Last week bought a new addition to the shack in the form of a Foxdelta Foxview 3 APRS viewer so we can monitor local APRS traffic without the need of using a computer, after Dad purchased the kit we also needed to order a MX614 which I could only find available in the USA from Argent Data but impressively it all arrived in days of each other (IC being first!)

Getting it all connected up was easy enough to start with I used it on my Yaesu VX-150 handheld as the connection was the same as the Foxtrak but later on we wired up FT-7800E and have since been using that with great success.

Features

  • APRS viewer on a 4×20 LCD
  • APRS Position encoder (Fixed or GPS (not easy to setup)
  • Digipeater
  • APRS TNC

Its rather nice being able just to glance at the LCD to see what the last packet was and any supporting message, but you can also plug it into the PC the inner workings of the TNC seem to be based on the wb8wga tnc which I’ve been using with UI-View you can get the files needed to make that work from the Crosscountry wireless website as they use the same TNC!

Most of the gotchas have been with the actual display LCD system, and the help manual isn’t very good which doesn’t help, Gavin (M1BXF) and myself have still yet to get the “My POS” to work correctly if anyone has get in touch and also getting it to work with a GPS isn’t as simple as you might have expected but that also does work.

Update 20/03/2015:- After using this unit for a few years I’ve come to the conclusion its utter crap and wouldn’t recommend it, the decoding ability is poor and the firmware is an utter shambles. avoid.