Category Archives: General

Two New Xiegu Firmware Updates

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The folks at Xiegu have provided minor updates to their popular G90 and the newer G106 transceivers.

G90 Changelog

UPDATE DISP UNIT ONLY!!
File: G90_DispUnit_Fw_V1.80
SHA-256: B0730B08500DFDD2BA767B390CD349606252B0B44FBBA7DE3130F192A1493F3A

[EN]
1. To work with JTDX/WSJTX (or some other data mode softwares), add CI-V commands 0x25,0x26,
   See <<XIEGU RADIO CI-V REFERENCE>> and <<XIEGU RADIO JTDX WSJTX SETTINGs>>
2. Add CI-V command 0x1d 0x19, read the XIEGU RADIO ID,
   See <<XIEGU RADIO CI-V REFERENCE>>

And for the G106

[EN]
1. To work with JTDX/WSJTX (or some other data mode softwares), add CI-V commands 0x25,0x26,
   See <<XIEGU RADIO CI-V REFERENCE>> and <<XIEGU RADIO JTDX WSJTX SETTINGs>>
2. Add CI-V command 0x1d 0x19, read the XIEGU RADIO ID,
   See <<XIEGU RADIO CI-V REFERENCE>>
3. Bug fix: Can't totally mute when RX volum set to 0
4. Bug fix: ACC TRX Pin is output only (now it's bidirectional)
5. Bug fix: Won't lock the long press key
6. Set RX audio bandwidth to 10~3300Hz in data mode

Neither brings with it substantive capability updates, but always nice to see a company continue to update their offerings.

You can pick up the updated firmware at https://www.radioddity.com/xiegu-download

Fatigue and Waking Up Again

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Photo by Isabella Fischer on Unsplash

So last summer I had a significant change in my career. It was overwhelmingly positive, but it also was overwhelmingly….overwhelming.

Time became constrained. Thoughts turned to getting my head above water while simultaneously trying to wrap said head around all the new things I have to drive.

That along with still having two teenage sons at home, a wife, two dogs, and everything else meant that priorities had to shift.

Ham radio took a backseat.

How it is feeling like time to wake up again and get out of my radio slumber. I dusted off my radio and found that winter had not been kind to my vertical antenna out back, so I’ll spend part of this weekend figuring out what happened.

In the meanwhile I have started listening to Morse Code Ninja’s 25wpm practice files again to get my brain back to functional. It’s amazing what 8-9 months of not listening or using CW has done to my comprehension, but I was pleasantly surprised by how much is coming back.

Baby steps…..

Have you ever had to take a break from the hobby and if so, how did you get back into “fighting shape” again?

Parks on the Air – Logbook Self Upload

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After posting about my POTA activation just a bit ago, I went off to https://pota.app in order to validate a couple of callsigns based on spots and get things ready to email off for upload.

Clicking through I found something I hadn’t seen before:

I can just upload my ADIF files directly now?

So I did what it said on the screen – dragged and dropped the file into my browser and saw the following:

I’ll let you know if anything goes wrong, but this is a welcome development and great to see.

By the way, I did a quick search and it turns out that this was just released on July 1, 2022. K4SWL did a write-up the same day it launched that I missed. You can see his article on his site at https://qrper.com/2022/07/starting-today-youll-be-able-to-upload-your-own-pota-logs/

Great stuff!

Lab599 TX-500 Firmware v1.13.08

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The folks at Lab599 have dropped a new firmware file for everyone.

From the changelog (link):

v1.13.08 (2022.06.15)
- [BETA] Added CW decoder function
- Extended 10-meter band for TX with taking into account the CB range: from 26065 to 29700KHz
- Added quick mode selection by long pressing the MODE button
- Improved VFO/MEM function: fast switching by TUNE/MULTY between stored VFO values
- Added ability to assign alternative functions to RIT/XIT encoder
- Improved LOCK function in Memory mode

You can find it at https://lab599.com/downloads/

UPDATE June 23, 2022

Looks like they issued a quick fix and rev’d the firmware to 1.13.09.

From the changelog, there was a buffer overflow bug that was addressed for CW decoding. All links above are still valid to obtain the latest firmware.

IC-705 Firmware Update 1.27

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The folks over at Icom released a firmware update today.

It looks to be a fairly minor change, but you can decide that.

From the change log:

Improved to enable forcing an All Reset by connecting an external power source (*) while holding down [RIT/ΔTX] and [XFC], even if you cannot turn ON/OFF the transceiver by using the [POWER] key.