Xiegu X6100 HF Ham Radio First Look

Xiegu X6100 HF Ham Radio First Look

Xiegu X6100 HF Ham Radio First Look
https://youtu.be/n4lc7s5OMcs


how's it going everybody josh ki6naz here back again in the shack because and also wearing a sweet sweet sweater
because i've got a new radio this is the first time you're seeing this at least the first time this has existed in the
united states this is the new shegu 6100 this
radio has had more videos made on what it potentially is than any radio i've
seen in a long time there's a lot of people talking about this radio this is a 10 watt qrp radio that will handle the
hf bands which means this runs 160 meters through six meters which is uh
nice to have this was thought by many to be roughly the size of a g-sock which
was an accessory kind of tablet-y thing that would connect to other shangu radios i can say that it no it is much
smaller than that it is more reminiscent of an x5 105 which is another portable
qrp radio 5 watts on the internal 3000 milliamp hour battery 10 watts when connected to a remote battery or an
external power source of some kind i don't want to talk to you that much i want to go right to the table top so you can see what this is all about and we'll
go through the capabilities and features and how to use it [Music]
well we have a whole host of things to cover so let's get started we'll turn this radio on we're going to do that power draw test
right up front so you guys know what the receive draw is and the transmit draw i have this connected to a battery off to
my left and it's connected to a little power meter here in the middle which is showing
draw and receive is 0.81 amps couldn't turn the screen off to make that any better i'm not sure exactly what's
causing that we'll dive into that as we go but we'll also do a transmitter test right now all right i've got the radio
connected to a morse code key and we're in the cw mode right now and i'll key up
and that takes us to about 2.4 wide 2.45 amps on draw
you are supplied a microphone in the box with a keypad it's a similar mic that
you would get on a g90 so this is now in am mode and we'll key up here
about 2.35 amps
this is still into a dummy load so don't worry we're not transmitting erroneously talking about what comes in the box you
get a handy mic and the connector cable you get a usb a to usbc connector you
get a wall plug that actually has a 12 volt or you know an ac sorry
that has a dc plug this notes that it outputs
0.6 amps output is 12 volt
1000 milliamps and then it comes with a power lead for building your own so if you want to put anderson's on this you can do that
all right here's another test we're going to do power output first we have the radio connected to a power supply
providing 13.8 volts so let's key up we're looking for 10 watts output
and there is the 10 watts we're looking for something i've learned about this production model and again this is the
first production model um when you when you're on plug plugged in any key up you
get you know the the 10 about 10 watts kilo india 6 november alphas it'll get into a dummy load
you have to have the radio on to charge again this is something
this version of the radio i don't believe this is the final where you have to have it plugged in to charge the
battery so when i disconnect the battery or the plug so it goes off now when i
key up i'm getting less watts out two to four watts
depending on how charged this battery is which is battery is pretty low right now
so let me let me leave it on and let it charge up again and we'll do another test okay so i want to make sure i get this
power test done and i've had some complexities here that i want to talk about
so i've got the the power removed from the uh i've got the lead removed so
we're running off the batteries the batteries should be fully charged right now i'm in am actually i'm in cw right now
let's go to am and i'm going to key up i'm getting i'm getting the 4 watts output
off of batteries okay on am and i've tested this with morse 2 when
i'm running my key and i get about 4 watts here's my problem though
and again that this is um we got to put this into perspective here
this is the the first production there could be some hardware differences i don't know completely but
what i've found is that i i can get the four watts on a full charge it will
quickly start to dip down to two and what i've noticed
is that we will start to see the battery
self-drain and i will come back to this a day or two later and the battery will be dead
so it's it's not the same um as i've i've normally expected with the x5105
again i'm i'm i'm lining this up with it possibly being the production model don't know but that's just what i'm
seeing and so far you know we're getting the uh we're getting the four watts out here's a size comparison the 6100 against
the uh shagu x-5105 the 6100 is just a bit proud on each end
and then if you stack them up next to each other you can see that the 6100 is shorter
it's also looks like a bit skinnier controls on the top ptt is the same the
band switches have moved to the left whereas they're here on the right on the shegu and then the volume control knob
is actually on the face of the radio now people liked the x5105 because the
controls were flush everything is is rubber and the vfo is this flush little nubbin that
you rotate now the just the controls are a bit more proud right you have a volume
squelch and your rf gain as well as you have this multi control
button that becomes important later in its stock configuration it just changes your power settings but you use
this for some of the menu controls that are on the bottom and then they actually have like a vfo knob here now that you can actually go in and control
the good news is if you're already familiar with the x5105 and to a little lesser extent kind of a bit the g90 then
the controls are very much the same if you want to change bands you just click the button here on the top and a change
if you want to go from the different modes single sideband cw and am fm and yes this has fm so now you can do fm
on 6 meters which is something people wanted when they removed it from the x5105 now note
here when you're changing a single sideband you now have you now have a control that will say
upper sideband upper sideband dig lower sideband lower sideband dig so you
actually have digital control now you can set that to the band or as we'll find out here maybe in a bit we'll see
if we can actually kick this into digital control mode with the usbc connectors on the side on the top you
now have buttons with names and then on the outside in screen printing you have
other names so you have an a and b set this is where you change your a channel with your b channel and if you hold it
down you will set your b channel to the same
as the a channel so you can split them but you can see nothing much is different but if i move this
and now i go back to b you can see it jumps back and forth you have a preamp an attenuator
so single press engages the preamp turns it off hold it down turns on the
attenuator you can see it right there you have an atu setting so this is
turning on automatic tuning and if you hold it down it will engage the tuner so if we turn that on the atu light
enables hold it down
it will go through a tuning cycle and then you're back out i leave the atu off because we don't need it attached to a dummy load
all right vm is for your um your vfo versus memory if you play around with
that agc control is for literally the agc if you want to set it to fast slower
auto so no this one there you go fast auto or just off
and then go back to slow and if you hold down the agc button you will engage
split mode now fast in menu i couldn't get the menu button to do anything and it's likely because this is like a first
gen production prototype however if i click it then i go from fast scan to slower
scan so fast scan we can just dive around here and note that when you scan and fast scan it doesn't drop the lower
order numbers you still have to go in there and and like get them sorted out so if you want them to be even you kind
of have to go in there suss that out and now you can scan a little bit faster with the vfo
all right so a couple of things that i like what they did here they added these soft touch buttons on the front which
changes the buttons down here in the bottom this is not a touch screen but you can use these non-descript soft
buttons to go into whatever that is so if i go to gen that's just your general radio settings
so go to radio 1 settings that's where you actually get a nice little pop-up this is very reminiscent of the yaesu
menu system on like the ftd x10 etc that's where you can set things like your agc settings your power settings
your mic selector you're gonna it's using the built-in mic right now which is that little hole right there so you'd
have to change that so you use the multi-wheel the multi-dial to spin around the different menu settings but
when you go to a menu setting you want to change like mic select you use the plus or the minus to select what that is
so in this case we're going to use the handle mic which i guess they mean is this you know the actual hand mic
and that's where you can change mic gain line in level line out monitor level so line out that's
actually pretty nice line in level is pretty nice too so that means you can adjust this in radio uh to get the right
levels you need for digital modes ptt mode what do they got their toggle oh cool so it's a so let's try that
we're on the uh remember we're on
we're on a dummy load so don't at me here
well close doing it
toggle yeah i wanted to toggle oh well guess you can't do that on the
handy uh hand mic oh hey there's a there's a feature
banned stack i'm assuming that means you can go all frequencies with this and
transmit remember i'm on a dummy load here let's let's go outside the the ham band
oh buddy
uh yeah so let's do that but let's go back to ham bands
nope it don't care okay don't know what that means maybe it's
the this band stack if i go back in here all banned
oh yeah it's it's it's literally giving me like shortwave bands too when i do that that's kind of cool if you're a
shortwave listener you may like that uh keep in mind again everybody i am using what is a demo unit this is not what
you're gonna get if you've pre-ordered this so if i didn't mention it this radio is selling for 639 dollars
off of radioidity.com and i'll post the link in the description and there was a first run of pre-orders that sold out in
two hours two hours they're now on a second batch of pre-orders and it goes for 639 dollars and it also comes with a
backpack if you buy it on pre-order all right going down the list here let's go to display settings this allows you to
change the references db up or down for your actual waterfalls
or your whatever displays you got because this has got a waterfall and then kind of a pan adapter as well
so let's go back there we go system settings not bringing up anything okay so for a
second or two for you almost a week for me i learned a lot of things in that time about this radio particularly the
one i'm holding in my hands which is the first production roll-off of this radio the x-6100 as i
have been told there is slightly different hardware for cat controlling the radio over usb-c and the firmware
that's running on here is also slightly different than what you will all be getting that pre-ordered this radio so
first things first i will be getting the production model of this radio this one
is going to go back so that means that there are a couple of things in this video that i showed that
are not working due to either firmware or the hardware so there will be follow-on videos that's the first thing
i will mention what those items are that are not functioning in the way they should again likely because of the
firmware or hardware that you won't see in a production model and that is the
swr plot that we're familiar with with the x5105 and the g90 right for those of you that want to see that
the modem application which allow like psk31 decoding digital mode decoding
that kind of thing there are some radio deep menu settings that are not available when you click the button it
doesn't take you uh to that location and last but not least while the usbc is
working perfectly fine for doing audio over usbc i see it just fine on wsjtx
and other digital modes what's not working is the cat control to change the radius frequency and also key the radio
which is kind of going to be fundamental if you're going to use this for digital mode operation now i will note i am
making no apologies for shegu or radiody i'm just merely passing on information
that i'm getting it makes sense to me that all of those things will work because it works for the g90 and it
works for the ft x5105 i won't be surprised at all if the radio that shows up very soon will do
all this out of the box so i'm not really worried so treat this more like a first look and there will definitely be an update video coming to rectify any
differences memory edit okay cool you've got some memories that you can edit here if you want to save the vfo you can do
that under app we now have modem and swr scan so let's go to modem
this would be one of those features that is not in this production unit but should be as promised on the final
production unit that you all will see modem is not activated yet this is likely software that's going to allow
you to do decoding of psk31 possibly ft8 all right
a wonderful feature everybody liked on the x5105 and the g90 is this swr scan
this too is a feature not on this production unit but should be on the production model that you all see at
least that's what is promised all right so under key
key type you have manual auto left auto right you have key speed which you can adjust
i'll leave it at 15. iambic you can go iambic b or straight or actually just ionic b or a
you can set your tone and your tone level under message you can pre cache
messages that you can then play out at any time if you're running morse code which i
don't have set up right now okay under dfn this is where you get your noise reducer noise blinker and the
different controls for it for depth width and level so let's i have a very noisy environment
right now on 40 meters so let's engage noise reducer
and noise blinker and see if we can find some signals
[Music]
something that definitely deserves a mention this noise reducer is greatly improved over the x-5105 here
and the the g90 i think this is also kind of a step up this is very good
you can [Applause]
really loud noise for engage the noise reducer on 40
and it greatly suppresses the noise but i can actually it feels like it is
actually pulling out some of those uh some of those uh vocal the voices it's actually really i'm surprised this is
actually really really good now under the dfl menu that's where you can get in here and
actually play with your filter swings if you want to do a shift and you can increase the bandwidth if
you need to or move it around
how big can we get this no it's just a shift
so you get a 2700 hertz bandwidth here on the first filter
second filter is 2400 this is what you'd use for single sideband and then three it's it's reduced further so let's leave
it on 2400 and we'll go back to the general [Applause]
[Applause] [Music] all right let's walk around the sides because you've got io on the sides here
so on one side you have your dc input your iq out so this carries over the iq
out that the shegu other the other shaku radios all have and share there's also a
bnc connector on that side for your antenna there is a kickstand on each side i will
note um that is one thing that they don't they didn't go as hard in the
kickstand space i feel that the kickstands are a bit better on the x5105
these are okay they are detented there is a ball detent
you can feel it when it hits the end for holding it open and keeping it closed
they both have a detent they're
the same width and thickness i just feel like the x515 is a little bit better
but it's not that big a deal all right rounding out this side which
is kind of where the exciting stuff is you have your mic connector you have an
acc connection which i am my understanding is that this port will be used to connect to
the xpa 125 b amp so they're going to make a special cable that will connect
from this to the back of the amp and allow you to drive that amp and get 100 watts out this is your key for morse code your speaker and your phone's key
now these two ports this is your host and dev port all right so i'm guessing
that the dev port here is what's going to be used for upgrading software if
you're not using the card that's possibly my guess though because you had to go through a firmware process
where you were flashing being a terra term a terminal application to
flash the firmware on but this guy says host so host makes me think that if i
plug into this while it's connected to my computer i'm going to see it as a device and we may potentially get cat
control and audio out of this for doing digital modes and that's something i'm
going to try on a subsequent video here but i'm very excited about that again you already saw the top and then
the bottom both sides feel like they have a bit of heat sink on not a not a ton
it does get a bit warm if it's sitting receiving but i don't think that is too
warm at the same time i haven't had it for very long so i can't really qualify it i am going to transmit and make some
see if i make some qsos with this and see how we do and and if it warms up much more than that but so far um seems
okay and here's here's in kickstand mode kind of how it sits i'll i'll put the uh
x5105 next to it and you can see the x5105 is a little
flatter with the angle whereas the 6100 is a little bit higher tilt that could
be good for you don't know but just keep that in mind a fun note when you plug the dc
connection in watch the microphone you get an indicator on the mic that
it's charging because the green light is always illuminated when the radio is on kilo india 6 november alpha
[Applause] zulu did i get that right uh qsl qsl the name here is josh josh
i'm in cerritos california talking to you on 10 watts okay josh and
whereabouts in california again i'm in cerritos cerritos i'm south east
of los angeles okay maybe things will clear up a little
bit it almost sounded like you were saying reno but we know that's in nevada so anyway josh
so first thanks for coming back uh conditions are a little weird um
actually i think uh i should be talking to the east coast uh real well about now
but um i think most of those folks are are down for the count tonight
so good to hear station just a little a little bit south uh we're in sisters oregon let me know how
you're copying me and i'll give you a signal report uh qsl qsl the sisters oregon i am uh oh
you are a 5959 here in cerritos cerritos california that is uh 20 miles east of
los angeles
a negative negative cerritos cerritos cerritos california oh got it okay josh
very good very good got you now um and so what are you running josh i want
to see if um are you are you giving me more than 100 watts or you're going barefoot tonight
negative negative 10 watts 10 1-0 qrp
well congratulations josh 10 watts holy smokes no wonder
well doc on it yeah you're doing uh you're doing really well for that i wasn't even looking at the meter because
i was having to get my ear close to the speaker but still that's very impressive um uh watch you got a little qrp uh qrp
rig and what he got printed josh well that was pretty awesome um yeah qrp i
mean he he has a pretty nice setup and he's running 1200 watts which is probably why i'm getting him at a five nine but i'll
take a five i i don't know if it was a five on my receipt strength it was a straight five five regardless though
that's uh that's pretty good hopefully that got a little pile up going for him you can see the waterfall right there
pretty nice now i will note i think this was the alc that was popping up and it was showing a little red bar there i did
have the mic gain tweaked this doesn't have a compressor normally i'd have a compressor turned on if i was going to
do single sideband with a qrp radio like this speaking of that we ran the cuso
and it's a bit warm not too warm i i appreciate i let it sit for a couple
minutes after the q so but let's do a quick gun check here looks like the left side of the radio is
going to be the highest and that got up to about 99.3 degrees fahrenheit
but it it's not that bad you can easily hold it it's not too hot to hold feels like
lukewarm hot cocoa in your hand let's do a bottom check on it because that was just sitting up against the
so 100 degrees uh directly on the bottom of the unit which is not bad
that was for a five minute cuso back and forth not bad time will tell you know um
i i will go on the record as saying that my my you know my x-5105
will overheat if left in direct sunlight on a summit when doing a summit soda activation that happened to me a couple
of times i am obviously in my shack right now so i can't really give you a good uh
indicator on whether this will have any kind of heating trouble seems okay and you know it's gonna vary
a favorite for a great many people is morse code key clicks and the sounding of said key click so
i've got a secondary microphone right here and basically it's the sound of the
relays clicking people are really curious about in a morse code radio so i'm going to put the microphone right
here underneath it and i'm gonna rattle off a couple of uh little characters
[Music]
going too fast for myself
so that is my call sign and that is the relays so yeah it does have some audible
key clicks some of you do not like that i don't know the relays that are in this unit and going through the radio menus
i'm not finding something where you can extend those key clicks and hold them open like you can on other radios so
again
it has a audible key click there so that's something to keep in mind all right so what are my thoughts on the x
6100 as it sits today the one that i have
right here right uh well i'm gonna i'm gonna withhold my final judgment for when i have a final production unit in
my hand of course with a firmware that's more commensurate to what you all will
experience as well here are my thoughts though on what i have in front of me and um
what i think will work because straight up i all that stuff works on the other radio so why wouldn't it work on this
the big add-ons to this radio are the screen nice looking screen and the usbc
uh control here for cat control digital one cable to do digital right that's the big upgrades
why someone would consider this over an x5105 the form factor of course is different too it's got the bigger knobs
actual knobs versus that little flat flush unit that's on the um on the x5105
so what are my thoughts well it's a solid upgrade to an x5105 in that case it is a good
upgrade it is offering new things that is not available in the x5105 x5105 came
out what was it three or four years ago about three and a half four years ago
would this be an upgrade in step based off of newer features that hams are looking for today
it has a it has a micro cf card for recording it has one cable for cat
control these are all things you're going to expect to see in radios even qrp radios from pretty much all brands
at this point going forward it also has a pretty nice looking screen sure it feels like a an appropriate
incremental upgrade capitalizing on the things that hams want to see in qrp
radios i am very careful with what i'm saying right now and i hope you all appreciate
what i am saying here this radio what i'm holding is not the final model it looks just like it
i'm told that this is the first production unit and so that the firmware on here is also
not production so there are things that are just not working so i can't show them to you yet
and when i get the final version i will update this video with what works
i'm assuming everything that is written on the website is going to work so with that said i'm going to say wait and see
if you went ahead and pre-ordered one i'm not that worried about it i really am not again i feel like those features
that are not working on this unit will work my confidence level is 75 to 95 percent
right unless something crazy happens so that's where i will put this i will
put this right down and i will withhold the rest of my thoughts until i have the final
production model i'm relatively confident that it's all going to work out everything's fine because again the older radios have all this stuff
it's the new features like usbc and the tia the cf card
recorder that i'm a little bit more interested in seeing it in its final form so hopefully that was helpful i guess
you can look forward to a future video a couple of videos at least because there are some other things i want to talk about that probably deserve their own
video just a quick how-to to help people out the only thing i can kind of say is that
the um the kickstand is a little that's the only downside
it's you know the kickstand on the x5105 was one of my favorite things about that
radio actually i really like the kickstands so this is just a bit of not an upgrade
um maybe this will be somewhat worked out in the next edition so anyway tune
in for that make sure you hit subscribe so that you'll know when i post a video on the next or the final production