You Need A Cheap Android Tablet For Ham Radio!

Just a suggestion there are a lot of your video titles that interest me but its rare that I have an hour plus to invest. How about making some of these topics available in a 20 to 30 minute video. Thanks for what you do.

Thanks for the video! I don't know how well a nanoVNA works with a tablet, but is plays very well with my Windows 10 laptop and an attached monitor. I can set-up the VNA with mouse clicks (rather than trying to select items on the tiny touch screen), see a large display on a 24" monitor, print SWR (or other) graphs and, best of all, get higher resolution plots (higher frequency resolution) than the nanoVNA's 101-sample screen-size allows. Sure, it is still a $50 VNA, not a $50K instrument, but for HF antenna construction it is a godsend. On Field Day 2021 I built the ARRL HF end-fed antenna kit and used the nanoVNA to trim the antenna, moving the SWR minimums into the digital portion of the 40M and 20M bands. When used with a laptop-attached projector, the nanoVNA becomes a great teaching tool. The entire class can see the plots. Regarding the use of the RTL dongle on HF, as you no doubt know, there is an upconverter that will shift the HF bands up 100MHz. The RTL dongle then works pretty well as an HF receiver.

Motorola is taking Garmin's idea of position reporting (on their RINO radios, currently brand-exempted for Garmin only) and expanding it to be automated. That's much needed. Hopefully, it will allow general data transfer (i.e. APRS-type messaging, also supported on RINO), and not be restricted strictly to position reporting only.

Fun fact, SOME Chromebooks also run and have access to the Android app store. This includes a keyboard and a full size USB standard. They are about the same cost as this tablet.

Reason Josh is so compelling is he has passion for what he does.

My field gear is a raspi4 and iPad, or a small windows laptop, replacing all of that with an android tablet would be great except I can’t see an android version of wsjtx or js8call.

OK Josh.. Now you have me trawling through all the old droid tabs in the house from before we went apple, trying to find which one is the best! 😁

Been using a fire tablet for a while now. It was just collecting dust so I used the toolbox to "root" (more like jailbreak it) and use it for logging. I had no idea there was so much it could do, gotta do some shopping!

I've got that same keyboard, and even though it's not the best, I keep it in my tablet go-box for just-in-case situations.

After watching this video I purchased the tablet use here. I can afford something better but wanted something dedicated to ham only. My expectations were quite low honestly, but it turns out I really like this tablet. I've added several apps and it still works great. It's an awesome little tablet that very affordable. If money it tight you still be pleased with this one. Thanks for the video Josh.

The Mobilinkd TNC3 is supposed to be 9600-baud capable if you have a radio that supports it. I haven't found a peer to test it at 9600 yet with my Kenwood TM-V71A, but you might have better luck in your part of the world.

I love my chromebooks for ham radio. Have a FT8 decoder, Morse decoder, KiwiSDR and lots of other stuff. Only bad thing is the only app that drives the RTL SDR is for an AM/FM radio no Unitrunker, SDRtrunk, anything like that.

For HF you need a nooelec smart, which supports direct sampling. The smartee dongles do not support it but perform better on higher frequencies

Thanks for all those ideas on this one. I didnt realize you were in OC. I`m in Tustin. KD6CFE was here. 73`s.

Hi, How do you connect the APRSdroid to the radio via bluetooth? is the radio has TNC built in? Can I connect APRSdroid via bluetooth to anyone 878uvii plus? TIA

haha just got into ham, taking my tech and general at the end of the month and have lived in Santa Ynez, small world. hope that was some yummy wine! thanks for all the handy info!

I have a similar keyboard..the one that connects to 3 devices. It comes in handy but it is a bit hard to get use to. I'll accidentally hit the connection keys (that are above the trackpad) when trying to hit the backspace and accidentally switch devices lol

Ack, this video's thumbnail has a red border, and that made me think I had watched it already. Don't use red, or you might get less views!

K6dds. Hi Josh. Pretty neat. On my iPad SDR Thanks for your input. iPad SDR

KD8RWC from Battle Creek Michigan 73's