Egzumer Needs a Squelch Lower Than One

Egzumer is great software for using to modify the Quansheng radios. It has many excellent features and is very easy to use. But one thing I have noticed that does annoy me a bit is the lowest squelch level. It reads number 1. But for this to be the lowest squelch setting, I think it is set a little too high. Some signals, which are not too bad in terms of how clear / strong they are, are choppy on the lowest squelch setting.

Disabling the squelch does get rid of the choppiness but then the squelch is making a heap of noise each time the transmission ends. This can not be stopped by pressing the M [menu button], or the middle side button if the squelch is set to off [zero]. So It would be great if there was a lower squelch setting of 0.5 so that all the faint signals could be heard without being choppy, or without having to disable the squelch completely [which is a squelch of 0 = disabled].

Other than that Egzumer is excellent. I have seen some people say that the Quansheng K5 / K6 etc are not really scanners. But they are. With Egzumer installed you get 200 channels to add frequencies to. These are scannable, so its basically a 200 channel scanner with tons of features. And the scanning works great. Each channel is totally customizable. You can change steps, mode [AM, NFM etc], Demodu and much more. A lot of the older scanners can not do this for individual channels, so yeah, it's really good. 

Inside My Home Base Scanner

Here is the inside of my old Home made airband scanner receiver. Circuit board: It has an airband chip inside called: R&EW 720 CH AIRBAND RX. l've wrote about this receiver before [at the link] so not going to talk about it much here. Just thought I would show some pictures of the inner workings in case you wanted to have a look! I'll talk to you soon. I'm going to be posting about some Quansheng / Antenna related stuff.

Home Made Airband Receiver Radio

Check out this old school home made airband receiver that I got from Scotland around 1 + years back. Has some issues but will make an excellent restoration project. I've got too many things going on myself to try and fix it so decided to sell it on eBay as spares or repairs. It wasn't up for sale for very long. Someone who loves home made stuff snapped it up really quickly.

It does have an issue where the read out from the dials at the front does not match the frequency. Its all topsy turvy. So I think its only really the front frequency dial mechanism that is faulty. Although I can not be completely sure.

Whilst it is faulty, it does actually work. It could pick up 1 air band transmission and a distant mainstream radio station. Not sure which one. That's all I could get it to pick up. Check out the video of it picking up Birmingham Airport [136.025MHz].

 

It comes with an antenna that I have posted about before on this blog. It's a piece of wire with an angled BNC connection. Old school cool. Works really well. I've tested it against normal antennas and it is just as good as them. And in some cases, better!

    

New Box Design For the K5-8

Well, it's a new box for what I'm used to. I've ordered a fair few Qanshengs and the box is always the same. More compact, all brown, and fatter. This box is different. The inner tray plastic is also different. It's clear and seems a bit tougher. I've seen many people, most of them probably resellers of these radios complain about the inner tray arriving damaged from transit / customs etc. They have to travel far and wide all over the world. Maybe this new box will be better. Mine arrived undamaged, so yep, looks promising. And inside is less crammed.

Front

Back

Inside - one of these was in there

I was going to order a K5 (99). Some call it the K6 I think. Or should it be the K7. You know, the newest model out right now. But I have heard they have some issues so decided to go with the K 5 (8). It's my favourite model out of them all. I know they are all mostly the same, but the design on this one is more nicer to me.

-lcr

Uniden UBC92XLT / Quansheng K5 8 Screens

Which one do you prefer?

Uniden UBC92XLT / Quansheng K5 8 Screens side by side. I do love the deep orange screen on the Uniden. But also really like the screen on the Quansheng. Not just the colour, but also how much it has going on. It's so full of info. Anyway, this was just a quick screen comparison post.

Quansheng_Yellow

Or Uniden_Orange

I will add. I like the Quansheng better than the Uniden. It's easier to use [the Uniden has some annoying navigation features] and it has buttons that light up. Many of my older scanners do not have this. And I am someone who uses scanners in the dark a lot. So the Quansheng has been great for that. Catch me in a few days sir major.

Realistic Pro-37 FAULTY CHANNEL MEMORY

Realistic Pro-37. Has a faulty channel memory but works fine other than that. No frequency can be saved properly. However it can scan manually and monitor a frequency just fine. The memory has a mind of its own though. This is just a quick air-band test to show that the scanner works. Would make a great scanner for monitoring a specific frequency.

 

Realistic Pro-37 Scanner Airband Test

Realistic Pro-37 Scanner Airband Test video UK [video below]. Good old school scanner receiver with a decent frequency range. It can pick up airband really well with the stock antenna. It's also got the 800 Mhz - 900 Mhz frequencies [806 - 960 Mhz]. A cool feature this radio has that you don't see on many scanners these days is a scanning speed button. Press the button and it can go from slow scan to fast scan. This works with both channel scanning [programmed frequencies] and manual scanning frequencies. 200 channels. Manufactured in Japan [for Intertan / Tandy].