight!
Can these be unlocked to operate on GMRS frequencies? I have both licenses, and would like to utilize one radio rather than two.
Does anyone know if there's a download page for this radio for manuals and such? My son is getting his in the mail, just waiting for it, but wanted to view the manual to help him out.
Scan mode, yes, choice of 3 modes: carrier (scanner halts on a signal and holds until end of transmission), time (scanner stops for a set period of time then restarts if you don't push a button) or stop (scanner stops when it hits an active signal, you have to re-start). I did not find a downloadable manual, but there are some pretty good youtube videos.
Just got my radio! It shipped quite fast, I passed my tech and general on Tuesday 10/18 and was able to get my call sign and sign up for an account on QRZ and order my radio. I received my radio Monday 10/24. I programmed in a few local repeaters and got a hold of a friend of mine. he said was loud and clear. I released it didn't come with programming cable. So I later placed an order for that, but its on back order and expected to ship in a couple weeks. Which gives me time to practice manually entering in memory channels. It is very nice of QRZ and Giga parts to offer this program. I didnt even have to pay shipping for the radio. I plan to order the USB-C Battery as that would be a nice feature. I highly recommend reading the manual a couple times over. very helpful. Shout out to the folks on Reddit who recommend me the program.
I got one, but the manual seems to have several mistakes. I am completely unable to save frequencies to memory as directed, and look at the description for the reset option in the menu! After some self-contradictory gibberish, it literally says “See page XX for more information” at the end. Help would be appreciated!
@KQ4DVX - You're probably asking for how to do this from the radio, which I have just tried using the instruction on page 30 (Channels Storage and Delete). That seems to be working for me. Although I opted to use the free software Chirp, which recently supports this radio; this works just fine to program all the channels and other settings. Download here: https://trac.chirp.danplanet.com/chirp_daily/LATEST/. I got my son's radio setup in half an hour or so. This assume you already have the programming cable though. You may want to give that a shot. Incidentally, my son's call sign is KQ4DXV, which is the same as yours except that the last two characters are swapped. Welcome to the hobby.
I also took advantage of this after the examiner of my Technician test informed me about it. Really appreciate the companies and organizations that made this happen! A couple of observations and a question below: - I programmed it with Chirp, which worked fine. The manufacturer is listed as Explorer, which tripped me up at first. Gigaparts' cables are backordered but a Baofeng cable from Amazon worked. I have not tried the included software as I don't have a Windows machine. - I bought a Signal Stick for it. You'll want one or two of the rubber spacers they sell, the connector is tall. - The manual you can download from gigaparts (link below) has a couple of errors. Most are trivial, but one that actually matters is that the manual claims menu option 21 "sets the FM transmission modulation level. Wide (25 kHz) is the default option and is most common for amateur repeaters in the US. The Narrow setting is 12.5 kHz." In reality there are three settings (wide, medium, and narrow), and I don't have the equipment to test whether "medium", which it seems to default to, is actually 25kHz. The TYT UV-88 manual (also below) is no help here. Now for a question that maybe someone with more experience can help me with. It seems like there is something funky about the squelch. I have a bunch of repeaters programmed and if I set it to scan it will stop when it hears traffic. However, if I stop the scan and just leave it on that station it will not turn on the speaker at the same signal level that it identified as traffic while scanning even with squelch at 1. So I can scan, run into an active net, and listen to it while I leave it on scan until there is a pause long enough that it continues scanning. But if I just tune to that same repeater I don't hear anything unless I hold down the monitor button, in which case I hear folks loud and clear. I can also turn on my UV-5R with a rubber duck and the same traffic will pass the squelch threshold at a medium setting like 4 or 5. This doesn't seem to be CTCSS related, as I've had it happen on a repeater with no tone. Did I get a dud, or am I doing something dumb? Manual link: https://0f03806ff3d3e74e9602-196c53d60dd8027754ef96352b4703ae.ssl.cf2.rackcdn.com/downloads/Explorer QRZ-1 Manual Print Ready.pdf UV-88 manual: https://fccid.io/POD-ADB5/User-Manual/user-manual-4578462.pdf
This sounds like an excellent program!!! Kudos to GigaParts, QRZ! and RT systems. I hope the price that RT Systems is getting for their software in this program is a very small portion of the price. I am not saying anything bad about their software, from my exposure to it (seeing it used, hearing others talk about it), it is great software. Under this program their software is getting a lot of exposure (both the new hams and elmers helping the new haps) and will probably generate future sales. Perhaps GigaParts, RT Systems and QRZ can solicit support for this program by adding a Donation Option to their check out pages to continue to offer discounted prices beyond their current plans. I'm and old ham, planning to purchase one of these systems at the normal price. 73 Ben - ne5B
I really appreciate the starter program that QRZ and Gigaparts offered, and I received my QRZ-1 just the other day. However, I can’t seem to alter it’s programming. I follow the instructions, but the radio does not respond to the programming. I downloaded the rs system’s software that came in the box, but the Mac version offered won’t run on my Mac (which has the latest version software). I can’t even erase the two channels that it came with. So far, it’s been a very frustrating experience. Is anyone else having the same difficulties with the QRZ-1? Thanks, Randy KC1RZR
As a follow up with my first post, I called RT systems and they were very helpful. No problems with that, however I tried using a Mirkit programming cable which I already had and would connect but could not get the data into the radio.
