HF on a Hand Held?

Radioditty sent the new GS-10B Pro to me before it was released as they wanted you to see it first. When sending it, they never told me what to say, only to review it. So below is what I honestly experienced.

This handheld radio is not only dualband UHF, VHF radio, it also receives HF, single sideband, and CW. It has a waterfall display as well, plus a load of other goodies which I hadn’t seen in a handheld before. So, let’s have a look.

Some of the things this radio includes is a realtime spectrum display, which is the same as a waterfall. It’s got full HF, single sideband and CW reception. It’s an all band scanner receiver that covers most of UHF, VHF, HF, airband, and FM radio stations. It also connects to the weather station if you have them in your country.

It has two SMA connectors on the top. One that does for UHF and VHF and the other one is for the donut antennas that’s supplied which I will look at soon. You can program the radio either via computer or even by your mobile phone or direct input or each frequency. The direct option is a lot easier than has been before as the menu seems a lot better.

It has a 250 milliamp rechargeable battery that can be charged using USB-C cord and it has dual PTT and dual watch as well.

The 1.77 inch color screen is fantastic especially for the waterfall and I love the display how it shows not only the frequency the frequency name and the channel number when in memory mode it shows a whole lot more like signal strength and all sorts of things.

This upgraded PRO model has 999 channels, so you can store a lot more in there than you ever have before. It can transmit on the normal VHF and UHF bands, but it will also receive right down to 150 kHz.

Looking at the radio itself, the speaker is behind the keypad, which gives the radio a little bit more real estate.

They got quite a lot of menus in the radio making it a lot more functional. I have done a video below on this, which I receomend you watch it.

As an example, menu item 32 is autolock. So you can change that to how many seconds.

So one of the things you might like to do is to listen to HF. So how do you do that? If you go into the menu and I’m going to go to menu 2 4 (which takes me to menu 24). This menu item is where you program what the PF3 key is. I’m going to make sure that that is set to radio, then press confirm. So then if I press this PF3, it’ll go to radio. The next thing you should do is change the antenna to the donut antenna.

Take off the VHF/UHF antenna and next to it is a knob that screws off to reviel where you attach the donut antenna. You can plug in an external antenna if you like.

When listening to HF, if you press and hold down the home key, you get a waterfall right across the band.

The Radioddity GS-10B Pro is a high-power 8W handheld ham radio designed for long-range communication. At the time of this video, it had not been released yet. This new radio is built as an upgraded version of the popular tri-band radio, however, this portable transceiver features a real-time spectrum analyser (waterfall display) on a 1.77-inch color display, allowing you to instantly scan, view, and locate active frequencies in your area. Its precious model without all the extras is widely used by amateur radio operators for satellite communication, emergency readiness, and Parks on the Air (POTA) activations.

This handheld radio has advanced shortwave listening. The GS-10B Pro handheld transceiver includes wideband HF monitoring with SSB (Single Sideband) and CW modes. Unlike standard analog radios, it has a dual-antenna path system with two SMA ports to keep high-frequency and VHF/UHF signals clear and separate. It also comes with two donut antennas.

To make setup simple, the radio features built-in Bluetooth wireless programming, so you can easily configure channels, update your codeplug, and manage repeater offsets directly from an Android or iOS smartphone app without a computer programming cable.

The hardware is optimized for survival gear and off-grid use, with a 2500mAh USB-C rechargeable battery that supports 2A fast charging. It comes equipped with dual PTT (Push-to-Talk) switches for seamless dual-band monitoring and an extra physical channel knob for quick frequency tuning. If you are buying your first ham radio or looking for a budget-friendly backup radio, custom noise reduction, and standard Kenwood 2-pin accessories.

If you go via this link, you will get a discount:
https://radioddity.refr.cc/bensangster then search for your item


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Portable Hot Stop with Battery Pack

The new OpenSpot3 has come out with an internal battery. You might ask why? Well there is two common issues that is mostly raised with almost all hot spots. One is the range – I have addressed this in my BlueDV post if you want to make your own long range hotspot. However the other issue is it isn’t very portable.

I have two OpenSpot2 hotspots and enjoy them very much. I can cross modes easily all by using the one radio. You used to have to get one radio per band which was a lot more expensive. Anyway I can take the OpenSpot2 in the car and plug it into the car battery and run it via my mobile phone which works well. However what if I want to go for a bike ride or walk without the car?

The main issue is not having the battery of the car when you walk or ride your bike. This is perhaps one reason why the OpenSpot3 has an internal battery. For the rest of us, you can still do it.

Below is a picture of my setup. I took this picture in outback South Australia. At the top of the picture is a small pocket size battery which actually has two USB plugs, so I could plug in my HotSpot and my mobile phone. It even has a torch on it and has a lot of charge (15,000 mAh 2.4 Amp) so it wasn’t the cheapest one available. I could have gone a lot cheaper however we also used this battery pack for other things while we were in remote Australia for several days.

To the left of the photo is my GD-77, my hotspot and my phone. With this setup, I was able to talk the world!

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Mini Keyboard Options

I bought this wireless keyboard/mouse which was very cheap. It does come with a USB dongle. It has a fantastic range since it is 2.4GHz RF. The back also has good grip which apparently isn’t common on all models. You can select what colour you want the plastic to be also.

Setup

Setup couldn’t be easier. Make sure it has batteries installed, some come with a rechargeable, mine required triple A batteries. Make sure the switch on the top side of the keyboard it to the left position for it to turn on – it should light up when you do this. Then in the battery compartment will be the USB dongle. Just plug in the USB dongle before powering up (if it is into an Android box), then it will connect and work fine straight away. If your model came with the battery, there may be a cord to charge the unit also.

Touch Pad

The top part of the keyboard in the touch pad area controls your mouse position. Using two fingers will scroll up and down the scroll bars. Unfortunately two finger zooming does not work. Right click can be done by a simultaneous two finger tap. You can turn the touch pad on or off by pressing Fn + F8.

Changing the Touch Pad Tracking Speed

All you have to do is press the blue Fn (function) button down the bottom left corner, then press the space bar.

Shortcuts

The keyboard comes with the following shortcuts at the top of the keyboard.

Far left Shortcuts

Over the far left side are media buttons, including volume up and down, pause and play, next track

Middle shortcuts

Either side of the touch pad are shortcuts, then are the following from top to bottom in order

Left Side of Touch PadRight Side of Touch Pad
1. Open Music Player App1. Open Google Search
2. Open Email App2. Go home button
3. Mute button3. Internet Browser
4. Mouse left button ( this is also on the far left of the letters below on the top)4. Mouse right button (this is also on the far left of the letters below on the bottom)

Far right Shortcuts

Over the right side at the top are directional buttons with an OK button in the middle.

Sleep Mode

The Keyboard will auto sleep and wake-up to save the battery. When the keyboard is idle for 3 minutes, it will go into auto sleep mode, and all LED indicators will turn off.

Keyboard Glowing Colours

Some keyboards glow at night. Unfortunately mine foes not, but if yours does, you just press blue the Fn key down the bottom left and the F2 key to change the colours. Press Fn-F2 again to change to the next colour and so on. This will give you the three standard colours. However, if your feeling nerdy, you can press and hold down the Fn key, then using your thumb on the touch pad, move it left and right to get all the other colours. There are 7 different colours in total.

If you want to be a geek of all the nerds, you can do the RGB spectrum, but pressing and holding F2 and then scrolling your thumb across left to right on the touch pad, then let go. It will scroll through all the colours automatically. You can still use the touch pad as normal while it automatically changes colours. I guess not having this saves some power also, however it does turn off every 30 or so seconds. There is a switch up the top right on the side of the keyboard that will turn it off also.

Fuction Keys

Apart from what I have already mentioned, you can do the following functions using the blue function key (Fn) found down the bottom left corner.

  • Fn + Fn = Enter into pair mode
  • Fn + F7 = take a screen shot
  • Fn + F8 = turn on or off the touch pad
  • Fn + F9 = F11 key
  • Fn + F10 = F12 key
  • Fn + Back = Delete
  • Fn + Page Up = Home

Other Keyboards

Here is a review on several other keyboards of similar size. This is not my video, but thought it gave a good quick overview of several models available.

Conclusion

The size of the keyboard is just right, not to small so you can’t find it or use it easily, but not to big so it takes over the desk or armchair. It works well with my Android TV device, but understand it does work on other devices such as windows, Raspberry Pi etc.

If I was going to buy it again, I may get the one with the inbuilt battery installed that can be re-charged, however once the batter goes, you almost have to replace it. My model could be loaded up with rechargeable batteries you can buy from anywhere.

Before I was using this Keyboard, I used a USB mouse, and while in some ways that is easier than a touch pad, to have a full keyboard and the touch pad all cordless with a good range is fantastic.

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