A look at the new UH-950S

[Yipyip46]

I had one of the UH-950S hand held radio come across the other day so I thought I would post some thoughts on it.
On opening the box I found the following:-
1 x Desktop Charger (Single battery pack only)
1 x Radio
1 x Battery Pack (7.4 V Li-ion 2300 mAh)
1 x 240 V AC Plug Pack
1 x 12 V DC / Car Charger (Designed to plug into the desktop charger)
1 x Speaker / Microphone (Not cross compatible with the Icom Speaker / Microphone)
1 x Lapel Microphone with Earphone
1 x Belt Clip
1 x Lanyard
1 x Instruction Booklet
All in all it is a good starter package with all of the required accessories that handheld users need.
My first observation was that Uniden have finally change the speaker / microphone socket to a 2 pin configuration on their flagship handheld. This is not cross compatible with other radio manufacturers. The radio has a die-cast main body with a plastic front. The unit has a good weight to it and does not feel like a light weight toy.

Uniden have stuck with the SMA socket for the antenna connection allowing for high gain whips or external antennas to be connected. The front panel buttons are well spaced for people like me who have largish fingers. The top button is a bit cramped and the Boost Button and the Call button on the side are a bit on the small side. There is a large number LCD in this unit which is clear and easy to read with the grey backlight. The speaker is a Mylar coned speaker that is well sealed into the front case. Uniden have supplied a 2300 mAh battery with this radio and claim 27 hours operation (depending on your duty cycle). They are still using the same style battery clip except it is now larger, I hope they have strenghtened the body of the clip as it was a weak point on the UH-075 / 076 & 078.

Now for the nitty gritty. The unit has the usual Uniden 6 Torx screws holding it together. There is also a sealed screw for pressure / leak testing. On the other side of the bollard there is a pressure vent that should not be covered. The board quality looks good and the reflow soldering is neat and tidy. There was no sign of rework or after thought modifications. I didn’t like the inter-PCB connecting Flat Flexible Cable. I feel this is a bit flimsy.
Out of the box the test unit measured 4.6 Watts and a Frequency Error of -430 Hz. In Queensland I would prefer to see the power closer to 5 Watts and the frequency error to be about the 400 Hz high as with our summer heat power drops off quicker when transmitting and the frequency drifts more.

The deviation level with my un-calibrated whistle was 2.1 kHz which is normal for when I do a whistle test. The receiver came in at -119.3 dBm which is pretty stand these days. On Air the radio did not have any strange quirks and sounded fairly standard. On air tests are fairly subjective depending on who is at the other end.

Operation of the unit is straight forward. Most of the settings are done through a menu button on the front. Each press of the menu button increments to the next option and the up / down buttons change the setting of that option. Uniden have added a feature called Master Scan where the radio will scan a selected group of channels (like the typical Group Scan) and if it finds a transmission that does not match its CTCSS or DCS setting it will ignore that channel and look for a vacant channel when you transmit so the other members of your group can maintain contact.

In conclusion this radio appears to be a nice up date of what was getting to be an old series of models.

[Radio_Australia]

I noticed this does "scramble" most likely inversion , I thought that was not legal to scramble on CB bands ?

I may be wrong .

[Yipyip46]

Good Morning, Yes it does the basic scramble / voice inversion. It is not illegal. The unit has ch 5 / 35 locked out of scramble list and the repeaters are also restricted. Scrambler / Voice inversion has been available as an option (sometimes fitted , sometimes as a extra module) on a lot of the radios since the late 1990s. My argument is if you need that level of privacy then use the phone. It is more of another way to annoy the other users of the CB band.
Regards
Yipyip