SSB Receiver ATS-25 Max DECODER (LW, MW, SW, CB, FM) Review

hello everybody my name is Paul and I'm at the radio cosign is om0et I'm from Slovakia and welcome to my Channel today I'm going to talk about the ATS 25 Max decoder this video will be about the overview of the features and this video will be about how this radio sounds like in a real outdoor conditions like this and if you wish to find a link for the purchase of this radio you can find it down in the video description so I hope that you will enjoy this video and keep watching [Music] so the radio comes with this uh package and inside you can find this colorful printed manual written in English this is clothed for cleaning the radio or the screen and in this bag you can find the y5 antenna also four pieces of the rubber feet then we have a touch pen because the screen is the touch panel and here is the USBC cable which is the charging cable and also data cable this is the VP antenna with the BNC connector and the radio itself perfectly protected inside the foam so thumbs up for the packaging of this radio well so the ATS 25 Max decoder is actually a latest model of the ATS 25 series you can find and many others on AliExpress on internet they were made in a in China and they are based actually on Arduino project so the internal menu system is very similar to an ATS 120 I reviewed in my previous video and therefore I will overview just the features which are a little different than on 120. and also I will tell you what is worse what is better than the 120 by my opinion of course so you can see that the shape actually or the form factor of the ats-25 is something like a mobile radio it's not actually a pocket radio it's just a kind of mobile form factor radio so this radio receives the short waves and also fm broadcast it doesn't have an airbend and doesn't have a 2 meter or 70 centimeters so we can listen long waves middle waves short waves ham radio bands on the short waves CW and the FM the FM broadcast stations the radio has an internal 3 000 milliamp hour battery lipo of course and it has a really large display and which is very good it has also a large tuning knob the casing of this receiver is made of aluminum alloy so it's pretty sturdy and you know so it's actually Shields internal components against the outer outer electromagnetic smoke okay here on top you can see also the speaker with holes and on the back side you can notice two antennas actually so this antenna is for Wi-Fi and this antenna is just vertical whip connector on it you can see is the BNC connector and of course on the y5 antenna there is a SM a female divide 5 antenna is included in the package and here you can see the USBC connector which you can charge the battery and also you can upload a new firmware from the developer so here we have the power switch and here is the phone output or for a speaker for the speakers or for the headphones these is actually a switch for an antenna but the radio itself has kind of outer switch so you should stay with or you should leave the switch in Auto position and I think that it's going to be good without switching okay so here you can see the bottom of the radio as you can see it is for rubbers I will show you how I how I put the rubbers to the bottom part of the receiver for proper mounting of the rubber feet we need an ethanol alcohol a piece of paper and a ruler degrease the underside of the receiver with ethanol and Mark one centimeter from each side around the corner of the paper Mark a corner of the template into each corner of the radio with a small Dot and then finally stick the feet on marker in each corner of the radio each dot will be right in the center of the feet perfect the ats-25 max decoder has an original Fever made by a Russian guy I call it a developer from Russia and inside this rig is actually a purchased code or the key from this Russian guy it's very easy to purchase I think it costs just about nine euros and you can pay it via the PayPal so let me turn on the rig so you can you can see the bootloader here and the radio detects that it has a new version after you connect the radio to your local y5 network which is actually a very good feature so as you can notice that this receiver has actually very similar firmware screen like the ATS 120 I reviewed previously in my older video so I would like to explain just a new features which are different from the 80s 120 if you wish to see or overview of the all features in this radio you can visit and watch the previous video where I was talking about the 8s 120. I will say that the features are almost the same over here in the ats-25 as well the very good thing and this is gonna be my next video project that I found that this guy the same guy from Russia made also a funeral the same filler as here in 25 also for ATS 120 so I can upgrade my 120 to a better funeral like this so finally the ats-25 max decoder has a fully functional RDS feature in FM broadcast band you can see the RDS actually right here in in this line here is the name of the radio station and here you can see the text of the RDS rolling from the right to the left side this feature was not properly working on the 80s 120 first version and the next very interesting feature is the y5 ability to search for the networks if you connect your radio to a network here in this corner of the screen you will find a color dots or a small indicator which indicates a propagations on your current band so we'll we'll show you how it works actually you have to go to setup and to find a setup Wi-Fi feature Wireless you have to you have to switch to on and then you have to save these settings when the settings is set you can see the y5 indicator right here but the radio is not connected to your Wi-Fi you have to you have to go back to the setup and here you can see the list of the select AP or access points so here if you go to this list you should find your network like here I created a test net for this video so if you click to this network and if you put the password one two three four five six seven eight and set and the radio should connect to this network exit and exit you see this little indicator is turned to the green if you wish to confirm that the the connection is successful you have to go there and you see here the test net and you can see also the IP address so which means that the receiver is connected okay now if you go to for example hambones like let's say 20 meters and here appears a green indicator this green indicator is actually showing us that we have a good propagation a dead daylight time I think that this indicator is um is loading data from some kind of internet server I don't know where from but it is here if you go for example to uh let's say 10 meters you see they're 10 meters is right now in the red which means that there are no propagation or should not be a propagation by this prediction if we go to let's say 15 meters or 12 let's say 12. yeah it's still red if we go to 15 meters it's green so 15 meters is green so there is also I think an orange and also a yellow Dot indicator the green is the best and the red is the worries okay another very interesting feature and I think the most interesting feature on the ats25 max decoder is actually decoding of the digital signals I'm currently on a 20 meter band 58 portion of the band um as you can see it's a 14074 and if I wish to decode the signal I have to go to mode and you see that the mode section is kind of diff different than on 120. so here we have a DG and here we can see a features or the modes of the digital uh digital modes and those with black color are ready to use rtty hell and rttu the Lower Side Band upper side Bend for rtt yr kind of greenish they are also working but the the gray features like psk jt9 jt65 and SST V like like here they are not available right now so the developer says that he is preparing those features for the next firmware upgrades so we have to go to the ft8 modes and we are ready to decode let's turn on the volume and here we can finally see a screen kind of the waterfall and our radio should decode some FDA signals right here in this box here on the bottom foreign to say that if you wish to decode the signals on ft8 firstly you have to connect this receiver to your network to internet to get the UTC time here the radio will synchronize the UTC type time from an internet and after that you can receive the FDA signals and decoding for the better reception I connected this receiver to my magnetic Lube antenna mc20 which is right next to the radio and here is this external internal antenna [Music] the whip antenna which I used previously you can see and notice that the signal is coming much much stronger and the first decoded signals or signal appear here on the screen [Music] I've made another recording for you thank you [Music] okay so the next feature of this receiver it has a new kind of the S meters or the indicators right here under this frequency of readouts if you click on this s meter which is the bar s meter you can find also here the analog kind of kind of old school s meter which is also very nice I like it very very much here in this radio and if you click on this screen here you can see the Spectrum scale with the waterfall underneath the Spectrum scope is just within the audio spectrum is not actually a frequency spectrum of this receiver and if you click again on this screen you will find a spectrum screen here very also nice feature of this new firmware and also the menu system is different there were added some new features and a menu system if I go to the beginning on the first list you can find the RDS time so that means that the radio is able to synchronize the time from the RDS I believe it's then we have the FM Bond start in 64 megahertz this was also in 120 version this is also the new feature the save step individual for bun this is a very good thing the rbds program type I don't know what is what is this but maybe you know and you can tell me down in the comments on the list number two we can find a frequency digit backlight I'm not using it highlight the frequency in SSB in color if the bfo is not zero I'm not using that as well and 24 hour time format English language is a pre-installed here in this uh in this in this version of the firmware and in my next video where I will show you how to update this receiver I will tell you how to load also an another languages into this receiver well the next list you can see the find the new feature the Retro s meter or the audio Spectrum if you switch to the S meter the audio spectrum is off and vice versa the battery value involts this was also possible on 120 screensaver or display light off in screensaver this is also the same thing the wait time and screen screen orientation is able to change on on this receiver the scanner settings also the same the memory released retro scale you can also adjust a different retro scales for for the old bands and here we can see the hardware setup like a battery indicator itself charge battery show warning about exit of limits value of battery these all features I have turned it on encoder reverse I have totally gone half step encoder automatic antenna switching and antenna FM so here we have a decoder settings you can turn on the CW and DG decoder or turn it turn this feature off decoded data sent to com port felt help picture smoothing and here we have a Wi-Fi setup I showed you previously and the configuration of the memory so you can restore the configuration you can save the configuration and reset to factory default and here release the license key or update from file I didn't try that yet and that's it so this is the menu system of the new 80s 25 Max decoder I found two dislikes on the 8s25 max decoder it is no FM modulation on short waves like a CB radio the second one is there is no preamp like in 120 or 80s 120 receiver a preamp like LNA means an additional preamp or amplifier this amplifier is missing on ATS 25 receiver but there is also another thing what I would like to mention and this is a very common problem on all the Arduino based receivers with this nice color displays uh the noise the high pitch noise which is uh picking up on an internal antenna actually if you use this radio with the whip antenna as right now I do you can notice the high pitch noise like this and if I turn off AGC denoise is a little weaker okay so this noise completely disappears when I connect an external antenna like you will see like you will see in a moment so I'm connecting my magnetic Lube antenna which is right next to my radio there is no noise [Laughter] this problem is very common on the old Arduino base receivers I hearts in the past so I don't think that is something new so now let me uh tune across the band and show you how this radio sounds like on its internal speaker and magnetic Lube antenna placed right next to the radio [Applause] foreign decoder Works signal is weak so we are able to receive a lot of noise and decoder doesn't work properly but you need a proper signal if you wish to decode uh properly or correctly the signals oh [Applause] so we're back in the single Side Band upper side band on 20 meters [Applause] foreign [Laughter] remember the eggs [Applause] foreign [Laughter] [Music] [Applause] foreign [Laughter] thank you foreign [Laughter] [Music] ridiculous [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Laughter] [Applause] [Music] [Laughter] thank you [Music] this noise is coming from an internal antenna or actually I connected the vertical whip to a BNC connector and this noise is coming from that it's coming from the screen [Music] [Applause] okay so this was the ATS 25 Max decoder receiver for everyday use on short waves and also FM band I hope that you enjoyed this video and if you wish to find the link for the purchase of the radio you can find it down in the video description so check that out I hope that you enjoyed this video and don't forget to hit the like button if you like my content on my channel I will be very happy so wish you 73 and hope to catch you again next time foreign [Applause]

Channel: OM0ET

Views: 45,949

Keywords: ATS25, receiver, SSB, review, FT8, RTTY, Max-Decoder

Id: rzsNLW7tvpU

Length: 34min 9sec (2049 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 24 2023