So it’s sort of a bear to program this radio. I might just pop for the programming cable. It’s cheaper than the one for my Yeasu.

I did manage to turn off the beeping on the radio. Every device I own that came with beeping buttons – I’ve turned it off. It’s annoying.

But I did manage to trip a 222MHz repeater with it. At 5W output it should trip it. I also like that it has a hard power switch. None of this soft switch crap. It’s a nice, lightweight radio only slightly smaller than my Yeasu.

The body on the radio is plastic, very much unlike my Yaesu VX-7r which is a made out of Magnesium. But it was a little over 110g while my Yaesu tips the scales at almost 300g.

Sorry for getting metric on you there. But amateur radio by it’s nature is metric. Look at how we refer to the bands – 2m, 1.25m, 70cm, 6m, 10m, 20m, 12m, 15m, 30m, etc. All in meters.

And I discovered something about how USPS works. It seems packages are handled almost completely separate from the regular mail stream. I realized this because we shipped a package to Keyron’s mom and it went right from my local post office to Springfield, MA and from there to Raleigh, NC and finally to Columbia, NC. For my radio it went from Susquehanna, PA to Lehigh Valley, PA and then to the main RI postal facility at 02904 and finally to my local post office. 

Now had I sent a letter to NC it would have gone 02909 to 02904 (The main) then to Raleigh, then Columbia. So it appears Springfield, MA is a package hub for USPS. Interesting.