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From March 2000 QST © ARRL

Reviewed by Joe Bottiglieri, AA1GW

Assistant Technical Editor

Alinco’s latest product offering for the

dual-band hand-held market, the DJ-V5T,

has been taking a bit of ribbing for mim-

icking the physical design cues of Yaesu’s

FT-50RD, ICOM’s IC-T8A or Kenwood’s

TH-G71A. These H-Ts are relatively short,

husky little handfuls that use “clamshell”

type construction—the battery packs attach

to the back side of the chassis. But hold

on a minute here… perhaps Alinco should

be the company credited with starting this

trend. Their DJ-F1T was one of the first

H-Ts to sport this configuration—way back

near the dawn of the last decade!

Highlights and Features

The DJ-V5T is a “one band at a time”

VHF/UHF transceiver. As is the case with

most of the similarly positioned dual-band

H-Ts offered by their competitors, dual si-

multaneous receive and full duplex

crossband operation is not supported. If

these capabilities are important to you,

you’ll find them in Alinco’s top-of-the-line

hand-held transceiver—the DJ-G5T.

Some of the DJ-V5T’s most notable fea-

tures include 2

memory channels with

six-character alphanumeric tagging, sepa-

rate VHF and UHF call channel memories,

priority watch, independent CTCSS encode

and decode frequencies, tone burst, DTMF

paging, autodial memories, wire cloning and

a good variety of scanning arrangements.

For this review we purchased the “H” ver-

sion—this particular package comes with a

9.6 V 6

mAh NiCd battery pack.

Unlike most of the presently available

H-Ts, the current version of the DJ-V5T

does not come with expanded receive cov-

erage outside of the amateur bands. While

the FM broadcast band (76 to 1

8 MHz

WFM) is included, reception of AM aircraft,

NOAA weather radio, VHF marine, public

service and commercial radio frequencies

is not supported. To its credit, the entire 42

to 45

MHz range is covered. Alinco has

recently released some good news concern-

ing this lack of receive frequency agility.

I’ll fill you in on the details later.

A Jump Start

The ’V5 bucks the current trend towards

the use of multiple menus for basic control

operations—and this makes working the

radio seem very intuitive. Once I had the

transceiver unpacked and the battery

charged, a careful look at the legends

printed above the buttons and a few min-

utes spent poking the various keys and

twiddling the knobs and I was up and run-

ning—without ever having to refer to the

The Alinco DJ-V5TH Dual-Band FM Hand-Held Transceiver

Instruction Manual.

While I’ll admit that I have a bit of an

unfair advantage (I’ve had the opportunity

to play around with more than my share of

H-Ts over the years), I’m confident that

anyone with a good basic understanding of

repeater operation should be able to easily

duplicate this feat.

A note for first time buyers of amateur

FM equipment: if “repeater offset” and

“CTCSS encode” are unfamiliar terms, do

yourself a favor and find an Elmer to help

you over the first few hurdles!

The manuals included with most of the

current VHF/UHF gear will not provide

detailed information on the fundamentals

of repeater operation. You wouldn’t rely on

an automobile owner’s manual for basic

driver instruction—would you?

Possible sources for help range from lo-

cal hams and radio clubs to Internet reflec-

tors and discussion groups. You can also find

excellent explanations and useful tips on an

incredible range of Amateur Radio operat-

ing topics—including FM repeater and sim-

plex operation—in The ARRL Operating

Manual (ARRL order #6141) and Ham Ra-

dio Made Easy (ARRL order #5374).

The Instruction Manual that’s packed

with the transceiver is well organized. The

instructions are clearly explained and

nearly every section includes helpful dia-

grams. Alinco also supplies a complete and

legible schematic.

Control Arrangements

The ’V5’s rotary encoder and volume

control are a dual concentric knob set lo-

cated on the left side of the top panel. The

main knob controls the encoder; volume

adjustments are made using the lower ring.

These knobs are large, easy to grip and

slightly tapered. Speaker/microphone jacks

and a female SMA antenna connector are

also positioned on the top panel.

The squelch can be set to one of six lev-

els by pressing and holding a

MONI/SQL

button and dialing through the choices with

the encoder.

A large LCD window is located on the

upper portion of the front panel. It displays

black segments on a gray background. The

frequency digits and the icons that appear

in the display are large enough for very easy

viewing. A side mounted

LAMP button will

activate backlighting for both the display

and the DTMF pad. Backlighting can be set

to automatically switch off a few seconds

after the last keystroke or to remain on un-

til manually deactivated.

The middle section of the front panel

includes a column of three oval-shaped

buttons—

POWER, FUNC/LOCK and BAND/

SET. To the right of these is a large speaker

grill. A red/green transmit/busy LED indi-

cator is positioned just above the grill.

The lower portion of the front panel con-

tains the typical four-row four-column

DTMF pad. Each of these keys has mul-

tiple assignments. The primary operations

are printed in white lettering to the left of

the buttons, the secondary operations—ac-

cessed by first pressing the

FUNC/LOCK

button—are printed in orange just above.

All of the legends are easy to read and gen-

erally logically titled—

PO for power out-

put level,

T SQL for CTCSS settings, RPT

for repeater offset frequency and direction

and so on.

There’s only one menu—the “set” menu.

This contains just six items—keypad beep,

bell paging, auto power off, battery save,

DTMF autodial transmit delay time and a

“split” setting.

While the other operations in this menu

are self-explanatory, the split feature is

unique. When activated, split allows you to

use a memory frequency for transmitting

and the VFO frequency for receiving. This

arrangement can be used for crossband half-

duplex operation—AO-27 satellite commu-

nications is one example.

Operating Impressions and the Lab

Numbers

As I mentioned earlier, operating the

DJ-V5T seems pretty straightforward.

BOTTOM LINE

The Alinco DJ-V5TH dual-

band H-T squeezes respectable

performance and a nice selec-

tion of features into a compact,

rugged looking chassis.

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