Hi George!
Thanks to Stefan VE4NSA for referring to the QRZ.com forum discussion I started about this radio and working SO-50, shortly after the last Hamvention. Rather than having to wade through all those posts, here's a summary...
The KG-UV8D has desense when transmitting on 2m and trying to receive SO-50's 70cm downlink. It works better if the 70cm signals are stronger, like when using this HT as a cross-band receiver to reach a far-off repeater. Full- duplex operation on SO-50 aside, the KG-UV8D's 70cm receiver is good for receiving SO-50. Make sure to use the 2.5 kHz tuning steps with this radio. There are points in SO-50 passes where the KG-UV8D won't receive the downlink, when it appears to be in between the two frequencies using 5 kHz tuning steps.
At the ARRL convention in July, I was able to test my KG-UV8D with a Fox-1 prototype on display at the AMSAT booth. The Fox-1 prototype was using the same frequency pair as the Fox-1A satellite - uplink on 435.180 MHz, downlink on 145.980 MHz. No desense issues were heard when transmitting on 435.180 MHz and simultaneously receiving the 145.980 MHz downlink. It worked well, and the radio sounded well through the prototype. I reduced my transmit power to 1W, and the prototype was using a dummy load as its antennas, in an attempt to better simulate working a satellite in orbit.
I can't wait to get our Fox-1 satellites in orbit. Radios like the KG-UV8D, and others like the IC-W32A, will be great for working Fox-1 satellites full-duplex. This will be even more important, when transmitting on 70cm to Fox-1 satellites instead of 2m to SO-50.
73!
Patrick WD9EWK/VA7EWK http://www.wd9ewk.net/
On Fri, Sep 19, 2014 at 2:04 AM, George Henry ka3hsw@att.net wrote:
The new Wouxun KG-UV8D is being advertised as full-duplex. Don't know whether it suffers desense or not. I used to have a Yaesu FT-470 that worked quite nicely, and currently have an Alinco DJ-G5 that seems to get the job done just fine.