[chirp_users] "Most unusual" "Radio did not ack programming mode"

[Richard Haney]

Actually, I am amazed and impressed that Chinese technology seems to be
getting better all the time.  And although the UV-B5 manual definitely
shows a quality-control issue, the radio itself seems to be rather
excellent (at least for the price).

Perhaps Baofeng may have one or two rather expert engineers who supervise
the technical engineering of the UV-B5, but I get the impression that these
chief engineers may be far more capable than the people Baofeng assigns to
writing the manuals.  Well if Baofeng needs to economize in order to bring
the price down to reasonable levels, I'm glad they are doing it in the
writing of the manual.

I also get the impression that one reason that the UV-B5 is as good as it
is for the low price it has, is that, as I think I read somewhere, the
radio is basically a transceiver on a chip -- almost all of its electronics
is an integrated circuit.  As I understand it, ICs are generally far more
reliable and far cheaper than equivalent "discrete-component" circuits.
 And it only takes one small, highly expert engineering team to come up
with a superb, reasonably logical, intuitive design for an IC.  Once that
it done, it seems that, relatively speaking, producing quality radios for a
mass market at a low price should be a piece of cake.

And the "generic", one-design-for-all-uses design of the chip and thus the
radio obviously makes it possible to sell cheap radios to a larger market
and thereby keep the price very reasonable.

As some reviewers have noted, the big-name producers of ham radios should
take note.


On Tue, Jun 10, 2014 at 7:21 PM, Pete Mackie <pete at seaquest.com> wrote:

> Richard,
>
> I apologize for flaming on regarding the quality of the CHIRP radio memory
> management utility. I certainly misunderstood who your complaining about
> having a lack of good engineering.
>
> That being said, the Chinese do not perform any “basic engineering
> design.”  Instead, what they “sort of” do is copy someone else’s design
> with little or no true engineering discipline let alone exactly know what
> they are copying. This is how they can build a radio in China and then pay
> to ship it all the way to the US for distribution sales, for a price with
> profit of $35. What you get for this price is what you see and don’t expect
> any more.
>
> If you pay $200 to $300 for a HT, even if its was designed and
> manufactured anywhere in Asia, then you would have a right to complain
> about the design quality, et al. And these level of Asian vendors all
> provide local to US support via email and direct telephone calls.
>
> Pete
>
> On Jun 10, 2014, at 6:05 PM, Richard Haney <rfhaney at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> Hi Pete,
>
> Please note that the comment of mine that you quote was intended to be in
> reference to the product(s)  (the Baofeng UV-B5 and cable) I bought and not
> in reference to CHIRP.  I'm sorry that my intention in that regard was not
> clear.  It certainly seemed from what I knew at the time that the problem
> was with the hardware, and I thought that that was clear from my comments.
>
> However, I now think the problem is a problem with CHIRP because I have
> been able to upload the HT's programming into the OEM software offered
> by miklor.com <http://www.miklor.com/UVB5/UVB5-Software.php> .
>
> So Hooray!  All is not lost!  At least it seems I have not irreparably
> damaged the radio as I had feared.
>
> But it does seem that a bug fix of CHIRP regarding the problem is in
> order.  However, I have not checked whether this problem is already
> regarded as a bug that needs fixing.
>
> Anyway, I thought folks would like to know in case anyone else is puzzled
> by this sort of problem.
>
> Richard Haney
>
>
> On Tue, Jun 10, 2014 at 5:11 PM, Pete Mackie <pete at seaquest.com> wrote:
>
>> You pays you money (zero $) and take your chance. There is no free lunch.
>> Be thankful that some developers donate their extra personal time to make
>> CHIRP available. If you want a better product, then I suggest you join the
>> CHIRP development team to assist with better “basic engineering design.”
>>
>> And just so you know, CHIRP is getting constantly better all the time
>> thanks to hard work of donated software developers. If you do not like what
>> CHIRP is providing for you in the way of an experience, then I suggest that
>> you not use it.
>>
>> Pete Mackie
>>
>> On Jun 10, 2014, at 4:45 PM, Richard Haney <rfhaney at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> But I am also dismayed that the system seems to be so temperamental.  I
>> would think that basic engineering design principles would be employed to
>> guard against very common errors.
>>
>>
>>
>>
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