Retevis RT-85

Modified on Tue, Oct 4, 2022 at 2:20 PM

The Retevis RT-85 is a bit "quirky"... but all seems to work well if you know what to expect. This is what we found in testing:

When received the radio was in some kind of Memory Only Mode... or at least it seemed to be. The instructions in the manual of pressing the [# radio] key to access VFO had no effect. Everything was fine with it once you had your channels programmed into it. You just did not have VFO (which most folks don't use anyway).
We learned that you can press and hold the 1 and 7 keys while turning on the radio get the radio out of this memory only mode and then access the VFO. BE AWARE that once you do this, there is not a way to put the radio back into that memory only mode. Yes, you have memories that you can access and use... you just don't have memory only as you did originally.
This option cannot be changed with the RT Systems Programmer. If it is in memory only mode, it will remain in memory only mode and pressing the [# radio] key will not work as expected. If it has been opened for VFO, that will remain available from the face of the radio (along with the memory channels you program in).

In all honesty.... working with lots of folks with tech support on lots of radios... I would not do the change to the radio to access VFO unless you really understand what VFO is for and have a need for it. Otherwise, VFO mode just gets in the way since it is the channels in memory that you want to use anyway.

You will notice on the VFO tab of the programmer that there are four (4) entries. Four you say, there are only two displayed on the radio. But... if you do the keypad modification so you can access the VFO on this radio, you have four (4), yes really, 4 VFOs. Access is as follows

In A display, press [# radio] to access VFO mode. VFO appears at the right in place of the channel number for the top display. Press and hold A/B to change bands. Make note of the UHF and VHF frequencies shown here and for a real test, change them and make note of what you changed them to.

Now press A/B briefly to move between top and bottom display. Now in B display (bottom) press [# radio] to access VFO mode. VFO appears in place of the Channel number for the bottom display. Notice the frequency. It will be different from that in the A display (top) that you changed that one to... check your notes. Press and hold A/B until you change bands and notice that frequency is different from what you had for the A display... again, check your notes.

As I said, 4 VFOs. 1 per band on A display and 1 per band on B display. How cool!!