Radioddity GA-510 10-Watt Ham Radio Handheld, Dual Band High Power Long Range Two Way Radio with Two 2200mAh Batteries & CH340 Programming Cable, Chirp Compatible

I bought this video to get back into hand media. Yes a nice little star unit is easy to program easy to use. I recommend that you program it from the computer and not try to program it from the way to go and if you really have the patience for it But other than that, it’s a great little 2 m, 70 cm rig so you might also get an SW order to check your power out and so forth I added a longer container to my own to be able to hit my local computer and I can actually now hit my local computer on low power show if you’re looking for a beginners video or something for analog and something just to get on the air quickly this radio is a good radio for you and thank you all and 73.

Update Aug 17, 2024: My second complaint is that the volume knob turns very easily. When I put the radio in my pocket the volume will get changed either all the way up or all the way down. I contacted Radioddity about this and they have no solution, or seemingly no concern other than to return the radio. I ended up with a fix where I put a small rubber O-ring around the volume knob at it's base. This gives added friction to turning the knob and by selecting just the right size O-ring it works pretty well...not too loose not to tight. So I'll keep the radio despite these two annoyances.Original review: I bought this radio to use as a cheap dual band ham, GMRS and to receive local fire traffic. The speaker is good, maybe not great but better than my older Yaesu 2m circa 2005. Using CHIRP to program is great and all radios should be compatible with CHIRP. It has only 128 memories which is small by today's standards but I've only used half of them and have filled in everything that I can think of for now. Getting a spare battery is a plus. The charger: well, it's a classic desk charger (with a light that is tooo bright, I put a piece of tape on it's bright center, now it's fine). No USB charging as this radio seems to have been designed in 2019 based on the FCC filings. I was concerned that it uses a now obsolete chip and maybe it does, but it's RX sensitivity is just as good, no better, than my older Yaesu dedicated 2m talkie. So this is fine for me. Are there more sensitive radios out there, maybe, but for some $40 this is a no brainer radio. My only complaint so far is that the little tab things on the bottom that allow the radio to stand on a desk are too close to each other. yes it does stand upright, but wobbles a little when I set it down until it stabilizes. But it's rather thin (1/2 that of above mentioned talkie) and very light with good speaker and decent display. What else does one need in this price range. Oh, I did find that the antenna is rather stiff which I don't like in a talkie as that means a lot of stress on the SMA connector when the antenna is stressed. I ordered a brandX dual band antenna that is more flexible and will do side by side comparison on performance. In the end this is a rather older design clearly, but has modern software, a good speaker and is mechanically better designed than many others I've seen out there.Update after 6 months: the generic dual band more flexible antenna I bought turns out to be terrible at 2m band. So I've gone back to the Radioddity OEM antenna despite it being rather stiff. I've found that dual band talkie antennas fall into two types: 1- fairly well designed with an internal structure that requires them to be stiff; 2- a bottom end fed flexible whip that has tuning at the bottom for both bands. The later type is terrible inefficient as the radiating whip is just toooo short for 2m. The former works better, if you don't break it or the radio's connector from stress on the antenna. I transport the radio with the antenna off and put it on to use it and the treat it carefully. Not that I think the radio or antenna are fragile mind you, it's just that should the radio's connector get damaged it's lights-out for the whole radio.As for the radio after 6 months ownership: it's fine, not great, not bad, but definitely light and with long battery life. I still recommend this radio.

This Radioddity transceiver was a second choice, but a serviceable one. It programs easily with CHIRP, and hits repeaters about as well as other similar small handheld radios. The menus are OK, similar to other low-end radios, and better than some. It feels solid in the hand, gives good audio and got no complaints on its transmitted sound in the few QSOs I did with it.It was a gift from my wife to one of her friends who had recently gotten her Technician amateur radio license, so my experience with it was limited to programming it with a starting roster of local and regional repeaters, and testing it to see that it indeed hit many of them. This last it did, including some fairly distant ones, though there were times when a older smaller inexpensive radio reached a distant repeater that this one would not reach reliably. Its reception seemed quite good, but there were a few times it came in slightly second-best there too. In fairness, it was the better of the two in a few cases as well. Minor differences in antennas and squelch settings, etc., could account for these marginal differences.Programming with CHIRP, which I used in preference to the dedicated software so as to easily share the programming between it and other HTs I own that CHIRP can also program, was for the most part easy and predictable, as CHIRP usually is. An exception was with a repeater that needed a digital code (DPL) rather than a tone (CTCSS) to access. The problem turned out to be that with DPL, the radio was requiring the same code back from the repeater to break squelch, which the repeater did not transmit. The exact same programming for other repeaters with a tone did not require the tone transmitted back. This may have been a CHIRP issue, as I saw it on another HT, programmed with the same set of channels. The key was to use a combined mode that specified both TX and RX code, with expressly no RX code. Oddly, CHIRP does not allow this for all HTs it programs, and for one I had to make the change after programming, using the radio keyboard menu. I don't recall this before, so it may have been a change in CHIRP, which I had recently refreshed with a current version.It lacks a few minor useful interface features such as "locked" name and frequency display, so that both are seen together when in channel mode, and other minor features that are not missed unless one is used to them. Its menus and features are still better than some competitors. I liked easily cycling through the power settings using a dedicated side key. Reversing a repeater's frequencies was a one-key operation, as was starting scanning. Scanning worked well, and noisy or talkative channels could be bypassed (and scan direction reversed) from the keyboard (up/down arrows). One could program scan skip channels, but I saw no way to forbid transmit on channels intended only to be monitored (like the NOAA weather radio channels). Like I said, a good selection of features, but not an exhaustive set. It can receive (and transmit on, though the legality there is technically questionable) both FRS/GMRS and MURS frequencies.I wanted a new HT myself, but decided not to purchase one of these for myself, and perhaps wait for a usable version of a more capable three-band radio in the same price range. The story there is that the other radio, which I really liked and was my first choice as the gift, had a fatal flaw - on 2 meters (around 146 MHz) it emitted a huge amount of spurious radiation, on harmonics and other frequencies, at power levels rivaling or exceeding the main signal!!! After trying three of those radios (two from Amazon, one from the supplier's warehouse) and finding the same problem in all, I came to the conclusion that there was a bad batch from the manufacturer. I was going to review it to warn other buyers, but its listing has been removed from Amazon, for whatever reason.Needless to say, I tested this Radioddity for spectral purity, and though I cannot guarantee that my sample met FCC requirements, my simple instruments show that it was at least close.The included programming cable was one of the common type with a Prolific interface chip, requiring installation of a specific driver to work. If buying the cable alone, for a couple of dollars more, a cable with the FTDI chip, for which Windows will automatically load the correct driver, is a better alternative. As this was a gift, I bought a separate verified FTDI cable and swapped out the included Prolific, which I kept as a backup.Note that there is no included easy method of charging the batteries using USB or 12V automotive power. I believe a separate USB to 10V adapter cable sold for use with another radio might work, but some careful testing would be necessary to obtain an easy on-the-go charging solution.The batteries do not appear to be a common type, so may be hard to find. Fortunately, two are supplied.So this is a nice solid radio, with two batteries, a charging stand, and a usable, if slightly inconvenient, programming cable included - everything needed to get a good start for a first, or a backup, 2 meter / 70 cm handheld FM ham transceiver. A very solid 4 stars, good value for the price, and recommended.Oh, and what radio did I end up getting myself? I decided that if I was going to get a new radio, it might was well include some really new features beyond my old Chinese analog HTs (new bands or modes, etc.). I ended up with a DMR radio, which of course can also do the same analog FM repeaters and simplex that this Radioddity does. Radioddity makes a serviceable DMR HT, but I went with another brand that I will review in due course, after completely surmounting the learning curve of code plugs and DMR features!