| LU4DAJ |
Rating:      |
2021-05-02 | |
| Muy buen Equipo¡¡¡ |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
| Estoy en Buenos Aires Argentina, hace cerca de 5 años me trajeron este equipo de 220 MHz de los EEUU, funciona muy bien , muy fácil de manejar tiene casi 60 watts de potencia , nunca tuve que repararlo ,estoy muy conforme. |
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| KD8RLA |
Rating:     |
2020-10-27 | |
| Still working great... 5 years |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
| Used as a base station radio. Has been on practically continuosly for five years monitoring our club 220m repeater with no problems. |
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| VE3WF |
Rating:     |
2020-10-26 | |
| Works Fine |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
| I have had this radio for 10 yrs. Still works well. It's nothing exciting but it works as advertised. Mine puts out 56 watts on high. If you find a used one , scoop it. Good 220 mhz radios are hard to find. |
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| W6PMR |
Rating:  |
2015-01-26 | |
| Junk !! |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
Had two and both died. Used them both at the base
and they were not abused in any way.
I think I've had it with the Chinese radios
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Earlier 4-star review posted by W6PMR on 2009-07-11
Just picked this radio up today, 7/11/09 and using the radio for the last few hours it seams
to be fairly strait forward in it's programming.
I like to see how much I can figure out without cracking open the owners manual and so far this radio is an easy one to figure out.
Using an A/B switch on the antenna lead and going back and forth with my Kenwood 331, ( I know it's not the most scientific way to compare)
it appears to be on par with that radio as far as sensitivity and rejection goes.
Audio reports from other stations say it sounds fine. It also does not get all that hot after long key-downs.
It uses a function key to set squelch like many HT's do now and I'm not a big fan of this, please give me a knob for squelch setting.
The microphone feels lite and cheap but everybody says it sounds OK. It lites up in the keyboard and you can set frequency and memorys from the mic.
Display uses 5 bars for power display and S meter and could use a little more.
All-in-all not a bad deal for the money and being the only 50 watt mobile radio for this band does'nt hurt either.
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| W2ROD |
Rating:     |
2014-03-09 | |
| Just got in to the 1.25 meter side of Ham. |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
The Jetstream seems to do fine as a base unit in my shack. For an antenna I'm running a Cushcraft ARX-220B at 25 feet off the ground. This combination works great for me on
receiving and transmitting.I am however going to move the antenna over a little on my house for better propagation. Takes a little getting used to programming the radio and I suggest Chirp and a program cable to make life easier, However there are only 4 repeaters in my area so its pretty easy.Just for your info 223.500 is the national Simplex frequency for emergency's and usage.Over all its a good little radio, and I hope the bugs have been worked out of it that seemed to plague the first generation of these radios. |
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| KY4JLB |
Rating:    |
2013-10-13 | |
| Low TX Power |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
| Purchased from a local dealer less than one year ago and never hooked up because was using an Alinco DR-235T on base and decided to put a 220 rig in My Truck so got the Jetstream out of box and began program procedure and when finished I noticed about 8 watts out on My Bird 43 on low-mid-high settings although it showed on front of radio the power level as changing. I called Jetstream and they said ship it to them with sales receipt which I did. A new Jetstream arrived in 5 days! Good Customer Service! Leaving on base so can observe watt meter. I am unable to leave evaluation since have only used a week other than Customer Service was Great!! However I prefer the Alinco DR-235's |
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| K8OCN |
Rating:   |
2012-08-25 | |
| Volume Control Bad |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
I have owned this rig for 2 years now, Its always lived in the shack never mobile and the volume control is not going bad. Its either nothing or blasting me out of my chair.
I will have to see if there are parts available for it. Also when I received it (purchased new at Dayton) the contact on the board was not making contact for the center on the antenna connector. I fixed it and every was ok until now.
Back to Alinco I think
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Earlier 5-star review posted by K8OCN on 2010-11-28
I purchased mine at Dayton over a year ago. They had to ship it to me because they had sold all they had at the swap.
It took almost a month to get, Good solid output and the receiver is just Great! Full scale on the receive only happens if the other guy is in your driveway...... But who cares, its just a reference.
I did have one problem, after a month or so it started getting intermittent on receive. I have always used this rig as a base here in the shack. I thought about sending it back and first just could not resist opening it up and seeing if it was something simple (simple are my favorite repairs) and I was blessed it was only a cracked soldier joint on the back of the SO239 connector.
I striped about a inch of the center of RG8X and tinned it, laid it on the board and then heated the pin on the SO239, inserted it into the connector then heated the board everything soldiered nicely and now its a little stronger a connection.
I do not know if I caused the problem or if it was a defect, I had the PL259 screwed on tight but only as tight as I could do with my fingers, no tools were used. Either way (I am not a engineer and I don't play one on tv) I think the connection on the SO239 is not good, there is nothing but soldier between the connector and the board.
I am not including this to complain about the rig, I love them, if nothing else it has forced Alinco to bring the price of theirs down and hopefully get more people on the 220 band.
I included the information in case anyone else is having the some problem.
Mine is on 24/7 here in the shack and is also connected to a Echolink node as a simplex link (I only run it on medium power). Started out as just something for me to use from my cabin and now its great because there is a app for the Android phone that lets me use Echolink anywhere were I have 3G and thats almost everywhere. |
|
| WB0YLE |
Rating:    |
2012-07-07 | |
| S'alright for what it is |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
I have two of them. One I picked up new from HRO in New Castle at the beginning of 2011, the other a couple weeks ago from a fellow OM who was selling his for a decent price.
Good points:
1. Put both on the bench, and adjusted the power to spec. Both were off. Both track what the manual says now (even though I run on reduced power...no need in the NY/PHL corridor to run 50w...you can hit the machines you need to hit with a wouxun, for criminy sakes.)
2. Styling. I think there's a factory somewhere that's producing all the LCDs for Alinco, JS, TYT, HYS, etc. They're all the same, just the backlighting is different. Makes it easy to figure out from radio to radio what it's doing.
3. Signal quality: well, not as good as a Batwing CDM 1550, but totally useable. Hey, it's not a CDM 1550 price tag, either, but it sounds just fine.
4. Mics, power cords, etc all swap between KW, Alinco, Jetstream, etc. Pretty standard; I've used my JS hand mic on my TS-480 no problem, and use my MC-60 on the Jetstream and Alinco when they're in the shack. Gotta love it.
The Bad:
1. The software SUCKS. It reads my radios just fine...but then try and pour the new data back in and it gets about 3% through, and says it can't find the radio on the USB cable. WTH?
2. If you have any RF leakage (loose PL connector, radio too close to the antenna, phases of the moon...the display will do strange and wondrous things. You would think they figured out how to RF shield things, but maybe not.
3. You shouldn't have to put it on the bench when you get it to check power out, modulation and deviation levels, etc. While I'm lucky to have a service bench and access to a commercial shop to check these things out, you would think that R&L (DBA Jetstream USA) would at least do a quick check...but, then again, maybe not. Just deal with it and move on.
4. The missing D connector. Guess what? The TYT and HYS equivalent have the cut out too. They don't have the D female for packet, etc. You want to do that? Use the DR235.
The Eh?
1. No D connector. I have two Alincos. I use them as my backup just in case my Batwing micor repeater radio goes tango uniform. Believe it or not, the Alincos, on low power, work just fine as a repeater on the Asterisk control system.
2. Dial brightness. Put it on dim, it's still a bit bright. Oh well. Minor nit.
3. Resetting, according to the manual, is a hit-or-miss thing. Sometimes it does...sometimes it don't. And, considering the programming software from JS is such crap, you do have to have some confidence you're not going to brick the radio when the software farts out half way through loading a list of machines.
4. Service manual is about as bogus as the software. 'Nuff said. Guess I'm spoiled by the Kenwood, Yaesu, Icom, Motorola service manuals. It is what it is.
5. Detachable faceplate. Should be almost de rigeur these days. Sadly, it's not. So...you need to account for mounting the whole thing up in the cockpit. If you've more than one mobile, you end up being quite creative with placement, stacking, power distribution, external speakers, mic hangers (this mic does not have the button on the back, but the Alinco-style tab off the top), etc.
Bottom line: if you want a 220 radio, 50w (when all is said and done), decent ergonomics, and, if it dies, you're not out a big pile of money...I'd give this a qualified ok. There are other options, some less power, some less-known manufacturers (the board in the TYT TH9000 and HYS version are almost carbon copies of the JS, which leads me to think they're all contract-built nameplate-engineered radios) for the same or a little less. If you want to get on 220, though, and get away from the good buddy ragchews on 2m...220 has the propagation of 2m, the quality of 440, and, guys, if we don't use it...we will loose it. You could do worse. I'd put this in the middle somewhere, as long as you don't have Motorola expectations for Radio Shack money. |
|
| W4AMP |
Rating:  |
2012-06-05 | |
| Overpriced junk |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
| This is an update of my previous review of years ago. These radios do not last. First rig had final failure after 13 months. I used it quite a bit, so I bought another one in May 2009. This one developed a bizarre display problem. After the rig has been off a while and turned back on, the display is blank. You can see the channel number, and the bargraph on tx and receive. Memories are still there, so it is not the memory battery. You can still use it, just cannot see the frequency. After a reset, you can program it, then it does it again. All is not lost however. After you throw the rig in the trash the mounting bracket holds an Icom 38A just fine. Way overpriced and self destructs when warranty expires. If you want to pay 250$ for a rig that lasts a year, this is the one to buy. |
|
| AA1PR |
Rating:  |
2012-04-25 | |
| Caveat emptor |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
the repeater was only 30 miles away, at 50 watts with 5 el beam & an excellent swr this radio could not hear or key up the rpt. however my kenwood tm3530 did @ 25watts & with better overall results on both TX & RX
this radio is a scam
the only good thing I can say is that the display was nice & it was easy to program
however the orange & blue display was weird |
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