My handhelds

[N9JIG]

Stop the presses! Believe it or not, I have not rearranged my shack for a couple months and have no plans to do so!
That said I have added a few toys to the handheld collection recently. While I don't know what I might pick up at Dayton this month I just do not see any new radios in my near future, I have everything I need and want at this time.

Hear is the handheld collection as it stands right now. I keep most in the top drawer of a Husky (Home Depot's house brand) tool chest in my office. The drawer height is perfect for handheld radios at about 3.5 inches and it is plenty deep where I could stack 2 deep as needed.



From left to right:
Uniden SDS100, BCD436HP, BCD260DN (x2), BCD396XT (x2), BCD325P2
Icom ID-52+. R30, R5 (x2)
Wouxoun KG-905G, Cobra FRS (x2)
Anytone D878UV-III (x2), D868UV
Alinco DJ-C7, DJ-S11

I have desk chargers/stands for some of these, these are on top of my network cabinet, which is on top of the same tool chest:



I have used stands in the past and found that this seems to work best for me. I can open the drawer and grab the radio(s) I want and see which ones are not there in an instant. I usually keep an R5 and the 325 in the car, the rest live here when not in use.

In case anyone asks, the laptops are my MacBook Pro M1 Max-14 and an older Intel MacBook. I use the older MacBook for Windows when programming my mobile radios. The wood-slatted box is my home PC in a Fractal North case. The UPS serves the network and PC, I have a second identical UPS protecting my main Mac desktop (Studio M4Max) on the working desk.

 

[sallen07]

Stop the presses! Believe it or not, I have not rearranged my shack for a couple months and have no plans to do so!

While I don't know what I might pick up at Dayton this month I just do not see any new radios in my near future, I have everything I need and want at this time.

Who ARE you, and what did you do with Rich?

 

[pb_lonny]

Nice collection of handhelds.

 

[merlin]

Quite a collection. A few more and I be competing with you.

 

[K5MPH]

Us radio people can never have to many radios.........

 

[Indianabrad]

I'll bet when you moved to AZ, it was a big job reprogramming all of those. Or are a lot of them too old for digital use?

 

[wtp]

YOU NEED TO FIND A HOBBY....oh, wait, you did !

 

[N9JIG]

I'll bet when you moved to AZ, it was a big job reprogramming all of those. Or are a lot of them too old for digital use?

It wasn't that hard. Of the ones shown I think I only had the 436, 125, 396 and the little Alinco's. The others came after I moved here 10 years ago. I got my 325 the week I moved in from Paul in the beta program, I moved in on Monday, the local town went encrypted on Tuesday and the radio arrived on that Friday.

 

[K7MFC]

I use the older MacBook for Windows when programming my mobile radios.

Did you struggle to get COM ports working on Windows and getting various radio software to detect the ports on your Intel MacBook?

 

[N9JIG]

No, it was pretty easy! I am writing an instruction guide on how to do this, I should have it out tonight, it is easier than it sounds.

 

[K7MFC]

Oh perfect - currently doing a fresh Windows install on my Intel MacBook Air, and I had to jump thru a few hoops last time to get Com ports working under Bootcamp. Your guide will likely jog my memory and/or show me where I went wrong. These old Intel MacBooks make such a great radio programming laptop! Got a cheap refurbished one for exactly this.

 

[N9JIG]

Here ya go! COM Ports Settings Guide for Scanner Users

I had already written one and forgot that I did. The new one is in the same thread as the old, but is half as long.

 

[N9JIG]

Oh perfect - currently doing a fresh Windows install on my Intel MacBook Air, and I had to jump thru a few hoops last time to get Com ports working under Bootcamp. Your guide will likely jog my memory and/or show me where I went wrong. These old Intel MacBooks make such a great radio programming laptop! Got a cheap refurbished one for exactly this.

I have an old Intel MacBook that I use for that too. It took a little while for Parallels to catch up to the ARM processors in the new Apple Silicon machines but now it works great for most of my scanners. The only ones it doesn't are the ones using the USB-1 cable, apparently there are no ARM drivers for that so I cannot get my older non-USB radios to work with it. I haven't tried to find some other USB-Serial converter that does work with ARM, if so then I see no reason why I couldn't run all my scanners on the Mac.