Review of the Feidaxin FDC-460A ham radio

I heard some decent reviews about the Feidaxin brand of ham radios. These have been what we call 'Rice Box' Radios. They hail from parts of Asia and with that come at a very cheap price. On average a single band radio will sport about $60 USD or so. Being that they are damn cheap makes them appealing, but are you getting what you pay for?



From my experience with my FDC-460A its not completely horrible. For $60 I cant complain much.

The good:
Inexpensive.
Works great as a spare radio
Just fine for a simple radio that does repeater, CTCSS, and DCS.
Unlocked in the entire 400-460MHz band, use as FRS/GMRS (or other) Radio.
Decent solid design, I wouldnt beat it up but its not a bad radio.
Ni-MH Cells, easy to upgrade or replace if you are handy with a soldering iron.
Full 5 Watt on all frequencies. Or 1 watt in low power.
Option for programming cable for the PC and software to program the memory channels.
99 memory banks.
Can be put in "Stupid User Mode" which allows the user to cycle through the programmed. channels, like a regular 2-way radio.

The Bad:
No Alpha tags, you have to memorize your frequency list, unless you put it in "Dumb mode"
Scan speed is slow, even for an HT.
Digital Squelch.
The charge dock mashes in the bottom row of buttons on the radio, its hard to dock.
Battery charge time isnt the best.
They have a male SMA connector on the radio, which is weird.
User manual is in horrible engrish, but with some common sense its not hard to figure out.
Programming software is usable but in engrish.
Some people report having defects.
Doesnt operate the best in extreme cold, so dont keep it in the car during winter.
Programming the radio by hand is a pain in the ass, but isnt that said for all HTs?
When using a headset you cant use the PTT button on the radio, you must use the PTT on the headset... thats just weird too.
No VOX Support (I dont like VOX anyways).

General
I use mine on both ham radio bands, local security (in hindsight I should have gotten the 410-470Mhz model), FRS/GMRS, and anything else in between. The squelch control is menu driven, you may not like it. I dont mind so much but being I have been an HT and Scanner user for many years I am very accustomed to manually adjusting my squelch while in the field. The 1W / 5W power selection does seem like a small drawback especially for battery consumption, but this is common on even expensive radios. I like having a Low-Medium-High setting. The fact that it can do full 5W (closer to 4W on the upper band) is nice though. I can pop on the FRS/GMRS bands at 5 Watt. Yes, I know it is not legal to operate over 0.5W on FRS Bands. Blow me, I dont give a rats ass. When an emergency arises I can hand out a small fleet of FRS radios and use this FDC-460 as a repeater node (with some additional hardware). I have seen report of some people making low-cost, low-power mobile/portable repeaters out of these lil' buggers. This is also great for an inexpensive APRS Radio

If you just need a spare radio to hand to the kids, wife, or friend to keep in contact via simplex, or have a friend that wants to get into the hobby and you dont mind being control operator for them, this isnt a bad choice. I keep this as a backup and when I am out hand it to my lil' lady Bunnie, or even my other friends when we want to go shopping and I want to fuck off. I see crappy FRS/GMRS radios that cost just as much and dont offer the features this thing has.

It also has full PL tone (CTCSS) and DCS Support which is also used on many security fleet radios, FRS/GMRS, and Ham Radio Repeaters. Unfortunately the lack of Alpha Tags you need to memorize what all your frequencies belong to. There is a mode you can boot the radio in by holding the [F] key and turning on the radio which puts it into what I call "Dumb mode". It will list each programmed frequency as a number in a list, rather the frequency. It also locks out the ability to manually tune in a frequency, play with the offset, PL/DCS, and other settings. This way you can set it up, hand it to an inexperienced user and just tell them "Tune to channel 4" or whatever...

I would definitely recommend getting the programming cable. Programming any HT for me is a major time consuming pain in the ass. Unfortunately the software is in Engrish as well. For me it wasnt hard to get working at all, but I am an experienced hacker and technophile. I have noticed that most Hams have as much computer skill as a 4 year old child on drugs, or worse. Just make sure you get the right programming cable, if you are using XP, go for the USB one. Dont even ask for OSX or Linux support! I wouldnt consider this a major purchase factor though.

Some minor quirks
For some odd reason they put a male SMA connector on the radio. Typically you see the male connectors on the Rubber Duck Antenna or Coax. A female SMA coupler fixes this though.

(Yes, it came with a very nice antenna)

Another small quirk I noticed is that if you use a headset you cant use the PTT on the radio. It will transmit but no audio will travel from the HT. You must use the PTT on the headset. There is no VOX control, which I dont use anyway. I find that loud cars, alarms, and background noise tend to false-trigger most VOX controls since I am not a typical fat, lazy ham that hasnt seen his penis in years. I use my radio out in the field and I am very active in general, and this radio has done a pretty good job so far. For $60 shipped... I cant bitch.

Asus EEE - Where it went wrong

My buddy Mustang wanted an EEE PC, my other buddy was selling his for $150. Me acting as a middle man I was able to work the deal out, so I have had the honor to try out my hacky hands with this contraption. Its currently running a nice clean install of XP Pro Corporate. One thing that really pissed me off is that Asus sold this as a "Laptop for Hackers" but wont let you hack it. At first the violated the GPL License by not releasing proper drivers so you can install your on distribution of linux. They also made it so that replacing or upgrading the RAM or Solid State Hard Drive (SSHDD) voided the warranty. Thats really shitty! How can you tell me I will void my warrenty because I put more standard, off the shelf RAM in the unit? I can understand if I took the whole thing apart and took my soldering iron to the board, but to void it under the pretense that I replace standard hardware... fuck you. It seems they used "Linux Hacker" more as a marketing term than conforming to the Open Source sensibility of homebrew hackers and technophiles alike. This alone made me digress an EEE purchase.

Now, I like the size, but here are some minor gripes, besides the obvious maketing and licence blunders of the past:

• The touchpad is too small to be remotely useful.
• The 7" LCD isnt big enough to hold a typical GUI, even a slimmed down GUI.
  
• The keyboard is very hard to use without using the 'Hunt and peck' method.
• Battery... can we please have an official extended battery?

I like the SDHC, right now I have an 8GB card in there. I havent gone to installing linux to SD yet, or to a USB Drive, but with a little tech know-how its not hard at all. If you think GRUB is a type of bug, then you shouldnt even bother with an EEE. I have managed to BSOD the EEE within minutes of using it, but I just have that talent. Seeing how this isnt mine, I didnt really dig into it. Once mustang gets his paws on it, I will surely be by his side ready to sink my claws in.





For productivity, this thing is useless. The screen is too small to hold a standard formatted screen for text editing, and the keyboard is harder to use than a thorn covered butt plug. If you want it for generic mobile bullshit, its great! Add a beefed up wifi card and bluetooth stick, some nice linux software, and you could be a severe threat to anyone roaming the electronic frontier within the immediate area. Or just be a typical myspace/facebook whore... but beyond generic playing, which I must say, I do a lot, I wouldnt buy one at full price, and if I did get one, a 10" screen would be the best one to get if you can.

Once I get this off to mustang and we work on it a bit, I will post some more about the hellish hacks and misadventures of BSoD and friends.

Why Brown City, MI Postal Service hates me.

A little over a week ago I sent my buddy Nate a stick of ram for a computer. I wasnt using it, so I figured share the wealth. Usually when i send something out I take some artistic and creative skill and puke all over the package. This was no different. I asked Nate if I could toss in some typical Foxx Brand Sticky Humor. He agreed to it, so I went along with my evil plan.

Day by day passed and there was no profane, indecent envelope in the mail. A week passes by, still no awkward stare from the postal worker. A few more days pass, no defiled looks from family members towards Nate. We both begin to wonder, ponder if you will... where the hell is this RAM!?

I get a call from Nate telling me he is about to run into the post office and raise hell. Apparently he wasnt expecting the opposite. The local postal inspector took him into a room and had interrogated him about the contents of the envelope. They took copies of his drivers licence, envelope, and explained how they will be making a formal complaint against me, putting me on "a list" and will have an ongoing background check with investigation. All of that hassle for some measly profanity on an envelope! Jebus H. Christ, these people must have nothing better to do. Putting the thing in the 'suspicious mail' aka 'mail bomb' room for a week thinking that its some kind of WMD... Man, what the fuck?!

So, you may be wondering what was on the letter that made them all paranoid?

"in case the saliva on the flap makes a poor DNA sample, I included a sperm sample as well. enjoy!"

"Go stick this ram up your ass and fucking like it!!"

"Spend less time reading, and more time delivering this - thank you XP"


Glad I never use my real name. HAH! Have fun chasing ghosts, jerkoffs.

The adventures of Foxx and the Holy Shit

Someone once said "Put a thousand monkeys behind typewriters, and they will eventually create all the works of Shakespeare." Thanks to the internet, this idea has been proven completely fucking wrong! All the emo bloggers out there posting every mood swing, anime freaks talking about how big their chi is, and miles of pointless crap you have to bog through. Well, here is some more crap. Here is a tall tale that turns out warm and bitter sweet in the end.

So there I was silently napping, something I don't do often, when all of a sudden I gently hear my lovely Hunnie Bunnie sit by my side and grumble "Ummm, the toilet is broken". Of course this isn't the ideal way to start waking up. After some half delusional inquiries I had come the the deducted conclusion that she had accidentally dropped her deodorant into an already processing toilet. Somehow the swirl of psychic mind-melding water flow had a reaction with her equilibrium causing her to loose balance, and in the process of saving herself she had dropped the poor, innocent deodorant. Either that or shes just a fucking clutz.

All efforts to retrieve the lost Deodorant of D'Stink was an utter failure. Many men were lost, many lives were ruined, and I spent $8 on a plunger that didn't work. The Coat-Hanger seamlessly gave his life for the cause. However I think he was confused, he may thought of the mission was a back alley abortion. No worries Coat-Hanger, you will meet your dead baby an bleach soon... very very soon. We must prevail! The water MUST flow yet again!

Unfortunately I didn't notice a ticking time bomb that slowly matured. Mother Nature, thou are a crewel bitch.

Almost three days later and the urge to poop was upon me. To cast all evil out of my bowels, and purge myself of all filth. The Catholics would be disappointed. Of course this was the crack of night and nothing in a 5 mile radius was awake and willing to let me BM in their Loo'. Of course the obvious 'Loaf on a lawn' idea did pop up, but being dead winter and quite frigid out, I would think the Sphincter Gods would not bless the occasion. They would perhaps smite me in ways only German scat films, or rabbits with the Screamin' Shits could only depict.

I pack my bags and go on a hike around the ol' ghost town. With my laptop Apollo on my back I start trolling for possible drop sites. The first location that came to mind was a local coffee shop I frequent. Since I'm there often, the people that manage the facility dont like me. Probably because I am an asshole, possible because my shit doesn't smell like curry powder and rotten dog meat. Either way, they were quite reluctant to let me download. BAH! Puny ingrate mortals, I shall seek my revenge... but not today, I need to poop, and poop I shall!

Backtracking to whence I came and soon crossing my point of origins, I continue on in the totally fucking opposite direction to the next means of defecation passing an all Asian, ultra bright blue neon and LED bar. I'm sorry my yellow skin stereotypes, not today. Moving on I soon come to the next dunn'. Closed. Dear lord thank you for this butt puckering cold. Walking back AGAIN I approach the blaring ultra bright blue bar. Being greeted by a very low brow bouncer wasn't something I expected, neither was being asked for ID. Those that know me fully understand why I do not carry ID. I can be who I want, when I want, this moment was no different. This is getting ridiculous. The things I have to deal with to take a crap.

Its about 2AM and I find myself standing in this Asian bar cram packed with the most typical stereotypes you could ever imagine. It was like I walked right into a really bad anime, mainly because nobody had perky tits, dandruff free hair, or a glistening sticky overcoat on their skin. Lets not mention the smell of shaved cats or really bad looking teeth. Why are Asian people attracted to really bright blue lights? Fuck, now I'm standing here trying to assess the situation when the bouncer asks "You needing something?". "Nope, just waiting for someone." "You think you have the right place?" Yeah, I'm sure, seeing how its the only place in 5 miles I can think of that has a shitter. "I think I'm in the right place..." At this point I badger the bouncer with as many annoying questions and pathetic small talk as possible. I figure if this guy finds me annoying enough, he will give me what I want just to get rid of me. If need be ill give him a free Cleveland Steamer. I make sure to walk in and out of the front door as many times as possible, that way the fucker cant stay warm. The constant cold chilly air rushes in directly at him. I pretend to be on my cell phone to avoid any transient and unnecessary conversation. Ten minutes into this whole ordeal I exclaim "Hey, mind if I bleed the lizard, the cold air is tickling my pecker". The bouncer promptly points me in the direction "'Round the corner, downstairs".

Heading down the stairs I get stares of an indignant nature. The hell with you, squinties, wait till' I leave, then lets see what you think. I enter the bathroom not with a quint sigh of relief, but with a sense of calm admiration. This is the eye of the storm, well, more like the sphincter, but to each their own. Lucky I am a man that follows the idea 'Plan for the worst, hope for the best'. With that idea in mind I had well prepared my journey by packing my own toilet paper, cause shit happens, and when it does, be prepared.

As I sit on my borrowed porcelain throne I ponder the passive contents in my bag of many tricks. Hearing the locals in the thickest of Asian anime accents, breathing through their lack of testosterone, all I understand is the phrase "yo nigga". Thinking quietly I find a strange sense of humility in their presence. I was tempted by the Electron Gods to summon the powers of Apollo and his beefed up 2.4Ghz WiFi antenna and entertain my brain meats while I sit quietly. I figure you shouldn't bite the hand that feeds you, or worse... hack the bowl you shit in. I finished performing my civil duty, gathered my things and left the bar. Of course I pretended to be on the phone yet again to avoid any stray stares and unwanted conversation from the locals.

This concludes my adventure. I leave you now with a tale to tell the grandchildren, god forbid you ever do breed.

Fist full of Wii

So I have been doing a bunch of Wii Homebrew lately. Im fond of the Gamecube, but the bitchy disc compatibility makes loading small chunks of code a pain in the ass. The Wii has built in backwards compatibility with the Cube, however it has a full 4.5GB DVD Disc system, instead of the 1.4GB 8cm Disc. The disc compatibility of the Wii is admirable. It was able to load pretty much anything I could throw at it, granted the data layout was correct. (You cant just throw files on a disc and expect it to load). Wii discs have a type of XOR encryption that no PC or Mac can read or burn. There is also a specific way the consoles will authenticate the disc session and even let you load code.

One way to make the DVD drive to authenticate the disc session is by adding a 'ModChip' to the drive controller integrated circuit. This chip will talk to the drive controller and say "Hey, this is a valid disc, now load it before I puke in your boots". Weather or not the use of this modification is legal is moot. I dont care. Yes, you can use it to backup your own games. Yes, you can use it to make copies of rented games. Yes, you can use it to play games you have downloaded off the internet. BUT! It also lets you load your own code, which is why these mods are originally created, it just doesnt take too much time for the bootleggers to follow in the wake of progress.

Some of the bootleggers are legit companies, like CodeJunikes, creators of Code Breakers and Action replay, they have been ripping off a lot of the homebrew code for many of todays current consoles, and repacking a shit quality revision for profit. Lets see some examples! I wont get into too much detail, i want to get to my point soon...

Max Media Dock = M3 Movie Player

Datel Drive Doctor (Wii) = WiiFrii / Chiip / Viper GC Extreme

MaxDrive PS3 = Standard USB HDD

MaxDrive X360 = Standard USB HDD

Action Replay DS = Dipstar / NitroHax freeware cheat system

Games & Music DS = Moonshell & Many Slot-1 loader cards

Mii Manager = Google Mii Hacking, there are TONS of freeware Mii transfer tools!

SD Launcher = SDLoad with Action Replay Exploit

All of the things i mention on the left are code junkies products, on the right is the homebrew solution that was released well before code junkies sank their claws into it. This pisses me off... The one thing that puts my nards in a vice is the whole Action Replay story...

Back in the day and still usable today, there was a way to load code from an SD card on a GC (also works in GC mode on a Wii). This worked by loading a lengthy code via Action Replay which in turn boots a loader from a SD card adapted to fit in Memory Card Slot A. Making the adapter isnt very hard, if you cant, you can buy official GC SD Card Adapters (SD Gecko). So what code junkies did was make their OWN SD card adapter, then removed the 'Add Code" function from Action Replay, and create their OWN version of Action Replay that will only have that ONE code. Now thats all fine and dandy. Rebuilding their own product is fine, but none of this is viable without the work of the developers of SDLoad. Without that, there is no way to load the code off the SD card. This was stolen by Code Junkies ad repacked for their SD Launcher. Not only that, but they are packaging open-source hardware, the GC SD Card Adapter... This violates me in ways i cant explain. They are pretty much raping peoples work, then pimping out their broken spirits.

Ok, to my point. Ever wonder why the Wii doesnt have a DVD Player? It turns out they would have to had paid royalties to whomever owns the CSS Encryption Scheme, and Macromedia. It would have added an extra $75+ to the console. Not really worth it, a DVD player costs as much.

There was a homebrew DVD player for the gamecube, which was recently reworked to work with the full size DVD drive of the Wii. Nintendo recently rolled out a system update for the Wii that removed the El Torrito Disc format, which is commonly used by the homebrew scene. At first I thought Nintendo rolled this update out to kill DVD Playback support. They have been doing really well dealing with piracy and unauthorized stuff, but nobody wants to deal with the movie industry. Big-N is usually really nice to us homebrew people, but when a chunk of homebrew pops up that could cause potential legal problems for them, they have to do something. Now I was doing some experiments and came to the realization that this Wii v3.0 system update also kills the Action Replay, and probably SD Launcher... Could this be Nintendo's strike at homebrew... or at Code Junkies? We already have a way to boot homebrew code without using the El Torrito Disc format... But Code Junkies is FUCKED.

At first I was a little pissed and a wee bit dismayed that all my homebrew wouldnt work, but after some testing, all the stuff I made worked just fine, except some of the early stuff. It seems that Code Junkies and the Mod Chip makers are using the older disc formats of yesteryear. So this update kills all the Code Junkies GC products, and Mod Chip setup discs.

Yay for Nintendo for fisting Code Junkies in the ass using salted lube! The jerkoffs deserve worse...

DDoS your nipples.

For those of you that dont know, a DDoS, or Distributed Denial of Service attack is when a whole bunch of computers send itty-bitty bits of data to another computer all at once. All those little bits of data pile up on the attacked machine, and it will lag, or even be kicked offline.

With that little bit of information, let me tell you a short tale of my girlfriends tits.

The other day she was complaining her boobs hurt, so, me of my caring and nurturing nature, I decided to do what was right and massage them thoroughly. Now, im sure the lot of you are thinking im a typical tit obsessed male, well, thats besides the point.

Have you ever wondered why massage makes you relax? The human body has multiple types of nerves. Pain and Touch run along different nerve paths, but end up at the same location in your brain. The thing about this is that the nerves that sense touch are much faster than the nerves that sense pain. So if you stimulate the nerves for touch, you DDoS your brain so it cant receive the signals from the pain nerves. Being a person thats quite familiar with an overworked nervous system, I can tell you that this is not only true, but it works, and works well.

So next time you are achy or have a dull pain that wont go away, perhaps a muscle sprain, cramp, or bruise, I think you know what you need to do. Just do me a favor? Dont ask to massage or DDoS my nipples.

First Post

I got off my ass and got a real blog. Time to start spamming the world with my bad poems and gibberish musings that nobody fucking cares about. This is going to be more about the stuff I do, and how. This is to compliment all the ramblings I do on IRC to help people, and from www.BSoDtv.org

Hopefully now I wont have to repeat the same instructions over, and over, and OVER, AND OVER AGAIN! (Which was the reason i started the myspace blog, which I hate with a passion.)

Ill start posting all of my older articles, videos, pics and other interesting junk soon.