About 6 months ago, Retevis contacted me, asking if I was interested in beta testing a new VHF/UHF amateur handheld radio that is based on the design of their popular HA1G GMRS radio. They sent me a very early beta model and I began testing and providing feedback. Now that the radio has finally launched, I've received a production version and have had adequate time to provide a review of this radio.
The Retevis Ailunce HA1UV is a dual band, VERY rugged IP67 rated 5 watt radio that is marketed toward the entry-level ham community, with a price of about $70 USD on Amazon. The general motif of the radio is much like a basic commercial radio - the 256 memories are organized into Zones and Channels. 64 Zones, each containing 19 memory channels and two additional VFOs (for band A and B). The VFOs allow you to punch in any frequency or repeater without needing to program a memory. When the radio receives a signal, the screen changes to bright green with a header that tells you which Band is active, an RSSI meter, and the Tone/Code programmed for the receive (if any). If no Tone/Code is programmed for RX, the display will say "No Code". Note, that "No Code" doesn't mean the transmission you're receiving is not transmitting a tone/code ; rather it's an indicator whether the HA1UV receive has a RX Tone/Code programmed which will only cause the squelch to open if that tone/code is detected.
The HA1UV is a larger-sized radio and really does fit well in larger hands. I asked my wife with smaller hands to try it and she found it comfortable, as well. Here's a pic of me holding it at the local bar
The menu system is very easy to read and understand. There are no cryptic abbreviations and the navigation just makes sense. Retevis also provides a brand new, polished CPS application for programming (more on that later) but it is really simple to program the channels and zones with just the radio. Here are a couple shots of the menus:
The color & brightness of the screen is one of the areas that could use some improvement, in my opinion. Inside and in the shade, the screen is plenty bright and easy to read. But in the sun or bright shade, it washes out much like a typical smartphone. Throughout my evaluation period, I provide a lot of feedback about the color combinations - originally most menus had black text on the blue bar, which was impossible to see. Retevis took the feedback and changed all of the dark blue menu selections to have white text, which is a huge improvement. While I was writing this, I just found another menu that was overlooked when updating the colors, which I will report.
The two side buttons (not the PTT) and the top orange button are programmable and you can assign about a dozen different functions to them. As of the time of this writing, Retevis' website says that you can program one of the buttons to do the sub-band PTT, but there is not menu setting to make it do that.
Harmonics Tests
As I usually do, I hooked up the TinySA Ultra with a 40db attenuator and tested the harmonics with the radio set at 1 watt TX power. This is also an area that Retevis worked on throughout the beta process to ensure the HA1UV is as clean as possible. Here are the results:
These results for 2 meters are well within the FCC specs of spurious emissions at least 40db down and less than 25 microwatts. As you can see, marker 2 is -56.9db down and marker 3 is -64.3 db down. Using these measurements, at full power (5 watts), the worst harmonic is 10.2 microwatts.
Here are the tests for 440mhz:
The FCC doesn't publish specific measurements for 440 transmitters less than 25 watts but I generally like to see similar numbers as the specs for transmitters up to 225Mhz. In this case marker 2 is below the -40dbc requirement but that's still 61 microwatts if the radio is putting out 5 watts, which is a bit higher than the 225Mhz spec. But that's still pretty good compared to a lot of the inexpensive radios.
Installing CPS on your PC
I recently purchased a new Microsoft Surface Laptop 7th edition which comes with the new ARM 64 bit Snapdragon processor and Window 11. This is an awesome PC, but it can present some challenges with hardware drivers that may not be available for the ARM Windows 11 platform. When I installed the new Retevis CPS and plugged in the radio using the included cable, it didn't work. It didn't take me long to troubleshoot the problem and fortunately Windows logged a driver error that was easily understood. If you are using a similar setup (or maybe Windows Parallels on a Mac), you can get the updated USB Serial driver directly from the Microsoft Update Catalog here: https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=CH340. I've notified Retevis of the issue and advised them to include this driver in the CPS installation package. Once the driver is installed, the application works flawlessly.
Final Thoughts
The audio output of the internal speaker is LOUD. This might be the loudest HT I own! The external speaker/mic connection is the Motorola style and Retevis sells durable speaker/mics as an accessory. The antenna SMA is female, so antennas that you own for Icom, Kenwood, or Yaesu will work. To use the radio as a scanner, you need to create Scan groups out of the programmed channels. Scanning speed is a bit slow, but about the same as most radios in this class. Currently the VFO scan feature does not work, just producing "Scan Err!", but Retevis has promised to address this in a future firmware update. I have no reason to doubt that they will fix this because they've already fixed several other problems I've reported. This brings up an important point about working with Retevis: They truly listen to their customers' feedback and do their best to address issues. The first beta version of this radio had a lot of issues, but they listened and made changes. If you're looking for an inexpensive, rugged & waterproof, yet easy to program radio, this is a good one to consider.
The Retevis Ailunce HA1UV is a dual band, VERY rugged IP67 rated 5 watt radio that is marketed toward the entry-level ham community, with a price of about $70 USD on Amazon. The general motif of the radio is much like a basic commercial radio - the 256 memories are organized into Zones and Channels. 64 Zones, each containing 19 memory channels and two additional VFOs (for band A and B). The VFOs allow you to punch in any frequency or repeater without needing to program a memory. When the radio receives a signal, the screen changes to bright green with a header that tells you which Band is active, an RSSI meter, and the Tone/Code programmed for the receive (if any). If no Tone/Code is programmed for RX, the display will say "No Code". Note, that "No Code" doesn't mean the transmission you're receiving is not transmitting a tone/code ; rather it's an indicator whether the HA1UV receive has a RX Tone/Code programmed which will only cause the squelch to open if that tone/code is detected.
The HA1UV is a larger-sized radio and really does fit well in larger hands. I asked my wife with smaller hands to try it and she found it comfortable, as well. Here's a pic of me holding it at the local bar
The menu system is very easy to read and understand. There are no cryptic abbreviations and the navigation just makes sense. Retevis also provides a brand new, polished CPS application for programming (more on that later) but it is really simple to program the channels and zones with just the radio. Here are a couple shots of the menus:
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The color & brightness of the screen is one of the areas that could use some improvement, in my opinion. Inside and in the shade, the screen is plenty bright and easy to read. But in the sun or bright shade, it washes out much like a typical smartphone. Throughout my evaluation period, I provide a lot of feedback about the color combinations - originally most menus had black text on the blue bar, which was impossible to see. Retevis took the feedback and changed all of the dark blue menu selections to have white text, which is a huge improvement. While I was writing this, I just found another menu that was overlooked when updating the colors, which I will report.
The two side buttons (not the PTT) and the top orange button are programmable and you can assign about a dozen different functions to them. As of the time of this writing, Retevis' website says that you can program one of the buttons to do the sub-band PTT, but there is not menu setting to make it do that.
Harmonics Tests
As I usually do, I hooked up the TinySA Ultra with a 40db attenuator and tested the harmonics with the radio set at 1 watt TX power. This is also an area that Retevis worked on throughout the beta process to ensure the HA1UV is as clean as possible. Here are the results:
These results for 2 meters are well within the FCC specs of spurious emissions at least 40db down and less than 25 microwatts. As you can see, marker 2 is -56.9db down and marker 3 is -64.3 db down. Using these measurements, at full power (5 watts), the worst harmonic is 10.2 microwatts.
Here are the tests for 440mhz:
The FCC doesn't publish specific measurements for 440 transmitters less than 25 watts but I generally like to see similar numbers as the specs for transmitters up to 225Mhz. In this case marker 2 is below the -40dbc requirement but that's still 61 microwatts if the radio is putting out 5 watts, which is a bit higher than the 225Mhz spec. But that's still pretty good compared to a lot of the inexpensive radios.
Installing CPS on your PC
I recently purchased a new Microsoft Surface Laptop 7th edition which comes with the new ARM 64 bit Snapdragon processor and Window 11. This is an awesome PC, but it can present some challenges with hardware drivers that may not be available for the ARM Windows 11 platform. When I installed the new Retevis CPS and plugged in the radio using the included cable, it didn't work. It didn't take me long to troubleshoot the problem and fortunately Windows logged a driver error that was easily understood. If you are using a similar setup (or maybe Windows Parallels on a Mac), you can get the updated USB Serial driver directly from the Microsoft Update Catalog here: https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=CH340. I've notified Retevis of the issue and advised them to include this driver in the CPS installation package. Once the driver is installed, the application works flawlessly.
Final Thoughts
The audio output of the internal speaker is LOUD. This might be the loudest HT I own! The external speaker/mic connection is the Motorola style and Retevis sells durable speaker/mics as an accessory. The antenna SMA is female, so antennas that you own for Icom, Kenwood, or Yaesu will work. To use the radio as a scanner, you need to create Scan groups out of the programmed channels. Scanning speed is a bit slow, but about the same as most radios in this class. Currently the VFO scan feature does not work, just producing "Scan Err!", but Retevis has promised to address this in a future firmware update. I have no reason to doubt that they will fix this because they've already fixed several other problems I've reported. This brings up an important point about working with Retevis: They truly listen to their customers' feedback and do their best to address issues. The first beta version of this radio had a lot of issues, but they listened and made changes. If you're looking for an inexpensive, rugged & waterproof, yet easy to program radio, this is a good one to consider.
