E1618: Why Everyone Is Talking About the VGC NR7600!

a while. The predecessor to this mobile radio, the N seventy five hundred, was all controlled by an app, which this one is also. But reading through the manual just now, and reading through it comes with two manuals. This is the manual manual kind of washed out because it's white, and it comes with a whole separate manual for the

ht app. This was never included. I did a video about the N seventy five hundred on this channel several years ago when it was new, and we did a couple of live streams with it, trying to turn it into a all Star node, which that never worked out. But the ht app at the time of that recording only worked on Android. Now it works on iOS, so though it does say it's a limited capability, and it was never a manual or anything with it. You just kind of had to bumble your way through it to

learn the app. So that's already an improvement right there in my mind. Let's take a look at this brand new mobile radio. I'm gonna tell you about a few really cool features it has. All right, this is the radio itself right here, and it's got this eight pen connector on the front here, and we're gonna look at this. I'm show you this in a minute. But it's got a big screen on the microphone so you can control I think you can control the whole radio from the microphone.

The radio itself doesn't have a screen because it's all app controlled. It's controlled with your Android app or iOS app or whatever. And doing a little bit of research on this radio before I went live here, before I hit record, I should say I put together this high level overview of everything. N seventy six hundred is a fifty wat VHF forty wat UHF dual band mobile radio

designed for amateur radio use. It features headless design that's like its predecessor as well, meaning it lacks the traditional front panel et cetera, et cetera, et cetera smartphone app. Bluetooth Control Radio is built for discrete vehicle installation and offers advanced features like APRS, GPS network connectivity, making it verstaal choice for modern HAM radio enthusiasts. So we scroll down here and we look through this a little bit.

Right here. The HT app available for Android full featured and iOS limited functionality. Okay, good. And then we scroll down right here and it says built in GPS. Unlike its predecessor, THENR the VRN seventy five hundred. This new model, the seventy six hundred, includes an integrated GPS module for standalone look atation track in APRS beaconing transmits GPS coordinates with transmissions for geolocation tracking and mapping, and then APRS features.

It supports APRS for real time positioning, reporting and messaging. Okay, good, that's what the HT does. Functions like an iGATE for APRS. Functions like an iGATE for APRS. So you go on and you read a little bit farther and what it does. From what I'm reading, we're gonna hook this up here in a minute. You download the app on your Android device, which I just did that. I'm gonna look at that

here in just a second. You go into the app, you connect to the radio, you can figure everything on the app, and then it uses your smartphone intercon net connection to beacon itself to APRS dot Fi to join the APRS network. So it has GPS location, It has GPS tracker in the radio, so it knows where it is as long as you turn that on, I guess

it knows where it is. And it transmits that position through your Android app, through the Internet, through your five G connection on your Android phone to APRS dot Fi, so it acts as its own iGATE. That is pretty cool. Reading down through these instructions here, I don't see anything specifically about a KISS T and C connection, although it doesn't use that word, and I didn't find anything in the manual about a Kiss TNC. If you're not aware

what a Kiss TNC is. TNC is a terminal node controller KISS is keep it stupid simple, and it's basically a way to connect via USB or Bluetooth to an a You take a tn C and you interface it to a radio, maybe through a USB connection, maybe through the two prong Kinwood connector there's some old style TNCs that do that, and then that basically adds the APRS and wind link and functionality a lot of functionality to

that radio. Moby Linked is a good example of a modern KISS tn C. Also, the digrig can act as

a TNC. The digitrig is is hardline only, while the moby link has Bluetooth, so you can attach that to a radio and then use apps like win link over Android or APRS droid or something like that to do APRS over a non APRS radio or send win link over a non over a radio that doesn't have a built in T and C. Modern radios like the Kiin with D seventy four and D seventy five have have built in KISS T and cs that just allow you to connect to the radio via Bluetooth and it's all

done for you, kind of like a built in sound card inside of an HF radio. You don't have to have an interface in between your smartphone or computer and the radio if the radio has a built in KISS T and C. That The vr N seventy six HT that I just showed you a picture of is an example of something with a KISST and C as well

as the BTech UV Pro. These have built in t and cs where you don't need an extra piece of hardware between your computer and or smartphone and the radio in order to enable these extra functionalities with the radio. All right, we're gonna connect this up to the power supply here, got the microphone hooked up here, so you've got a menu you can go in and edit the channel. There. These two buttons here. Main menu is this button here, return channel up, channel down. These are all the pre

program channels that came with the radio. Some glare on the screen of the microphone, but it's nice and backlit. As you can see. You can edit the channel that way. Main menu basically control the whole radio from that microphone, which that microphone was not an option on the On its predecessor, the N seventy five hundred, it was only controlled from the app on this one. Also, there's a there's this USB port in the front here. It's Usbare's it's not USBC, And I wasn't really sure what that was,

so I consulted the manual. The only thing it really says right there down at the bottom of that page is that it's an output of five volts and two amps right there in that little diagram right there, So it doesn't appear that that USBC port actually does anything. You can plug your phone into it or plug I don't know, all Star node, I don't know power your All Star node, that kind of thing. So maybe maybe

more to come on that later. Maybe it will have some increased functionality on that later for an extra expansion or something. I don't know. But right now, what we're gonna do is I've downloaded the ht app on my phone and I'm going to take this. I'm going to open it up and I'm going to connect to this radio and see see what it looks like, what kind of APRS functions and other functions we can set up

while using the app on the radio. Now, with this radio setup, if I was going to put it here in the shack, or I was going to add it to my vehicle, which I actually might do that later, I will be feeding it with Mesi and Plony Coacts.

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which means how old was my this year? Okay, So we've got this right here. This HT app is just it's very it's just called HT. I just went to the play store and searched for HT and that's what it looks like right there. It says HT and it's got that green and white symbol there, so that's all it is. That's when you install it. So we're gonna go pair a new device here and the options are Walkie Talkie, PTT, Handfeld microphone or buy now. Walkie talkie is what it calls a radio. Okay, so we're gonna

scan this. Hopefully this seventy six HUNDERD will come up. That's the only thing I've got powered up in the shack right now. Now again, we can consult this HT app operating guide and there might be a menu. We've got to go and download the app. Okay, So what you have to do. And this book doesn't tell you that this is the ht app operating instructions, but it doesn't tell you that you have to put the radio

into pairing mode, which makes sense. It makes sense that the radio needs to go into pairing mode before it will show up on this app. I get it. But in order to use this book, you have to put the radio in pairing mode, which you can only find instructions for in the main manual, the user manual. Right there, I know it's washed out. There we go, that's better. This one will tell you how to put the radio in pairing mode. This one does not, but this one should say it, because this is how to use the

ht app. In my opinion, what we do here is we go into the main menu of the radio by clicking on the menu button on the microphone that I showed you a minute ago. And we're just gonna scroll down here. And I know that's washed out and right here a is pairing. We click okay, and then now it's in pairing mode, and now we can see it on the screen here. So I'm going to click on this one and it says at the bottom of the screen, make sure the device is in pairing mode pairing request pair. Okay,

the radio beeped at me. The device firmware needs to be updated. You want to start updating now, synchronized signaling settings? Yes and yes. Okay, So in firmware versions zero dot eight dot eight added smart beacon functionality. That's one of the things. When I looked up the instructions and the downloaded the specs on this radio, it said that smart beaconing was not available. Well, apparently that's been added now. APRS position sharing can be configured using the mike e

form to shorten the channel occupancy time. Added device GPS location sharing when the phone does not support GPS or has it disabled, so the device itself will share the GPS, reduce volume bard display time to one second. Fix the issue of interrupting network channel reception for location sharing. Okay, good, so we're gonna update that firmware now, which is easy this I remember this being easy on the last radio too. You basically it prompted you, you click yes, and then

you just kind of let it go. So we're gonna sit here for a second while this goes. Okay, that took about ten minutes, A little bit longer than I thought it was going to. But it's prompted me right now saying the data transfer is complete, you want to continue to upgrade. Device will reboot. Okay, it's talking about the device rebooting. Is talking about the radio, No, not the phone. So right now the radio is rebooting on the microphone, it's talking about a reboot. And you can

see the LEDs on the radio itself or off. So it says on the microphone updating firmware. Please do not turn off the power. Let that go for a minute and see how long it takes. Okay, there we go. Update is complete. That only took about a minute or to maybe a minute and a half, less than two minutes,

and there we go right there. Okay, So this is what the app looks like after it's connected to the radio, and we've got options there down the side for APRS audio connection, NBC monitor, join the network channel, join an existing channel, create a new channel. Here's some network channels. Those are all in Chinese. Not sure what those are.

Maybe there's a way to talk to this radio. If I have this radio connected to my app on my phone and you have one connected to your app on your phone, perhaps we can connect to one another and talk over the internet through the radio to the internet, kind of set up its own private talk group. Maybe I don't know, join a network channel, create a new channel title, passcode, bitrate, radio configuration frequency, okay, FM or AM.

I might have to experience. I'm not gonna do that now, but I may have to experiment with that in the future. Let me know in the comment section if any of you are planning to get this radio. Maybe we can get together on a zoom call and try out this network channel thing. That might be kind of fun. I'm gonna guess Too is probably gonna end up with one of these radios, so I might be with t O about that. But more than anything, I want to know. Okay, so we can rename the radio itself. I could turn

that off and on. I don't have I don't currently have because of some roof work I'm having done. I don't currently have my VHF UHF antenna up right now, so I'm not gonna be able to try to hit a local repeater with this or anything. Okay, I had to look at the manual, But here's what you do. So we've got our channels at the top left corner. There's that Hamburger menu at the top left corner right there. You click on that and you get to your channel section.

You can edit your channels just like we just did there. If you click on the three dots at the top right corner, you've got several options there, disconnect, Voice Connection team, whatnot, Device settings and settings. I was going to device settings, and that is this menu right here, and it's just basically squelch level speaker, wired mirkerotphone speaker. You can turn it off and on, firmware version, et cetera, et cetera. Okay, but if we go into settings, not device settings, but settings.

From that menu, now we have APRS settings, and this is what I wanted to look like, what I wanted to look at. So if we click on APRS settings right there, the first thing to ask you is call sign and password. This is to get into the APRS. It's the same call sign and password you would set if you set up APRS droid. So I'm gonna set k C five HWB and I'm gonna pay. I'm gonna

say DASH generally a mobile station is DASH nine. I don't like to use the same signifier, the same SSID on multiple radios unless I'm using those radios at too totally independent times. So right now, my truck, which is the radio in my truck is my YAZUFTM five hundred. It's not currently powered on, but it is set to kcfive HWB Dash nine and it becons that every time I'm on a road trip. So I want that one to always be my truck radio. So I'm gonna set

this one to ten KC five HWB DASH ten. I'm going to get a passcode, all right, get APRS password. You can use an APRSIS password that has been registered with other APRS applications. So when you register with the APRSIS, you were given a password. It should be an email somewhere. That's the password that you're going to want to put in here here is okay. I went back into my own email and found my own passcode, which is a five digit number, and if I click on verify passcode,

it says the passcode is correct. So there we go. I get service was automatically toggled on. I did not toggle that on, so you can toggle that off and on. I'm going to change my server to North America, of course, and say radio to internet and Internet to radio, so you can you can go both ways. You can turn on one way direction or you can turn on duplex direction for a messaging and then you can do receive messages from the Internet. I'm going to turn everything on.

Share location via iGATE send power well in operating frequency. No, I don't want to do that. Share location via iGATE, Location source system select coordinates. Okay, so if I wanted to share so, I don't see a setting in here for ambiguity, which is usually like one or two digits off. You can set ambiguity in a lot of radios so that it reports your position a few miles away or on the next town over something, depend on how you

set it. I don't see that. But what I can do is I can set location source here for select coordinates and just set it to if I wanted to set it to somewhere across town or set it to my mailbox address or something like that, I could do that. Okay, I'm not gonna do that right now, but that's how you do it. Okay, we can go interval five minutes and I don't see a setting in here for smart beaconing. Now it's not gonna really do anything. I guess I could. I guess I could turn this on because it's not

gonna do anything because I'm connected. I got the radio connected to a dummy load right now. I set a minute ago, I didn't have an antenna hooked up, and I don't, but I do have a dummy load hooked up, so I don't know. I'm not gonna I'm not gonna click on that anyway, so I'm gonna save that really customizable in there. So that's what that's where we are on that. Let's see, this is the APRS map now

that I've got my settings set up there. This is what it's seeing on the map currently, now that it's connected to the internet through my smartphone. It's not beaconing APRS over RF, not right now. Anyway. You can set it to do that, but you can also set it to use the five G connection on your phone to share your position, which makes it an eegate. So this is kind of a unique eyegate. Most igates will receive

an RF signal. If you've got an APRS radio in your car and you're beacon in a signal a location report on one three ninety, an iGATE will be a radio on top of a tower or a building or something, and it will receive your beacon and it will transmit that information. Whatever you share via the beacon, you can set it up in the radio to the Internet and it will show up on the website at APRS dot f FI. This is doing the same thing, but kind

of in a different manner. Is this is not transmitting our f at least it's not right now because it's in a dummi load. But you can see I am on this map right here. If you look on this map right there, you can see there's my call sign right right there is my call sign right there in Grapevine, right on the top of the Grapevine dot, which is where it should be up there on the north end

of Grapevine. So it is sharing my location via the GPS radio, in the GPS radio inside of this mobile radio, and via the settings that I just set right here. So this is kind of this is going to be a neat thing to play with. I'm interested to see if anyone wants to set up and do a network connection and see if we can talk to one another

over the network. And I'm interested to see if they eventually have a kiss T and C for this, although you might not need it because with the kiss T and C on the HT you can connect other apps besides just APRS to it, so you can connect wind Link to it. You can connect I can't think of anything else right now, but win Link an APRS, you know, are two different, two totally separate apps, and you can connect it and tell the radio to do whatever and connect to a win Link gateway or an APRS note

or something like that. So this one, with all the steps we just went through just now, this is limited to APRS, but it's totally open, fully function APRS. So this is really cool. I want to send some messages over the internet see what kind of feedback we can get and that kind of thing. So how many of you are actually interested in this radio? I would like to see in the comments below how many are interested

in this radio? What you think about this radio? What are some really cool things you want to try with this radio? Where would you put this? Would you put this in your shack or would you put this in your vehicle or would you put it in some kind of go kit that you would take to trips like to hamfests and whatnot. Or to camping campouts or something like that. Put a comment in the description below, thanks for watching today. Check out the links to the radio in the description below. Seventy three