The new QT80 radio by Radioddity is a fantastic radio and I have a lot of contacts on it already.
QT60 Vs QT80
This is a QT80 model but there is also the QT60 model so what’s the difference?
- QT80 has a higher power of 80W, while QT60 only has 60W
- QT80 does not have NOAA (alarm) feature, while the QT60 has
- In addition to unlocking 25-30 MHz, QT80 can also support 15 meters (21MHz) after unlocking, while QT60 cannot
One thing I did notice was the antenna plug on the back. It is a little bit tricky to put the plug on the back of the radio because of the big heat sink as you can only get to about 2/3 to turn it you can’t get your finger right around unfortunately. But that is not a deal breaker for me once it’s on it’s on and I don’t usually swap them around too much. You can purchase an adaptor if you want to.
Changing Modes
To change from Channel mode as you can see in Channel mode to VFO mode just hold and press the band button.
You can change the colour of the screen and there’s several colours to chose from. Some are a bit harder to see than others. While this is a bit gimmicky, it would be good mobile to turn down the screen or have it match your car interior.
Each button around the screen has at least three things that it can do depending upon which mode you are in. You can press each button, or press Function first, or long press it.
The radio also has a scan function here so you can press scan and you’ll see that this SC starts flashing and it’s scanning up the band if we want to go in the opposite direction just turn the VFO knob and it should go in the opposite direction. If you are in channel mode it will do the same there. If you hold the scan on the channel it’ll remove it from the scan list.
Turning the Beeping off
To turn the beeping off just press the function button here hold it in and menu item number one then press the VFO knob and it’s on one and turn up louder or off and then press function again to store that. Now if you selected off, it doesn’t beep.
You can make the radio show it’s SWR while transmitting, and preset what the maximum SWR you will allow the radio to transmit on.
The microphone has an up and down button, plus a predefined button on it that you can change as to what it will do.
The VFO knob is a clicking knob which is a bit CBish which is a shame, but just something to get used to.
Repeaters
Press the function key and then split and you can adjust to minus then you can set the offset. Then when you transmit, you will have a minus offset. You can do this on any more which is funny.
Unlocking the radio
Place the radio upside down with the speaker facing up and undo the top four screws on both sides of the radio.
Take the cover of the radio off, the one with the speaker on it.
Right at the front of the radio here there’s a little pin there and if we have a look closely you can see that it is currently connecting one and two we want to pull this out and change it to connect two and three
Put the cover back together
Hold the band button down the memory button down and then turn it on.
Then we have got two choices here as you can see it says ham.band or if I turn the knob we got HF.band so you got to choose which one you want. HF band is all the frequencies between 21 and 29 MHz or select ham.band which is just 10 metres.
Everything I have said above is in the video below which shows you step by step instructions.
The radio is not too big it fits easily in the car so it is great for mobile work or camping. I intend on using it on our next trip across Australia, rather than take my big HF radios that take up a lot of room.
If you want to see how I went connecting it up to the PC, then there is a video for that also:
If you are planning on purchasing this radio this link will give you a discount: https://radioddity.refr.cc/bensangster then search for QT80.
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