SvenMarbles

Radios are engineered to exist in uncomfortable heat. Regardless of the season and ambient temperature, they make their own heat.. It's why their bodies are heat sinks, and they have fans inside. Heat was a part of the plan. So ambient heat in your car isn't likely to hurt your radio. Before operating it, maybe be sure you've allowed the AC to cool the cabin for a few minutes though.. 140 degree interior car bake air being circulated amongst it's own heat generation isn't likely to help..

Baofengs are very commonly in use, even among some nation-state millitaries. You might think i'm being silly, but that's 100% real. Russian Federation units were pictured with them in the early days of the invasion as well. It's why they lost so many generals on the battlefield. Ukraine (U.S.) sigint was just listening along the whole way..

I think there is a sort of broad misunderstanding of what you can do on UHF, with watts and DB antennas. People want the 50 watters and the 9db gain antennas thinking that's the best way to operate. For your home setup, and with an antenna up high, sure... But it's more to do with the height/LOS. You could probably be achieving the same result with 10 watts if you're doing nice in that configuration. For the mobile side, you're a low plane level antenna. No matter what,... You can't punch through that dirt grade with watts. 50 or 5,000. The only thing that you can have control of is your take-off angles. The higher DB antennas are shallow. Give up on the watts or ERP. Just radiate more omni.. I've found that that it's been the solution. 5 watts can sound like 50 if it's clear to radiate. On UHF, you're due to lose the contact by terrain long before petering out on power. People CW on 5 watts across the planet. Power isn't the thing folks.. HF does it by ricocheting off of the ionosphere. Power only matters if you care to step over a guy. Do we do that in polite society?

I really hope it works out well for you. My only concern with these antennas are if the QC is such that no 2 of them are the same tune.

The NMO base is probably about 3/8ths, so the antenna itself is right at about 3 1/2”. Here’s how it sits on my wife’s car. Very subtle. It’s her antenna now because it’s the first time she would allow an antenna be put on her car, due to its small form factor. As for gain, I am sure it’s not more than a couple db. I’m actually in the process of re-thinking my strategy with mobile antenna gain though. I’m likely to replace my own with an intentionally lower gain antenna. I suspect that the shallow radiation lobes of the higher gain mobile antennas create dead spots around terrain height variations, whereas a 3db or lower, more Omni-directional in the X axis, performs better. With this antenna and a 4 watt UV5R, I get told on the comeback from radio checks into repeaters that are 10-15 miles away that I’m full quieting and loud. . Not sure if it’s just some kind of lucky anomaly, but this ultra cheapo setup ($50ish dollars all-in) just talks all over town quite nicely…

He’ll get a PM from me tonight.

Yikes… too many pops yesterday and got a little silly. Sorry folks.

I own that. I had an agenda going in. The title of this thread should have been “I don’t think that Midland GMRS radios are that great”. In fairness, it’s within the context of rebuttal of criticism of “Chinese radios”, from people that weren’t even here . So yeah I brought some heat that seemed like it came from nowhere.

Generally speaking, how do you find integrated radio-on-chip receivers vs radios with multiple IF stages to be, relative to eachother?

Well not really . Do you think because I got poked by Randy and his hangers-on that anything pertaining to the topic prior was satisfied?

I predicted the play on “showing my ass”.. ::golf clap:: Short of that you haven’t said anything else..

Personal insults? Weird…

I did miss the point.

I see. Defects. There’s something defective going on with, me.. Because I know radio stuff. As an interest.. In my spare time away from being a father, husband, and business owner. Maybe I should film my ugly face and go off half cocked on a topic that I know just a little bit about like “some people”. Hopefully though, I won’t run out of steam part way in and start making weird “art videos”..

Damn… so,.. you’re saying I passed the sad ham exam, before even taking the ham exam. That’s a distinction, for sure..

I’m literally the opposite of a sad ham.

By the way,... not a ham.. Could pass a tech exam, and continue to general tomorrow morning,.. hungover.. Not interested.

You're right, I don't know who "the players are" here. But frankly I don't care. I do radio. I know the radio things. I'm assuredly not "some people". Those ones are those who care about "who the players are" and the perceived "players" themselves. I don't fall in line with conventional dogma. When I speak on something it's because I've had empirical experience in trying that thing out. And in this case I know ALLLLL about the silicon labs radio chip things vs. superheterodyne receivers. I know where they're good and where they're not. I know about the "chuff" tuning vs constant and variable tuning. The squelch muting, and the vulnerability to harmonics. Bad first IF stages, etc... I'll be glad to have a conversation with any "players" here about it.. I know it's difficult to imagine. That there could be such a person out in the wild whose been doing the radio hobby for decades and just now signed up for MYMGRS, Hi. You've met one.

I dabble in GMRS, among varied radio interests.

Yes I bought my GMRS fishing license 4 months ago. What's your point? I wasn't the type to buy my GMRS license first and learn radio second..

And by the way... I'm a life long radio guy. 30ish years of playing around with things.But I recognize that there are better ones than me. Plenty actually. I subscribe to them all. ALLLLL of the old hams. OG, Jim(W6LG), etc.. I watch the nerd stuff like most people watch the netflix.. So If I've just missed a whole bunch and this guy can tell me about it, I'll take a picture of my ass and put it here..

Well I'm about it.. Where is that channel.

You're correct. Who is it?

You take a guy with a dbm style S-meter and you stick him some distance away. you key up and he tells you what your reading is. What's nuts about that? It's weird to me that you wouldn't even know how that could be done, but you're over there doing GS7 tests.

You did? That's a strange coincidence.. Can we see your signal generator and radio-lab? You just happened to do a head-to-head of two radios that surely nobody would buy at once, but is the topic of this discussion..?