Wouxun KG-UV950P review - Part 1

The Wouxun KG-UV950P has been part of the radio shack since around November 2014. In that time I have been pleasantly surprised by it.

The rig as fitted in G8YPH radio shack

Specifications

The brief specifications are:

• Quad band FM/AM transceiver for amateur bands
• 10m 10 watts output from 28-30Mhz
• 6m 50 watts output from 50-52MHz
• 2m 45 watts output from 144 to 146MHz
• 70cm 35 watts output from 430 to 440 MHz
• Dual VFO
• 8 bands receive the 4 amateur bands + 350MHz + 800MHz + Airband AM + Broadcast bands 87-108MHz
• Twin band simultaneous reception
• Duplex Communication (Cross-Band mode useful for 10m to 6m repeater work for instance)
• Same-Band repeat on to combined radios (yes 2 UV950s can be linked to become a full repeater system)
• Voice scrambler
• 999 memory channels (maybe too many)
• SOS alarms
• Full CTCSS/DCS compliant

Arrival

The radio is made in China and came boxed in a very substantial, well padded cardboard box from Martin Lynch and Sons. I paid £239.95 including a shipping charge of £10.00

Opening the box revealed the following items

• Transceiver already fitted with the inclined switchboard and remote front panel
• Hand microphone including hook
• A flat switchboard adapter
• Mobile mounting bracket
• Moble power cord
• 2 fuses
• Extension cable for the remote front panel
• Engrish users manual (more of this later - it is not a spelling mistake BTW)

I used the mobile mounting bracket to position the rig under my computer monitor on a riser stand I knocked together out of some scrap 3/4" plywood. This is only a temporary arrangement as I will change this in time to suit the entire station layout.

Connectors

There are several ports on this radio

Around the back are two 3.5mm jacks for external speakers - one per VFO

There is also a power socket for the power cord plug and a standard SO239 socket for the aerial.

On the side there is an RJ45 socket for connection to a computer via a suitable cable

There is another RJ45 on the side of the front panel for connection to the supplied DTMF microphone.

Construction

The transceiver itself is in a very substantial metal case, some parts of which are cast, with a cooling fan on the rear panel. It measures 140 x 44 x 207 mm (5.5" x 1.75" x 8-1/8") and weighs 1.437 kg (3.16 pounds) including the microphone.

The mounting bracket permits many different viewing angles and combined with the flat/or angled adapter plates will give many different options.

There are 2 loudspeakers mounted on the top of the transceiver.

The connection cable is a very heavy duty and should hold up well to the rigs current requirements. This is around 10amps at 13.8 volts 15% negative ground.

The antenna should be 50 ohms impedance.

Controls

The front of the radio is dominated by a large illuminated LCD panel. Essentially this is split into two halves one per VFO. There are a few common icons that are shared between the two.

There are also a number of multi function push buttons 0-9, MENU, EXIT, #LOCK and a red illuminated power button,

There are two rotary controls, the one on the left is a click stop rotary encoder, the one of the right is a dual concentric volume control. The outer control at the rear controls VFO2 on the right and the inner control at the front controls VFO1 on the left.

There is also a multi coloured LED lamp that is normally orange when not busy or green when busy (signal received or transmitting)

Out of the box setup

When the rig arrived there was no memory channels pre-programmed into memory. Programming the memories and labelling them is possible but laborious. Gone are the days of pre-programmed rig channels. The rig really necessitates programming by computer and thats what I did next

Rig Programming

You do need an extra cable to connect to your PC with this. I ordered one at the same time from MLS for the cost of £27.43 including shipping. It is called WO/PCO-003 - Wouxun Programing cable for Mobile Radio and probably fits a number of Wouxun radios. 

There are two pieces of software available on the Wouxun website to faciliate programming of the rig. One is KG-UV950P 5K and the other KG-UV950P 2.5K

I opted for the latter as it programmes the rig so you have 2.5K steps.

Installation on a PC is straightforward and when first loaded it has just 2 frequencies preset to give you an idea of what to do.

There are a number of tabs as shown here

Main Memory Group Tab

VFO Settings

FM Broadcast Memories

Remote Settings

Scan Group

Configuration Settings

I will cover each of the tabs in turn on subsequent posts