Dear Chirp Developers:

Back in 2009, I purchased a few Wouxun KG-UVD1P units (firmware version unknown) and they used to work quite well with Chirp "stable" up until around 2012 or 2013 or so. Now, on various versions of Ubuntu and Debian machines I have tried, Chirp can no longer communicate with these radios either to download new data or to upload anything based on an old image file. I suspected my programming cables--the drivers and/or the firmware faeries.

However, just last month, in addition to switching my desktop over to Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS amd64, I also purchased some new Baofeng UV-5R units (firmware version BFS297) and installed the Chirp "daily" build 20140724 and can confirm that there were zero problems programming them using my old Prolific PL2303 programming cables (not to be confused with the PL2303HX which this isn't--those also seem to work just fine under Linux).

I can't say for sure when things stopped working for my Wouxun units since I generally don't reprogram these units every day--stuff always happens on the same few repeaters all the time, I tend to forget my desktop at home while playing radio, I also know how to program them manually and my cloning cable still worked just fine so meh. Nobody else raised any similar Chirp bugs about it and nobody else was complaining about it on da interweeebz so it seemed that the problem must be on my end.

I have retained a working image file for my old Wouxun units from around 2012 when the old version of Chirp used to communicate fine with them and a recent image file from a working Baofeng unit with a similar set of programmed memories (and fewer mistakes). Hexdumps do not immediately tell me very much from these image files until I learn to read the Chirp code better. I have also extracted a brand new ~/.chirp/debug.log from a failed communication attempt with an old Wouxun unit and a working communication attempt with a new Baofeng unit--both on the same computer, using the same version of Chirp and with the same programming cable.

I would love to know if this failure might be something simple (where I might have a chance in hell of fixing it--maybe the byte preamble is just broken) or if this is something that folks already know about (where I might have a chance of helping someone smarter than me to fix it by providing more binary dumps or test out patches or offer other similar assistance) or else this is a simple "user too stupid" error (which I can also try to help repair by fixing the documentation).

Mostly, I really just want to know if this is a "unknown problem; please raise a ticket" or else this is a "known problem; won't fix" and that I should simply recycle my old Wouxun units into fixed-frequency packet-only transceivers (or lend/donate them to another developer) and stick with hand-helds that I can actually program properly. I would also very much enjoy contributing back to Chirp to make it even better once I get a bit more traction and a few practice patches accepted (i.e.: issue #1801).

Thank you and 73,

Tyler Tidman VA3DGN