Matter of Facts: Sometimes A Cheap Date Can Be Fun

Welcome back to the Matter of Facts podcast on the Prepper Broadcasting Network. We talk prepping, guns, politics every week on iTunes, Ditcher, and Spotify. Go check out our content at mwefpodcast dot com. On Facebook or Instagram. You can support us be a Patreon or by checking out our affiliate partners. I'm your host, Phil Raveley Andrew Nick on the other side of the mic, and here's your show. Welcome back to Matter of Facts Podcast. I'm Phil, that's Nick or that's Nick. I can never remember when I one of these when I inverted my camera. It doesn't matter though some of these are Nick. This is the Matter of Facts podcast. We have been challenged to make the show cut off at less than an hour. Well, I was not bribed by the patrons to rig the betting pool properly to force you to go over an hour. Yes, but we also never specified it had to be the next show, so like, we could cut off at fifty nine minutes this time and go over an hour next time and we both win. True. True, See it's all in the small print. But the people that are poking fun at us right now are the patrons, and they're always promoting bad decisions and usually ridiculing me because we're very long winded and we can't seem to make an hour show actually take an hour. But you know it's all in good fun. I enjoy it, yep. And you should also buy a shirt or a koozie or something from the Southern Galas it supports small business, supports us. And one of these days Nick and I will actually like not be drowning in work and we will put some time towards revamping. The merch line. I know Gramby Community College welding program is like definitely going to be a thing. We did have some interesting we did have some sting Warhammer forty K stuff about the omnisia and all that, but then you point out they they are was extremely litigious. There's one thing in games Workshop gloves. It's their money and protecting it. Yeah, we might have to wave off of that. I'm sure we could find a legally distinct knockoff. I mean, adeptist, ridiculous manages it pretty well. They sell merch true, true, of course, they make it all really horny in a creepy way. Sometimes Gil Rabers reminding me fifty nine minutes, actually it's fifty eight minutes. Because it's seven thirty two. Oh no, she's keeping count though. And last, but not least, you can prevent war crimes or invent new war crimes with disaster coffee. Use code mof at checkout, save a couple percent. It's good for you. Now, Phil cannot lecture you if you subscribe to regular shipments because it's a different discount code. So I will, I will admit I might. I may or may not have jump Nick's ass twice now because he didn't use the promo code. But it's because he set up a recurring subscription, and we can't do a discount with a subscription and allow more discounts because then we're giving him coffee. Correct. I mean he wouldn't mind, but the company would become insolvent very quickly, and then nobody would get coffee. Because I would just increase the volume of coffee over the pot of day I already drink. Okay, so it'd be a race to our poverty and your heart attack. Correct. Yes, Well, that's why we don't allow mixing and matching of you know, out the discount code and. The subscription service. It's really for your benefit, it's for my health, you know. Above all. Yeah, all right, So the topic is sometimes a cheap date can be fun. Nick got an. He can that he cannot show us on the stream because YouTube is. Dumb, and I did not remember to take a picture. But bet you most people in here have seen a Ruger ten twenty two. Mine's a little different. I didn't tactical timmy it. I didn't build it from scratch. I bought it from a guy who built it from scratch, So Bill, I showed it to you earlier. Nice dark walnut boyd stock, one inch heavy profile barrel, accurized trigger package, phenomenal shooting. Little gun. It is a cheap date because ten twenty two shooting twenty twos. You can do an awful lot of long range target practice and. Training with that. It's gonna be a lot of fun. The new range I belonged to, I believe has a twenty two league. So we're gonna see if I can't sneak in there between work and what are probably inevitable more renovations to my house that I am wrapped approaching. Yeah, I mean, sooner, Lar it's gonna happen. I will say that, like we've had this conversation about how I was never a big twenty two l R guy years ago. I will admit, as I've begun to shoot them a bit more, I'm starting to understand the appeal. And it's not really it's not really cost for me. It's the fact that. Let's all be mature about it for a second. Shooting does get fatiguing after a while. It absolutely can. Depending on what you're shooting and what your tolerances is how fast you get fatigued. But it does fatigue you over time. Like when I go out to the range and I'm practicing with my fourteen and a half ounce jframe, my tolerance is about fifty rounds and at that point, that tiny little snubnosed barrel, the concussion from the thirty eight special, the solid alumina backstraps smacking me in the web of the hand, Like you reach a point very quickly where it's like this is. No longer fun. Well but even but here's the think of it from a training perspective. It's not fine. You push past, but then you reach a point where it's like, Okay, I am no longer training because I am flinching because my handholds. Yeah, you're no longer effectively training. And you know I've Yeah, that's one of the big reasons why I decided to part with my three hundred win mag. The two well, the one of the bigger, bigger reasons, I should say, the biggest reason being I don't even even with this new range that has an occasional availability of five hundred yards, that's not stretching the legs of the cartridge. There is no game in this portion of the country that I can't hunt with my thirty odd six or my twelve gage. So wait a second, if you get rid of your three hundred win mag, what are you going to do with the nick box? Well, you see, I realize you are. The only person I know of that shoots Magnum, right, you know what, screw it? RAG was gonna get it if you don't. Well, you see, I was thinking to myself, I have a long action Remington thirty odd six right now, and twenty five ought six does like Magnum rifle primers and Magnum loads. Yeah, It's like I would have to look and is it was it ever Sammy certified or is that total wildcait? It was not. It's it's one of those total wildcats. I'm fairly certain it's not SAMI certified. I mean, I have not gotten rid of the three hundred. I don't know. I go back and forth on it all the time. Well, you got to make a decision by the summer. If you make it, don't make a decision before you have before you have to choose who you're giving it to. Well, I mean, it's yours if you want it. I'm just saying, like Raggle has already given me hell about why I didn't give it to him, And if you don't want it, it's going to go to a good home, so. Sooner or later. There's just will make it. There's only so big of a pool. There's only so big of a pool of people that shoot anything that requires a large magnum rifle prime. Yeah, and powders that slow. That is true, and you know that. But the trouble is filled. You ever shot through one hundred rounds a three hundred win mag in a sitting? No, but it sounds awful. Your brain feels weird afterwards. No, it didn't really weird before. But that's a different thing. Well, yeah, no, that's that's for sure. You don't dedicate yourself to that kind of range time without having something a little bit wrong with yourself. But I got I got to read in a study a while back where they talked about large bore rifles and cumulative brain damage from the concussion of firing them, And I thought to myself, it's not unheard of for me to sit down and fire one hundred rounds a three hundred win mag and then at the time I would grab my ar with a massive muzzle brake on it and rip through another few hundred rounds. And supposedly, according to the study, I'll have to find the link to it and send it to you. You'll find it interesting too, about sixty rounds of three hundred win Meg is comparable to a moderate TBI, like sixty rounds of three hundred wind. MEG moderate TV. The concussion adds up, man, it does. And I've been whacked in the head a lot just throughout life. You know, these things happen. You get hit in the head something, these things happen. I am well beyond my three free concussions. Uh, hang on, one second, doctor, scary guy. We plugging rim fire radio yet. I'm assuming that's either a YouTube channel or a podcast. But yeah, I mean plug away if their content is good. Yeah, definitely, I'll have to take a look. I've not heard of them, y'all. Y'all need to understand like the way I am about plugging like other companies or other content creators, Like if they're not douche canoes and they're doing good work, by all means, drop it like I am, I might learn something. I am very much of the school of thought of the rising time floats all boats, and I am more than happy to see someone get turned onto content that is up their alley. That's that's fine with me. The only thing I ever say is, like me personally, I am very hesitant to plug other people's content unless I personally like kind of I hate to say like the content creator because that almost makes it sound like it's a personal thing. But you know what I'm saying, Like, if they're not a douche canoe, if they're not a gatekeeper, if they're doing, if they're doing because if they're doing because they're trying to educate the community, I am very forgiving of a lot of things. And if they're just out because they're trying to do the ship for attention and money and fame. Then I'm like, ah, could be really good content, but I. Feel like you're doing it for the wrong reason, so I don't want to support you. That's fair. I think that's fair. I mean, it could be still good content even if you're doing it for the wrong reasons. But that doesn't mean I'm going to encourage you, exactly. You know, I mean that. But that's that's it exactly. It's you could still make great content and be doing it because it's a career and it makes you money and it pays your bills. But I'm just like I I I tend to look at people who are doing this this kind of thing professionally, and I'm like, I don't think you need someone to help pump your content. Yeah I want, I want to. I want to elevate it, hit those voices that are like doing good work but they don't have the notoriety. Yeah. Anyway, So I also got a new toy, and I can't show you all this on the stream because YouTube doesn't freak out when you. Show people radios. Yes yet that I'm sure that's coming. But anyway, So this is this is the. New Darling of the Internet. This is the bo fang ub five R Mini. And I. I don't want to cast dispersions or make assumptions, but I do find it a little bit suspicious the fact that like every single amateur radio content creator blew up with this frickin radio at exactly the same time, almost like they all got sent these things to do reviews on. Probably at least a few of them did. At least a few of them did. Now, what I will say is that I didn't get set this. I bought this for fifty dollars off of Amazon, this and this little brother they're sitting back there, and then spent an additional forty dollars on a pair of these really nice flexible lightweight signal stuff dual band antennas, which I haven't had a chance to try because I've been playing with this for a week and this showed up in the mail. Right before the show started. Nice. But all that to say that personally, I don't like doing unboxing videos. I don't do that thing. Whereas like, look at all the stuff came in the box. I don't care. I wanted to spend a week messing with the radio and like come back to the table ultimately with a with a recommendation for anyone that is in amateur radio, but also like the good, the bad, the ugly, the my. Gripes with it. Yeah, this is what really, this is what stood out. To me like that whole thing. And you have the actual user experience, not look at shiny yes. And you also have to bear in mind, like I, some of the things I complain about are gonna be the most eye rolling. Phi'll get over it. It's the twenty five dollars radio types of things, and I understand that. But I am an enormous user experience, user interface person, so thing little things matter to me because it's the things that like your hand and your eyeballs are gonna touch every time you look at this radio, So to me, that matters. All right, all that being said, so UB five R mini, let's go through the good first. It is absolutely the tiniest god given radio on the market right now. I do not have large hands, by the way, and this is literally like palm of your hand fit. This is a very very small, diminutive, very lightweight radio. So that is kind of one in the wind column. USB starting to see charging ports directly on the battery. That's nice. No, charger required, no cradle, no nonsense. Literally like the same charging port that semi phone will charge this. And I'm going to tell you right now that at this point in time, any radio manufacturer not putting USB SUE ports directly on their battery should just go out of business because it is. It is the de facto charging port. It is ubiquitous, it is almost universal, and it's just simple. It's not hard to just put a little port right there at a little bit of a little bit of electronic guts in the back to make it charge right off the battery. It'll be nice too, because then you can theoretically charge a battery off of the radio if you have two, if you have spare battery. You're talking about like plug this battery into another battery. No, I'm saying, pull the battery off the radio, plug it in, and put a fresh battery in the radio. Oh yeah, Now, I will say that I have not done what I did with my GM fifteen pros with those, since those are like my go to that's my go to comp set up. I have spare batteries and everything for that whole thing, so that if anything breaks or anything dies, I've got stuff to hot swap nice with these. I literally just bought one pack one battery. These are much These are intent and much more. For recreational use. I will point it out here, and this is one of those little goofy things that doesn't matter to anybody. But one of the things I noticed about a lot of these radios is that the bell clips mount directly to the batteries, which is a little annoying because if you hot swap the battery, you hot swap the uh the clip too. However, with these, unlike a lot of older bo fangs, these literally quick release right into They're not the battery gone, They're not screwed on. Literally that was a pain in the ass. Yeah, they just. Pop right in, pop right out like if I have if I wanted to swap batteries, I literally pull this clip off, dovetails into the other one, slide back in being being boom done quick and simple. That's good. Yeah, little things like that that I want to call them quality of life improvements, but really what it tells me is that somebody's been listening. Let's see here. What else I actually had a list, just in case I started wandering around and forgot about all things, because I've been taking notes on all this stuff all week. Okay, here's one thing, and I'm gonna pop an intent of back on here real. Quick, dial this thing up. Maybe maybe not. We'll catch some side traffic while we're listening, so y'all can hear the audio quality, all right, we're on a scan NICs. So one of the things I did is I have everybody knows like I have an sdr RIG, and I spent some time when I was away on work, like playing around with that, checking out local air traffic, listening on local air traffic, and I was directly comparing this little thing to what that sdr. Rig is capable of. And I am a little frustrated to admit this, but this m something's moving around that's New Orleans like for undwarth approach. Anyway, what I am forced to admit is that this actually had better reception, better sensitivity, better noise rejection than an sdr RIG did. Now, I will say that that sdr rig doesn't seem to have a real happy time with am frequencies or with HF, like it's really more in its happy place with like VHFUHF. And I've used to do things like satellite down links when you're up over one gigaherd. But it just doesn't. It's never felt really happy and in the amband. But what I do find interesting is that I didn't have that my my big old man pack, which is also AM capable. I didn't have that up north to play with and do a direct comparison. But the fact that this handily beat that sdr RIG. I kind of want to put it head to head with that big old four hundred dollars radio and see if it's sensitivity and noise rejection is substantially better than this. I suspect it. Will be because it's it should be. It's a I mean, it's a wukesan KG one thousand g. It's a super heterodone radio. There's no reason why this shouldn't get its butt handed. To it by that. But even if it does, you're talking about sixteen hundred percent more. Cost for that versus this. Yeah, that's not to mention, not to mention a base station radio versus this. The AM reception of this, which was one of the primary reasons I'd say to try these, because like I have radios that I can use for comps with my family. But like I am an old aviation nerd. So I spent about the first I mean six years in the military and then another somebody's talking anyway, spent the first six years in the military and then spent a good handful of time in civilian aviation before. I transition careers. So, like, I've been around aircraft for a long time. I like to go and just hang out around airports, listen to traffic and everything. It's just kind of a hobbyist thing. And eventually I'd really love to go catch an air show and be able to listen to tower frequencies in Unicorn and Guard and like listen to what's going on above my head. That'd be quite interesting. Yeah, that'd be neat, especially especially at an air show when you're you're watching it at the same time. Yeah, So the AM and the airband reception is kind of one of my biggest reasons for one to give these a try. And I am extraordinarily impressed with what I was able to get out of this tidy little thing. Nice what else? What else? That's the Lacombe repeater lighting up now anyway, set this off on the side. Only are two ur things. So the there is the ability not just with the pro the uh, not just with the programming software, but also through the phase play to add and remove channels from your scan group. So basically what I did with this was is I took everything out of the scan group except for the airband frequencies, so that when I put it in scan, it just it hot swaps across ten different channels. That is, all the New Orleans International channels, all the Lakefront Airport channels, and L thirty one's Unicom. So like every AM airban within twenty five miles of my home is all programmed in there now except for Hammond. I do need to add those cool. Were you able to pro to add those channels add channel names to those AM frequencies? Did you ever figure that out from the faceplate? So yes, well, let's power this back up. I don't know if I'll be able to show you. They'll probably be hard to get a picture of it on screen, that's how bright that is compared to the camera. It may but so let's see if y'all can see that. It may not want to zoom, very blurry. Yeah, okay, So the short and long of it is using either the BAO fang software or chirp. Because I did try both, which we'll get into in a minute. I was able to add channel names. You can also do it through the face plate, but I discovered something that's kind of an oversight and kind of annoying. When you program a. Channel through the face play, there's no ability to insert a space in the channel name. Oh you can using the programming. Using the programming that's a software. And the weird part of it is is that there's literally a key over here that has what looks like the bracket that is a space, but when you press it, it cycles through like a bunch of It cycles through two or three special characters and then the zero, but it doesn't actually give you a space. Is there an underscore in the special characters? I look for one. I haven't found one. Interesting, So now what I did do was I some of these I just kind of blurt, you know if I use like msy ground all one word, which is annoying to me. What I did start doing was I keep hearing a. Noise in my headphones, and I'm afraid it might be this radio, so I'm gonna leave. It turned off. It might be I'm not I'm not hearing it hm hm. Anyway, So what I did determine was what I started using was just a period oh that between two words. I mean, it works, it's a hack, but it's annoying that, Like, it shouldn't have been that difficult. Just have one of these keys cycle too. You wouldn't even need a special key work because this is like the old school, like when you would text by pressing key. Yeah, all you would have to do is have one of these. Just tap tap, tap tap till you get a space again. User experience, user interface. It seems like it seems like a minor gripe. Maybe it is, but it's still like, guys, y'all couldn't have put a space in here. It's it's one of. Those it's one of those little quirky things that makes you go, hmm, why did that get skipped? Because it's kind of a it's a core thing. I mean, I realize you're not ever going to be typing out full sentences into this radios display. One, the display is not that big. Two it's not really necessary but eh, but noticeable. But I'll tell you, like I've got quite a few, I've got a quite a few channels in here that are like nine and ten characters long, so it'll take a pretty healthy sure string of text. How many channels can you program into that radio? Do you know? According to the program is software at nine hundred and ninety nine. Huh, that's a lot of channels. Give me a second and we'll find out program channel channel memory and nine hundred nine hundred ninety nine. Nice Rydel would like to know. Can you edit it after the fact, you edit the channel names after the fact, I believe, yes, design context that's good. Yes, I mean either through the program software or through this I will say that, and and like, don't beat me to the punchline. When we get to the downsides. That's when I'll talk about some of the things in here that we're a little frustrating to use. But yes you can. Like, as a matter of fact, three of these channels that are now local tower frequencies, these were originally Barksdale and Shreevepoort channels, And I literally just went in and then change the text, change the the RX frequency, and just flip those back around and tournament to local channels. So yes, like, once you put a channel in here, you can very easily go in and modify it, or you can just delete it out and free that block up. That's good. So there is there is all that and last thing in the good column. There are twin push to talks on this radio. So you know. Normally, like you can you can engage dual watch so to listen to two different channels and then if you hit AB, then it'll flip between which is the active channel. Here you literally have two different push talks. That's nice. So you can now you can still flip those channels abe top to bottom, but you've you can literally like talk to one, hit the other talk to the other. I mean it allows you, if you want to use it that way, to flip back and forth between two. Channels very very quickly. Interesting. Now the bad and everything I'm going to say from here this point forward is like it's twenty five dollars radio. If he'll give some grades, I understand. But the same thing I said about being able to add and subtract channels from your scan group. There are no scan groups in this radio. So if you're familiar with scan groups, like some radios will have like group A, group B, Group C, Group DHA the channels this does not This has a single scan group and no provisions to make more than one. Not an enormous not again, not an enormous issue in a twenty five dollars radio, but annoying because baio Fan's more expensive radios have scan groups, and I can't agin the hardware takes up so much space that they couldn't have just put the program into here. It's probably just software limited. I almost wonder if in time we're not gonna find a weed jail break post it online that says hey, if you do this, you can unlock multiple scan groups or unlocked different portions of these software. Not sure, but that was an oversight that jumped out at me, because what I would like to have is like AM on one scan group and my gmors on a scan group, and maybe my repeaters on another one, and my mirrors on another and so on and so forth. Not gonna happen with this. Yeah, what you can do is just go in and one at a time, go through all your channels and just delete, delete, delete, delete from the scan group, leave them in the radio and just remove the scannability and then put the scannability on other ones like you can rearrange that. It's much faster to do through the programming software obviously, but like it can be done you have the face plate can. Be done through the face play. I will give that as I will give that as an across the board, like high five to this radio is I have not found anything. The only thing you cannot do from the face play the radio, obviously is upload a graphic to you know, for your for your start for your startup. On the on the radio. You have to use the programming software do that and AD. But as far as yeah and AD spaces, that's it. Though I haven't found anything else you cannot do straight through the face play, which is helpful and encourage fairly minor gripes. I would say I've got a few more. No, I'm just saying supposed to. Yeah. So programming these things was a gigantic pain and ass I do not know yet if the problem is like in the port itself, or maybe it was the cable that was provided with these, and if it is, I've got another one that should work just fine. But I only had the contents of this box and when I went up north, but about thirty percent of the time I tried to program whether read or write these, it would just fail immediately. Huh. The problem with. It would act as if the cable was not It would recognize that the cable was plugged into laptop and it would act as if it was not plugged into this. Now, once I got it running, it seemed like it was gonna run for a while. But there was one point where I literally pull pulled a program down out of this, made some changes, went to upload it up, went to upload it back in. Hadn't touched the radio, hadn't touched the cable, hadn't even bumped the desk. All of a sudden, it wouldn't work. Until I unseated the connection from the radio and seated it back in, and unplugged the cable from the laptop and plugged it back in, And finally something got its mind right. I see the look on your face. I'm right there with you. It's one of those things where it's like without now I will say that it did that that whole thing I just talked. It did that with more radio, but I plugged it into the other worked fine. But then when I plug but then when I plugged the uncooperative radio back in, that one started working fine too. What operating system are you running on the computer that you were programming that with Windows ten? Okay? I would be interested to see you try it with the same computer and a different cable. See if you get similar results. See if it's one radio in particular. If it's one radio in particular, it's probably. The port on the on the radio. It seems to be both radios intermittently. Cable, which would make you think, yeah, make the cable or the USB port on the PC could be driver issue. Perhaps hard to say, not sure. Like I said, this, the cable that came in this, I'll have to compare part numbers and everything, but I am pretty sure is exactly the same cable as what I've used program a bunch of my other bo things with. Doesn't mean it's not a shit cable. Could be a shit cable. But if it is a shit cable, it's a shit cable. They included in the freaking box. So you know, WI quality control is a thing. I mean, you could have just gotten one of. The cables that's not good or is somewhat suspect. Yeah, that will see. I'll do some more data into that. It'd be interesting to find out what your long. Term solution is. But there's more so BeO Fang's own software. When you go to upload an image, which. Because I'm a gigantic nerd, there's an mof podcast, you know, Badge that shows up on these radios now when you turn it on. But the instructions embedded into the programmer that tells you how to format the bitmap to fit on this screen and to work are wrong. The instructions embedded in the programmer by the manufacturer that tells you how to make an image fit on this radio, those specs are wrong. And I figured this out after trying about three times and couldn't figure out what the hell I was doing wrong. So I started going to YouTube University Lo and Behold another content creator was like, oh yeah, the problem is is that the it's not a. Square screen, it's a rectangle. But Bao Fang said that the image had to be it was either one hundred and twenty four by one hundred and twenty four or one hundred and twenty eight by one hundred and twenty eight square. And I looked at it and you can it's not an exaggerated rectangle, but it's. Very sty but there's a bit of a rectangle though. Yeah, and it's one hundred it's ten pixels taller than it is wide. When you change that works perfect. That's great. I mean it's terrible. I mean, you know, with as big of a company as bo fang is, that's it. That's the kind of oversight. That's kind of like. Somebody's job was clearly to go through those in st auctions and make sure it worked, and they failed. Something was seriously missed. Yeah, but there's more so. If you use Beofang's own software to try to program amk am frequencies into these channels, it will fail immediately. You will get a warning saying that that frequency is out of range for this radio, even though it. Is plainly not. You can program the exact same frequency through this face plate and it works fine, but their own program in software will not allow you to do it. Once you have programmed a frequency into this radio that is AM that is within the range that the programming software says is not right, you can then read the program back into the beofang software and it will accept it, and it will store it, and it will let you save it, and then it will let you re upload that back into the radio. It will, but the software will not let you select like one hundred and twenty one point five megahertz. Do it is that their. Only radio that does AM scanning. I'm not sure off the top of my head, but you marketed a radio very very loud and proud about the fact that it was AM capable, and yet your own, your own home programming software will not allow you to set an AM channel. Huh. But it gets better. You could do through the face plate, which is how I've done a lot of these, right, And then chirp next has a beta driver and chirp leeds you throw AM channels into this just fine. So it's clearly a software side issue with the bail Fang software. I'm wondering if it's not that they built that software, say for the original UV five R or a few of their other radios that was not AM capable, and they built in just a hard No. On that that is possible. But if that is the If that is the answer to the question, then someone bo fan needs to get like a bit of. A well, they need to send out at least a patch update or something like that. Yeah, what else do I have? There was something else. I have to remember what it was. Oh that came with it? No, no, no, not there yet to think it's still thinking about the programming software. This is a minor thing, and I will happily admit it. But with like my Radiosity radios, they have the ability in the programming software to set an RX frequency and either no transmit frequency or you can disable transmission on certain frequencies. So you could set. Up, like with those radios, you could set up a channel to be listened only. Yeah, so let's say hypothetically, like we have someone with a GMR, we have a younger person with a GMRS license, and we don't want them transmitting on hand radio frequencies because this is an amateur radio. It's wide open, unlocked. Yeah. With the radiodity radios and programs off, you could literally tell the radio thou shout, not transmit on this frequency, listen only. That's useful. This offers no such functionality. You are, if you don't pick a transmission frequency, it will set the exact same as the as the receiving frequency. Interesting, which I understand that's like a design choice, but it's one that I'm pointing out that like it would be. A nice feature to have, especially because this is the price point of radio that a guy with a couple of kids is going to go. All right, I can. Buy one of these for me, one of these for my wife, one for each of my two and a half kids, be under one hundred bucks in the whole thing program it all up. Kids are all legal. Kids are gonna dick with buttons, yes, and they could accidentally get themselves into broadcasting on a channel they should not, potentially potentially. So all that to say, Oh and the one air thing, the thing you and I actually talked about. Let me throw this up in front of every body. So if you notice on the right that radio has like a really aggressive radius on the bottom of it when it's sitting on a flat surface. And I pointed out to Nick that because this radio is so lightweight and the bottom of it is radius so aggressively and it sits on these little bitty feet on the bottom of it, this is about the most tippy radio I've ever felt like if you set the thing on a flat surface with a tall intent on it, if you set this thing down the least a little bit incorrectly, it's going to fall over on itself. Minor problem could be remedied by using like one of the smaller rubber duck antennas, but it's just one of those things. Like the criticism I originally had was when I was using this not with the signal stuff intenna that will probably live on this thing forever now, but I originally was using it with the Fagoya seven to seventy one. I was telling Nick, this is a Fugoya, not a Nagoya, because in Nagoya seventy seven one is a twenty five dollars intenna, and this was the intenna that BeO Fang included. In the box with a twenty five dollars radio. So close, I mean it, I've got a legit seventy to seventy one, and. This is this feels really really similar, but it doesn't say Nagoya anywhere on it. So take that with a grain of salt. But oh, that's a good point. Ragle hmm. If you normally run it standing up, there's probably a three D printed stand or base out there you can clip onto it, potentially find an STL. I'll make you one, potentially. But I also tend to think that BeO fang could have like taken the radius out of the bottom of this so that there's just more surface area on the bottom. I'm gonna tell you, well, it's but it's kind of a catch twenty two because this feels so nice in the hand. I was gonna say, I'd be willing to bet you somebody was holding on to a prototype one that has squarer corners and they said, yeah, can we just like round that corner a bit, Yeah, and I'll show you around at corner, and then they put this giant filet on there. Yeah. Yeah. But that's like the one downside to being the radio being this small in this light is that Nick. Nick's immediate reaction was like, wow, that would feel really good in a radio pouch. And I'm like, this is like actually, I. Said, like fit great in a grenade pouch. It will fit okay in a grenade pouch, like even in like an ar mag shingle, which those fit radios pretty well, they do. This thing is just. Entirely too small to fit comfortably in a radio and in any kind of a reasonably. Sized radio pouch at this point, Like this. Is you know the pouch I was really thinking of when I had that in mind. Was the old Alice pouch with the old alice I'm sixteen mag pouch with the two grenade pouches on either side of it. I bet you would drop right into one of those. Alice side pouches. It might actually Do you have one to try it? No, damn, I'll bring one to Prepper to our summer camp. Or you could just buy a pair of these yourself for goofing off. I could, but I already have four Bao fangs. But you don't have a programmed But you don't have a teeny tiny little one that's am capable. I don't, but I really I don't have like the interest in the airbands that you do. It wouldn't really add any fund. I realize you're trying to spend my money, and that's great. But that is the way our relationship works, snick. It kind of is. In fact, it mostly is that. But I just it doesn't add any functionality to my radio panoply because I've got I have a nice yasu handy talking I will probably eventually end up with a base station to utilize the giant tower I have out the back of my house. But I don't see myself listening to AM even if I had the option, it's eh, maybe pick up a game, but that'd be about it. But Nick, doesn't this look like fine? I mean, yeah, I like to mess around with computers and stuff, but I do that with my three D printer. Yes, but I could teach you how to spy on aviation traffic around your. House, right, but I have no desire to. We will create your desire. You can try. My wife was so. You know, I said to my wife the other day, I said I'd be kind of neat to learn how to fly a plane. And she said, well, why don't you get your pilot's license? And I looked at her like she was crazy, because well, it's not an unreasonable thing to say. Apparently it's like twenty five grand in Illinois to get a to get a single engine pilot's license. Yes, so it is quite literally nice bass boat price, get halfway decent bass boat price. Yes, and that's before you buy the plane or the fuel or any of that other stuff cheaper to rent. If I had, if I had twenty five grand spare cash laying around, I'm not getting a pilot's license. I'm getting a bass boat. I will tell you that I was told by several pilots that if it fly, if it flies, sleeps with you, or floats. It's cheaper to rent. It's possible. All three of those pilots. By the way, we're single, so you know that might call them, But the flying and floating thing is definitely still true. Like I mean, at a certain scale, I would agree with them. At a certain scale, like if you're going to. Go fishing two weeks of the year, I get it renting boats about thousand bucks five hundred bucks a week. It's really where you're at, and it'll be an okay boat. It'll float, it'll probably start, and if it doesn't, it's not your problem. They'll just give you a different boat to use. Flying is probably one of those similar things is how often are you really gonna go flying? And the problem is that with with tie down fees, hangar fees, maintenance, and the fact that the maintenance has to be done whether you fly the damn thing or not, because there are there's such a thing as flight hours and mandatory time on some of these things, like foul shout do an annual inspection whether or not you flew the plane this year, yep. And you are almost certainly not qualified according to the FAA to do that inspection yourself, so you're gonna go pay an aircraft mechanic to go do it. So really, unless you're like my grandpa's late neighbor, crazy Bob, who would land planes on the road in front of his house, take the wings off, taxi him into his barn, and then store them there, put the wings back on, and then fly away the next weekend, it's probably cheaper to rent space. It always comes down to what does it cost to rent the plane? How many times I'm a year are you going to rent it? And if the cost of ownership is less than that, then you own the plane. Yeah, it comes down to that. For for probably eighty percent of pilots I've met, and I used to work at airports for a living, eighty percent of pilots would have been cheap better off ranting the plane because they now, some of these guys they'll fly every weekend, every. Weekend, then it makes sense to have one. Yeah, and they did. And then you have the people that did it, like as Charter, they you know, did things with it. But anyway, all right, there was a guy I used to work with on the. I worked with them tangentially and no, Steward, we're not starting over. No, we're on a hard limit for today's time. Yes, sixteen minutes or missis, matter of fact, beats me with a rubber noodle. True, he had a floatplane that he would fly up to his cabin that he had on the lake. In that case, he's turning like a six. I think he said it was either a six hour car trip or a two and a half hour flight. Makes a lot of sense. He was going up to the cabin every weekend or every other weekend in the summer, you know that, that kind of thing. That makes a lot of sense. But I just I don't see most recreational pilots using it that often. Yeah, so anyway, let's round this out the verdict. As much bitching and complaining as I just got through doing about this, BeO fang UB five R Mini and I did a fair amount of bitching. It's still a hard recommend. This is a hell of a lot of radio for twenty five bucks. I think it's the same thing as the original UV five R. Is it the best radio in the category? No, depends on how you define category. Though, well, I would say handy talkies as a category, say handheld handheld amateur radio. No, it's not the best handheld fair, it's also like a fifth or less the price of the best handheld or even some of the better handhelds. So see, if you're. Equipping like a small group of people that are not looking for the best radio, they're looking for an acceptable radio or a radio they can learn on pretty good. Option, I see, I would say it depends on how you want to find category. Stewart's gonna distract it. Power output. I haven't hooked this up to my meter yet because literally I just got back into town from being out of town like six hours in a bit ago. Maybe this weekend I'll get around to plugging my plug my meter into this. See what the output power is. But other people have independently tested it at about four point six watts on high power, which is perfectly acceptable. That sounds about right because normally they're like I think those those radios from bail Fang are five watts radio, which means they're ever so slightly less than five lots. Yeah, But all that being said, like I tend to look at it as I don't think it's even rational to compare a Beofang to a Yasu. Or an icon okay or a Motorola. I don't. I don't. I don't think it's a rational comparison because you're literally comparing like tor de Camri to Ferrari, Like what's a different class. Yeah, the fact that they all have wheels and engines is kind of irrelevant. We're comparing two things together that are never going to compare at all, Like, doesn't it doesn't even matter what we're comparing, fuel economy, horsepower, handling, pick something, and it's going to be completely weighted one direction or the other because these two things don't compare together. But if you compare this to the the Beofang GM fifteen pros that I have that are like radiodity GM thirty's, if you compare this to a lot of other compar small budget amateur radio radios, I think this is kind of the one to beat at this point. It's I haven't found enough about it that I don't like to sway me away from from recommending it. And most of the things I complained about could be fixed. A lot of them are software issues. A firmware update to add scan groups to this, a software update to the programming software to fix some of the little issues with that, and that would erase seventy five percent of my aggravation with this radio. Like a firmware update. To add a space into the into the channel names when you want one. Like, it's a bunch of little bitty quality of life things that could be fixed and could be improved upon with a software change, with no extra hardware, without having to re release these things. And I think that would make these radios noticeably better and noticeably better to use than what they are now. But even the way they are right now as delivered, I am really hard pressed it tellsm not to buy a pair of these, even for my purposes. I don't have a hand rader license. I have a GMRS license. It didn't take me long to sit down and plug in all the GMRS frequencies, all the FRS frequencies, all the MERS frequencies. It's already got a one button press weather mode that cycles through all the NOAH channels Like. It didn't take long for me to put this into a state where I was able to use it as a GMRS radio. Even though I understand the SCC frowns and such things. You're supposed to use GMRS radios for GMRS frequencies, Y. Union, I get over yourself. I am operating within the specs of GMRS, or the fact that I'm using a radio that would give them hard palpitations, but I'm staying under the power limitations and within the frequencies. I think that's fair. I mean, look, as long as you're complying with the power regulations, you're really not going to be doing anything that wouldn't be done normally with a standard GMRS radio. So I fail to see what their sticking point is other than you're not locked in. I think a lot of it's because of the lack of Now this is kind of a sidebar, but like I feel like a lot of the whole I feel like a lot of where this thing about GMRS you have to use GMRS radios comes from is because HAM radio involves licensing and testing, right, Yeah, So you as the operator are expected to know what frequencies are inbound, what frequencies are out of bound. You're expected to know all those things. And she expected to know that with GMRS exactly. It's a it's a test free license. So I think that's the reason is because if you're if they're not going to test your knowledge, then the race has to be what locks you out of which you're not supposed to play a round in. But but if you have the knowledge that it takes to search YouTube to figure out how to program GMRS frequencies into that Hamm radio, you've kind of crossed that barrier to entry already. Like you you've you've demonstrated enough knowledge that this is not an issue. Now you could willfully choose to ignore that, But then you're then you're making a willful choice to break the vial the regulations. I mean to be perfectly frank, being able to program this thing for repeater usage with CTS tones, that's well more than what most beginners, in my experience have an easy time with. True, and I understand there's hand radio guys out there that same program radios isn't difficult, But it's not. It's just your teenage miile of how to program this radio. Tell me how long it takes. Sure it ain't gonna be two minute job. Put it that way. Yeah, So that's kind of the long and short of like my opinions about the UBI five R minting. It's there's so much in the win column here that even if it was a fifty dollars radio, I think it would still be really good value for the money. But at fifty dollars for a pair of them, the value proposition is so freaking lopsided with this radio, it's kind of ridiculous. The transmission and the reception quality sounds really really good. I had a chance, very briefly to test this out and found Blue State Park last weekend with some people that had GMRS radios, and I was talking through the local GMRS repeaters using this, and they were listening, and they said that the transmission sounded pretty good on the air side, nice like we talked about earlier when I was comparing this to my SDR big. The noise rejection on this is so impressively good. I had better a reception with local airband from this then I did my SDR rig, which the SDR rig kind of struggles with a M band for some reason. But I was really not expecting this to trounce it so thoroughly. Well. That's good, I mean, because if I recall it correctly, your SDRG, what was that about one hundred hundred and a half. For all the kittens. No, I mean it was like fifty ish. Oh okay, so it's about twice the price is the BeO Fang then, yeah, I thought it was more than that. I'm not sure what Well got that. It depends on It depends because remember when we talk about SDR equipment, you're also lumping in like a sowbird goes and that dish. Right, Probably there's a lot. There's a lot of SDR equipment in this house at this point, depending on what you want to do with the SDR, Like if you want to list your local repeater net, that's a little bit of stuff. And if you want to downlink and decode satellites, it's a different thing. Which is cool. Is above my head. You could figure it out, It's all I could. Look if the hobbies behind me and the hobbies to my right and left, or any indication I need another hobby, like I need another concussion. This is fair. This is fair. So yeah, sometimes it she'd may can be fun. I will happily admit that, like I bought these radios fully expecting that, like if they just sucked, they'd still be something to keep on hand for like you know, going to local air show or hanging around the local airports. But I'm gonna be honest, I've I've been so impressed by this little thing at this point that this might be a regular rotation kind of radio. I don't. I don't think this is the radio I can comfortably hand to my wife or daughter because literally one press of a button and you go off of all the channels I've put in, and you go completely off the reservation into frequency mode with a wide open transmitter. So like this is the kind of thing that like I would use, I would handle my dad, who's an extra class to hand radio operator. But I still think I'm going to stand on business about what I said before about amateur radio. GMRS is always going to be the radio band I recommend it to the lay person. It's always going to be the one I recommend to a family that wants to equip you know, spouses and kids with radios. But I will say that to add something like this into your lineup where you can get a little bit outside of GMRS, and you can put it play with airband with merors and you could start listening in on some of the local repeater action on the amateur radio side, like having one of these in your kit. That's that's worth doing in my opinion. I think so, especially especially at the price point for a learning radio. Yeah yeah, and at this price point, like fifty dollars for a pair of them. If one of them's junk, or one of them gets dumped, dunked into a bucket of water or dies. It's kind of a it's kind of a no big deal issue. Yeah. So yeah, Hey, Nick, guess what I do have one question for you, Phil. If we end the show in three and a half minutes, we win. That's true. If any of the viewers have a Ruger ten twenty two with a heavy barrel and you've found a pet load for it that works really well, send it to me. I'm about to buy a shitload of random twenty two AMMO to accuracy test this. Best of luck with that, all right, we'll see it should be fun. I have a bet to win. We're gonna cap this off. I was. I told all of you I could make an episode last less than an hour, and we're trying to do right here now. A matter of fact, podcast is going to go out the door. If you have questions about radios or ten twenty twos or nonsense, you should reach out. We'll talk about another time. Buyer body right,