Review: the Anytone AT-779UV
Tony Jones G7ETW takes a look at an interesting new dual-band analogue FM mobile.
Tony Jones G7ETW takes a look at an interesting new dual-band analogue FM mobile.
This is a review of the new Anytone AT-779UV, kindly loaned to me by Chris Taylor at Moonraker. Just for clarity, this is Anytone’s latest dual-band VHF and UHF Analogue FM mobile.
The AT-779UV is compact (124 x 101 x 36mm), but it’s wide enough not to feel cramped, Fig. 1. It has the usual screensurrounded-by-six-buttons design, with many functions accessed via the microphone. The overall feel is of a ‘grownup’, quality product.
The radio has a 1.44in colour TFT screen, not a touch-type. Though small, this is pinsharp and does not look crowded. The colours do not assault the eyeballs.
There is a manual. It’s a ten-sided instruction sheet, better translated than most I’ve seen. I could pick holes in it, but I won’t. It’s easy to read and does the job.
This radio has 500 memories. Chris Taylor persuaded Anytone to make this modification, he told me. Moonraker ships these pre-loaded with 32 VHF simplex frequencies, 15 UHF ones, 227 amateur radio repeaters in alphabetic sequence, 16 PMR 466 and 92 Marine VHF channels. Non-amateur memories are listen-only.
These ‘inbuilt’ memories make the AT779UV easy to get going. I switched on, pressed ‘V/M’ and stepped through the memories, quickly finding GB3AL (which is local to me) just as someone was calling through it. I replied, and was able to have a QSO within seconds of powering-up.
I could have had the radio do the scan for me, so I tried that later, and was astonished to find that I could hear and work GB3XP in Sutton, South London.
There were a few errors in the channelload as delivered, most notably that the squelch type for repeaters was set to ‘CARRIER’. I discovered this when traffic from the ex-Olympics repeater GB3OY was heard with GB3OM (Omagh, Northern Ireland) on the screen.
Both are on RU76, of course, but they have different CTCSS codes and these were set correctly (Tx and Rx). I notified Chris of these errors so I expect they will be fixed by the time you read this.
Twin Receive
This radio comes, as standard, in dualreceive mode, and the screen shows ‘A’ and ‘B’. These are Anytone ‘Bands’, each of which can be driven from memories or its own dual-band ‘VFO’.
This is very flexible, but initially seemed complicated. I’ll explain, but I’ll have to tread carefully so as not to contradict Anytone’s instructions. Terms in italics are as Anytone uses them.
Bands,VFOs and Memories
Fig. 1 shows S22 (in old money) Band A at the top. This is shown as a vfo frequency (top left). ‘NC’ means ‘no code’, ’N’ means narrow deviation and ‘L’ is low power. The orange panel (bottom right) says MAIN A, indicating that this the main or active band. The radio will transmit here and this is what’s altered by using Up and Down or keying in a frequency (VHF or UHF) from the microphone.
At the bottom we have the Sub band, Band B, although B is not displayed. It’s the same (2m) band, but not the same band. Each band has its own 10-blip S-meter. The blips don’t correspond to S-values, but they do indicate relative signal strength.
Now see Fig. 2a. To make this change, I pressed MAIN once. This has the same two frequencies, with the bands swapped. S18 is still Band B; see the MAIN panel – but this is now active, on High power (as was shown in Fig. 1).
This is straightforward enough. By choosing VFO frequencies from 2m and 70cm and using MAIN I can select any combination of twin VHF, VHF and UHF, and twin UHF. I can monitor both, hear one at a time and transmit on whichever I want.
Now see Fig. 2b. The top frequency is a local 2m repeater, identified as ‘021S’ where ‘S’ means ‘Stored’. This is a Channel, and to make this change I pressed V/M and entered 021 on the microphone. If I were to press Up now, I’d go to memory 023 (because Channel 22 is empty). ‘-‘ indicates a negative offset, ‘CT’ means CTCSS and ‘N’ and ‘L’ are as before.
The sub-band display can be disabled in settings, which simplifies things. Only the display, mind – the bottom frequency is still there and can be selected if desired.
A Second Opinion
I lent the radio to my friend Peter G3YXZ
get his impressions of it.
He rang me up. “How do you change the power?”, he asked. “The instructions say it’s FUNC plus O-POW, but that doesn’t work”.
The instructions say it’s A-fun (not too long, or it locks the radio) then O-pow to do this. Many radios would present an option to choose ‘H’, ‘M’ or ‘L’ (or similar), but that’s not the case here.
Anytone implemented a cyclical control – successive A-fun plus O-pow iterations take you from High to Medium, Medium to Low, or Low to High.
Odd, yes. But it does work, and I’d had no trouble. Covid not allowing visits, Pete said he’d put the radio aside, then play some more. A few hours later, the phone rang again.
“It’s A-fun on the microphone”, Peter said.
“I was doing FUNC on the front panel”.
An understandable confusion, since there are two lots of function settings. FUNC on the front panel takes you into ‘function’ options for fundamental, likely-tobe-permanent band settings such as VFO steps. Whereas A-Fun on the microphone opens up ‘shortcuts’ − operational settings that might change by the minute such as reducing the squelch for a weak signal.
Peter performed a technical evaluation
using his and the Radio Society of Harrow’s diagnostic equipment. The results are shown in Table 1. Power readings were taken on a Bird 43. Deviation, receiver sensitivity and frequency accuracy were measured on a Marconi 2955 Radio test set. Spurii were looked for on a Takeda Riden TR4132 Spectrum analyser. None of this equipment has been kept in calibration, please note.
On the Net
Peter used the AT-779UV as net controller on one of RSOH’s tri-weekly 2m nets. From my home five miles distant he was the usual 59+20dB (on 10W) and sounded very nice, unmistakably himself.
Other stations received him as well as they usually would on his 50W Big-Three base-station and complimented him on his audio.
Programming
The AT-779UV comes with a programming lead. Chirp works, but Anytone have a dedicated program called AT779UV, which is available on their Downloads website. This arrives as a rar file so I used 7-Zip (which is free) to unpack it; expect to see AT779UV_ Setup_2.00.exe to install this.
AT779UV has a ‘batch edit’ facility. This works well, but this has no ‘undo’ option. Take a copy first is my advice!
Fig. 3 shows part of the Moonrakersupplied channel matrix as seen in AT779UV. My example repeater GB3AL from above started out as Channel 53.
Pros and Cons
There is much to like about this radio:
• combined on-off and volume; a potentiometer
• no fan
• nice audio quality on transmit and receive
• no need to program it if you can remember channel numbers
• no gimmicks such as broadcast receive or 220MHz coverage
• 5W setting
• clean transmit spectrum
But it’s not perfect:
• the power lead is thin, short, does not unplug from the radio and the only fuse accessible (5A, 30mm) is in the cigar-lighter plug tip
• the radio gets hot even on medium power
• the speaker is bottom-firing
• lack of variable microphone gain
Conclusion
I bought the review set and it’s now my dayto-day FM radio. The price does this radio no favours by giving the impression it’s another cheap Chinese product that works but fails to delight.
That simply is not the case. The Anytone AT-779UV is by any standards a good amateur radio. 20W, three power levels, dual-band, over 200 2m and 70cm repeaters memories preloaded, and it looks and sounds nice! What’s not to like?