I loaded the nicsure 5.14.01 firmware from the patreon onto my RadTel RT-880G. It changed storage stucture, so I needed to do a factory reset before installing. I found the RMS software does weird things importing chirp files or reading from the radio. I needed to sort out erroneous CTS codes, reverses, etc in the RMS.
The radio is receiving APRS really well off the outside antenna, and I’m seeing lots of good decodes.
I found I can mute the dedicated APRS channel on my Btech UV-Pro to never make a sound, so I can listen to the 2 dual-watch channels without needing to hear digital squawks.
The UV-Pro already had a feature to mute what it recognizes as digital signals, but that always takes a moment to activate it. I don’t know how that’s useful at all.
The RT-880G has this feature, and it got me thinking and reading manuals.
I got WINE setup to run the software for RadTel. I had to install Mono for Windows inside WINE to make the RadTel CPS and Flasher work: https://askubuntu.com/a/992215 I also got serial going: https://gitlab.winehq.org/wine/wine/-/wikis/Wine-User%27s-Guide#serial-and-parallel-ports
The APRS support on the RadTel RT-880G still seems a bit broken, though. I keep seeing a stray character in the path: “WIDE1_-1” Setting the path in CPS software had the same problem. Setting the path to " WIDE1" makes it show OK in packets.
I got the BTech UV-PRO back on Friday, 2025-07-18. This one has a different serial number, so very quick replacement. I restored the configuration from the HT app on my phone. The new radio is seen on https://aprs.fi/ again and I occasionally see APRSDroid report that it’s been digipeated by a nearby node. I tested the transmit power to be 4.8W with the small meter. Power was previously not detected at all by the meter.
I joined the APRS Thursday HOTG (Hams of the Gram) net.
I checked in by sending: ANSRVR CQ HOTG good Thursday morning.
I guess it sent 117 messages to others,
and for the 12 hours I was subscribed,
I received 174 HOTG messages to my callsign
from stations across the US and around the world.
APRSDroid
would often fail to reconnect to the UV-PRO:
java.io.IOException: read failed, socket might closed or timeout, read ret: -1
The HT
app would manage to reconnect OK.
I would need to cycle power on the radio to get APRSDroid
to reconnect.
In APRSDroid,
Preferences->Connection Preferences->Channel was set to 1.
I blanked that channel setting,
and now it may be reconnecting
between stop and start of app,
bluetooth,
or distance.
As a side note, having the UV-PRO monitoring a frequency other than APRS may interfere with packet reception. I don’t see as many APRS packets when monitoring another repeater, probably due to interruptions from the non-APRS audio.
The activation at King’s Gap Environmental Education Center, US-4361 was tough-going, even though I was at the top of the mountain. I used the GRA vertical whip with tapped coil. Internet access flaked early, so successfully spotted myself on APRS with APSPOT.
I had my UV-PRO and APRSDroid running at Mountain Creek in Gardners, PA, using a normal telescoping antenna. The APRS traffic I observed looked pretty familiar to what I typically see around home, with a wide range of activity and some of the same digipeaters.
I’ve been learning about the BTech UV-Pro. When scannimg, it degrades the incoming APRS, even in digital mode where it checks back to the APRS channel frequently. I’ve been using stock APRSdroid over the TNC connection, but it takes a little fiddling sometimes to get it to connect.
In the new firmware, they’ve been flip-flopping features between 8.2.x and 8.3. It has bold/yellow fonts (or not), and new button actions to access groups. NOAA alerts have also come and gone to see if they affect RX performance overall.
