30 Years Apart

Warning.  Geekery follows.

On the right, an early 1990's vintage Alinco DJ-F1E - the first amateur radio transceiver I owned from new aged about 16 or 17.  I've managed to get the old battery packs working with some charge cycling an judicious use of the freezer, although I'm going to replace the cells in one of them which will be a fun bit of surgery.  It is still a great wee 2m FM transceiver, but to bring it up to date I'll be turning down the FM deviation to modern standards (~5kHz to ~2.5kHz) which will require some minor surgery too.  I'm still hoping to find an EJ-12U CTCSS board for it so it can open up modern repeaters, but no luck so far.  A recent glimmer of hope turned out to be false.

On the left, a 2020 vintage Anytone 878UV+.  Covers all of the 2m and 70cm bands, with full support for CTCSS and loads of other modern stuff, as well as support for DMR digital radio.  You can (and for digital radio really need to) program it from a PC.  It has GPS and can transmit its own location if you so wish, and Bluetooth for use in a car.

The newer radio is much more versatile, but the old Alinco is simple (no menus), has nice analog controls for volume and squelch, and has a more sensitive receiver.  Transmitter power is slightly lower, but with fewer harmonics.  It did a better job of picking up the club net tonight... Definitely worth some tinkering to make it as useful as possible, quite aside from any sentimental attachment I may have to it...

It keeps me out of trouble :-)