Hand held UHF - Wouxun

Howdy, Thanks to your advice, I also recently purchased a KG-UVD1P with the USB programming cable - My Windows 7 PC was having all sorts of trouble accepting the driver for the USB Serial interface cable (Prolific Technologies Chipset) that was downloaded from the Wouxun website - kept coming up with a Code 10 error. Anyway, after a bit of digging around, this is a very common problem which I have been able to fix using this driver sourced from this site

Akosta Innovations » Blog Archive » Problems with Prolific driver – Solution.

I hope this saves you from the headaches I was getting!!

Thanks to all of you for such detailed info. I was debating getting a handheld unit and after reading all of the above I have pulled the trigger on the OP recommended wouxon with a USB cable. Any feedback on how long shop409's gear takes to get here(Mel)?

from my experience, 5 days if you buy in a Hong Kong based shop, or 15 if it is in the inland china (to SYD)

Carlos

Hi I have the wouxem KG-UVD1P and very happy initially, It seems to have lost a bit on the recieve & transmit?? I am hoping someone out there has sucessfully set up all of the functions correctly in the available software.
I would like to know about Offsets, step frequencys etc. Any info would appreciated

G'day Andrew,

Sounds like you are still happy with the Wouxun but .....

One of the first things is to check that the battery is holding charge. If your initial voltage in the battery is down and you have all the battery save features enabled then the unit will respond accordingly by reducing power on transmit and sensitivity on receive. Which can make the unit seem like its losing its edge.

A good fully charged battery should show 8V or higher on first turn on. If your battery shows less than this immediately after charge then its on its way to that great big charger in the sky. Likewise if you don't use the radio often then it will be slowly draining the battery while it sits around. Recommendation there is to leave the fully charged battery off the radio when you're not using it for a while. Discharge rate is way slower when not attached to anything. The radio has a non-volatile memory for the programming so, unless you don't turn the unit on for a few years, this will remain.

These are merely hypotheses on my part though most modern radio technology is sometimes too clever for its own good with all the energy conservation features.

As to things like offsets - these are exactly what they say they are - frequency offsets (for duplex operation). They can be up to a 60MHz separation from memory. It is not much use to you if you are using your radio as a UHF CB handheld as the offsets there are set into the channel frequency allocations although for the duplex channels it is a consistent gap.

Some commercial applications and Amateur Radio operators use the offsets to space out the transmit and receive frequencies by a consistent amount (Whatever the offset has been preset to).

For both types of operator there is no requirement to know the transmit/receive combination as it is always the same separation regardless of the base frequency. The transmit or receive frequency can be the higher of the two. As an example, if you were to set the offset to 2MHz and you set the receive frequency to 468MHz then your transmit frequency becomes 470MHz. If you change to 468.75MHz, then your transmit then becomes 470.75MHz, and so on. You can even program the radio so that these can be swapped with a single button press. That is (using the above example) 468.75MHz becomes your transmit frequency and 470.75MHz your receive frequency. This is sometimes referred to as reverse duplex.

As to step frequencies, the radio has a number of frequency steps (or separations) ranging from 6.25KHz to 25KHz. The old 40 channel UHF CB channel plan used 25KHz channel steps, the new 80 channel (actually only 78) uses the same band start and finish frequencies but uses 12.5KHz channel steps.

Have a look at the sticky with the frequency allocations for the UHF CB band and that should become clearer.

Unlike some the manual for the KG-UVD1P is actually quite good and readable though I guess you have to know a little of the background to what you're reading on more than a few occasions.

Hope this helps some. Feel free to ask about anything else that puzzles you about the unit.

Cheers,
Iain

Thanks Rangiebit
I am using it as a UHF and have all the 78 channles as per an earlier post about the Wouxem on here.
I will check out the battery saving option first, I am assuming from what your saying that I do not need to program any offset's just the frequencys?? What do I do with the SFT-D option ? Should it be OFF,Plus shift or Minus Shift??
I must admit to playing around a bit and may have changed something that was best left alone? The other possibility is a damaged ariel, wondering is there a way to check ?

Thanks for your help will charge it up fully and go from there

Hello again,

The SFT-D option should be set to OFF as you have already programmed in both Transmit and Receive frequencies (assuming you used the table from those earlier posts).

The battery save setting on receive should still be OK. The other thing to watch is what you have the squelch set to. If you have it set too aggressively then you'll need somebody standing next to you and transmitting to open the squelch. Find an unoccupied frequency, or at least one that seems to have nothing but white noise. Then play around with the squelch settings until you find one that just manages to kill the white noise. You should be able to tinker with the settings via the keypad initially and then once you have a setting that works you can program it in to all of the channels via the programming lead.

As to checking for correct output power then this needs to be checked using a suitable power meter. Either one that can take the signal direct or determine it from a radiated signal. These are not necessarily expensive bits of kit but they don't tend to be in everyone's cupboard. If you're friends with a competent radio tech then they may be able to check this quickly for you. Otherwise if you think you may have damaged the antenna then its a cheap thing to replace. No harm in having a spare if this isn't the problem.

Cheers,
Iain

Thanks Again RangiBit

Think I have everything right now, Just need to take it on a trip to make sure. Hope its fixed, it's a great little radio when it's working properly.