I am generally suspicious of anything too digital going on in these radios but I was convicend by a fellow ham to own at least a DMR radio for the fun of it; I didn’t want to spend top dollars on them and didn’t want to wait for some rig to come from across the globe. Cheapest rig apart from the classic Baofeng seems to be the Radtel RT-4D DMR Radio so I had a shot at it, fully prepared to suffer a bit as I was under the impression that it may nice, but not be the most community supported radio around.
Leggi tutto: Radtel RT-4D DMR Radio, an happy surpriseSo I bought it, recovered a baofeng, kenwood-style programming cable (there was none in mybox, just a USB-C for charging. My Baofeng cable from UV-17pro seems compatible!) and flashed latest firmware (v3_22 at the time) and with some little detours I was able to flash it. Some firmware updates have a unicode update that must be applied after firmware so please read the README.
CPS software was a different question, as it probably requires precise communication timing (or hates purposefully VMs) and asks for administrator privilege (the Gods of Electromagnetism know why, as the firmware update does not require administrator elevation, but the CPS does, and both use the same COM port…). After you finish comprimising the security of your PC successfully, you will be able to program the Radtel. The CPS software is surprisingly good compared to other software from other makers (Retevis, I am looking at you and at RA-25) and Import CSV serves well your purpose.
The Radtedl Rt-4d
The biggest drawback is that (it seems, I can’t tell, being new on DMR) that the software uses terms that are a little different from the ones commonly found in other CPS so Your Mileage May Vary while trying to figure what to do with the various tabs for the software. Also, I didn’t check if CPS runs on Wine.
The reports where good both in DMR and analog mode. I am still a little bit confused on how (and if it can be done) to change at least the settings on analog channels. It seems it can be done but it is unclear to me as to save it on the fly.
The battery and the power level seems ok (more than 5W on UHF and 4.5W on VHF using a dummy load).
So far I am satisfied with it.