SvenMarbles

You can give your call in CW, and it's not your problem if anyone understands it...

Is anyone else here running an H8 and randomly have the radio make a beeping tone and then display "P call" on the display? I see nothing in the manual that calls it out.

I can’t remember if I read about it somewhere here in these forums or on a FB group post, but someone was mentioning about, for example, a 6db gain mobile antenna. The way that it accomplishes that gain is by shallowing down that take off angle into something more narrow of disc shaped and really concentrating that radiation to something like a degree or two. And that’s great for ERP increases, but a mound of solid dirt in front of you at the foot of an incline on the roadway is just going to absorb it if you’re running 5 watts or 50. And in this scenario, you’re just beaming that signal nearly horizontally right into it. So if there was a receiving vehicle a mile ahead and already on top of that increased elevation, he may not hear anything at all. But now suppose you have a 3bd gain antenna which is a bit more Omni direction in the vertical axis, perhaps shooting as high as 10-15 degrees. It’s lower ERP, but would be casting signal into more useful directions in realistic terrain environments. When you first get into mobile line of sight radio-ing, one of the first things that you become more keen on is how the terrain lays out ahead of you as you’re driving. You see those high points, and low dips and you just know when you’re optimal for shooting out a nice signal and when you’re likely to get into a dead spot down in a hole. So with that being said, is a high gain vertical actually counter productive in mobile applications?

For sure, but,.. It's been my experience that it's gotten that way because of all of the hams putting the "ham flavor" all over the GMRS band.

So it was like,.. “Hey, anyone out there need any help?”,.. And 34 people responded on ham radio saying “Yes, I need some help over here!”..

You yelled for help on the radio to see what you'd get back? lol Alright then.. I guess every area of the country might not resemble the rest, but I can tell you for sure that GMRS far more active where I am. There's still plenty of 440 and 2meter stuff, but all of those guys are just also on GMRS. Not sure why so many hams do that, but it seems to be a thing.. The GMRS repeaters out here get way more traffic than the club ham repeaters.. But as for what's a better SHTF radio. Technically anything that works to reach your intended party is a good one. I will say this though. GMRS is SUPPOSED to be more for the family units to be able to carry on with more "familiar talk" with husband/wife/kids etc. Somehow though I think if it got used that way hams on the channel might actually accuse you of being in the wrong place, and that you're interrupting the "rag chew".. The irony.. Ham radio on the other hand is explicitly hobby radio. You're not supposed to use it for practical or "familiar comms". You're just supposed to go on there and talk to other radio guys about radio stuff. But I digress.. If i'm choosing the most appropriate line-of-sight band for what my idea of SHTF backup comms is, I'm choosing the one I get to have all of my people setup with, and not the one that is only supposed to be for hobby purposes.. Colostomy bag Larry ain't showing up with food and blankets for you..

Do you think you can try to get more recordings of it, maybe for longer? This sounds a lot like a data mode that isn't even in FM that's trying to be demodulated in FM.. If you do a lot of HF tuning, you'll know what I mean.. I wish i could be around for it and try to tune it on an RSP SDR.

It gets 12 watts on MURS. I actually have a little circle of MURS guys out in my area so it's actually something that I'm on a fair bit. Even went as far as to get an actual 6db MURS purpose made antenna mounted outdoors. So I can definitely vouch for the H8 being suitable for MURS.

Also, the good news is that it’s GMRS that we’re discussing here. No need to “dual band” anything.. We should enjoy the luxury of only needing to target one resonant frequency “chunk” and making the best of it… For 462-467 the quarter wave, purpose cut for that specific frequency (shorter) would provide a better balanced dipole to the radio body…

Thanks for this.. Makes perfect sense. Simplicity, balance, and efficiency.. Have you ever messed around with pig tail counterpoising for HT antennas? If it works, I wonder why manufacturers haven’t incorporated it as a standard design..

Yes I'm aware. That's not what I was point out though. The lower of the dual tuners is hotter than the top one. Specifically on VHF though.

One last thing to add. There's one thing that was encountered and I dont know if this was only in my radio or if this happens on all of them. The lower tuner/VFO is "hotter" on VHF. Uppper and lower will do about the same on UHF, but I do MURS too on this radio also. It'll do about 10 on VHF on the upper as well, but on the lower it does 12. Just a little quirk I discovered..

I'm a budget minded radio hobbyist, which means that I'm an avid consumer of the "cheap Chinese junk". I've possessed all variety of Baofeng, Quansheng, QYT, Talkpod, Radioddity, Retivis, etc. My experiences have been mostly positive. Some QC issues occur at a higher rate than higher priced "known quality brands", but they all DO essentially work. When factoring in the price/value ratio, there's simply no debating whether or not they're worthwhile purchases. Furthermore, when you move away from the $30 category into the $50-80 tier of such radios, It's been my experience that they're mostly excellent, especially when accounting for the value relative to the $200+ options. (Secret time,.. Those radios are made in China too). And say what you want about the Chinese makers of radio equipment, they seem to be very active in being a driving force in innovation and care about what people in the space ask for, and then they do their best to bring it to market. Quickly. If you choose to not be a consumer of such products, that's ok, but you should at least appreciate that they're there applying pressure in the market. Anyone who follows the radio YouTube space is familiar with how often these guys are being sent radios for testing, get pretty honest feedback about the shortcomings, and then revisions are made to solve the problems. That's a pretty remarkable thing for a market sector in the US that if left to the mainline brands, we'd be pretty niche and neglected. A prime case example is the TidRadio brand and the TD-H8 model. A relatively new entrant in the market. The early versions of the H8 had problems, honest feedback was given, and revisions were made. I've waited until I've reached a bit over 30 days of ownership to write this review. Initial impression: Very good build quality. feels "weighty" and stout in the hand. Powers on to a standard logo screen and defaults to a dual VFO display screen. One pet-peeve I have with some of these Chinese made radios is the font choice of the characters. Please stop using seriffed fonts. It's an odd look for a display that should only emphasize utility and readability. Another thing that I found to be a bit of a detraction was the mushy feel of the PTT button. This is less of an issue for my use case because I have my example of the radio mounted down statically and operate it with an external speaker mic. But if I used this radio daily in HT only form, I'd probably really have an issue with this. On day one, when trying to use the bluetooth programming function, I found it to be broken because it wasn't properly saving my repeater shift information. I later found that it was my mistake because I wasn't doing so with the "repeater designated channel" but the simplex one. I now know that the bluetooth programing of this radio does work perfectly fine, but I'll stick to the Chirp method just because of the ergonomics and familiarity that I have with the format. After prolonged use: The handful of cons listed above seem to be the extent of anything wrong with this radio. It probably should be mentioned HOW I deploy this radio. I've made it my primary home "base" radio. It's mounted statically on my desk, with a hand speaker/mic, and via LMR-400 coax to a 9db gain GMRS yagi outdoors about 17ft high and rotatable. I have my reasons for wanting to operate this way. A low power draw radio that operates from a self contained battery. I don't require a high amp power supply that requires mains power to operate. I could even get it charged with solar if need be. Maybe you're getting the idea of why that might matter to me and why I'm of the mind of wanting that. So with that being said, I've been in search of an HT style radio, but, one that has a bit more balls than the standard 3-4 watt options. Anyone whose done the same thing might be familiar with how frustrating that search is, with all of the gaudy and fake Aliexpress (false) advertisements of 8-10 watt HTs. The TidRadio TD-H8 is genuinely a 10 watt radio (picture below). Which means that it straddles the line perfectly between a more powerful mobile and a less powerful handheld. With a 9db gain antenna and 1.4db loss across a 50ft run, it provides for an ERP of 57.8 watts. Which has been good enough to simplex my mobiles solidly in a 12 mile radius, and reach repeaters full quieting at least 50 miles away. The way that I have things configured, for my needs, I give this radio two very big thumbs up and recommend it wholeheartedly to anyone trying to accomplish a similar thing. ::Edit:: I neglected to mention one important thing. There are two variants for sale of the H8. The GMRS and Ham versions. The GMRS version of this radio will be software locked to transmit at 5 watts. Fortunately it doesn't matter which model that you buy, because there is an unlock method that simply involves a button press combination at startup to toggle the radio into operating unlocked. You'll need to do this with either model to get it to both operate on GMRS frequencies, and also at the higher power. Ham mode will be the higher power but wont allow operation on GMRS, GMRS version grants the GMRS frequencies but at low power. Unlocked mode is the third mode that allows both and both variants of the radio can be toggled into it..

I have to agree. As soon as you blend the "radio thing" with an internet connection, it lost the plot right there. I got my jollies talking to internet strangers in 1997 on AOL chat rooms. It's not what I'm after in 2024.. Don't shoot me but I'm a bit of a... ::whispering voice:: Prepper. I want my radio to be it's own backbone. If you're 80 miles out and I can't reach you, I don't need ya lol. Laugh if you want, but when the phone towers and repeaters lose power, I got my house and cars and neighbors on the phone within 10 miles,.. When everyone else is sitting puzzled looking at their phones not even getting info from something as simple as an AM radio. Yes I'm the deep freezer with 12 months of meat and fussing over backup power type..

Order the Tidradio TD-H8. There’s a button press combination that unlocks it and it’ll do 10-11 watts.

I'm on the outskirts of the Chicago area and there's a repeater of some measure on every possible repeater frequency pair. Every area of the country might not resemble your area of the country. As I've mentioned in previous postings on this forum, I definitely do appreciate the efforts of repeater administrators. The time, money, and energy spent. I'm fortunate to have several high mounted repeaters in my area with great coverage. But I will say this,.. I don't believe the dynamic is entirely that the GMRS community at large just needs to kiss the ring of the repeater administrators. While it is your equipment, you did sort of help yourself to the frequency pair, which isn't yours.. And with the limited number of pairs, there should be some degree of good stewardship towards the GMRS users. I understand that you can't please everyone, but feedback should at least be listened to without smarmy reprisal. The vast majority of repeater administrators take it on well meaning and with good intention, but there are a few out there that do it with "I want to be the moderator of this forum syndrome". The band allocation and the users that wish to occupy it aren't your toy to do what you please with, as your equipment is.

Yes that's true. It's not binding until it's in the actual rule outline, not just published on an article. They're very legally careful to word things the way they do in those rules. The person publishing on a web page, who might be an FCC employee, isn't necessarily the authority to decree anything or they might not have been careful with their own language, or they could even be incorrect altogether. I'm a drone pilot as well and in that hobby the FAA is an equally inconsistent and often convoluted governing body. This kind of stuff is nothing new.. At the end of the day, i'm more in the camp of just go on ahead and enjoy the hobby of your choice and don't do anything obviously idiotic..

I think they have a place. I just wish they werent SO prevalent. If I could tune to one of my 4 or 5 local repeaters and have it be the linked thing, that's fine. But when it's 3 of the 5 all simulcasting the same rag chew from 3 states over, not so much.... I'm not in favor of any more additional government, but I almost wish we could have a sort of informal yet respected body that would sort of keep some order to repeater channel allocations for areas so that people aren't setting up new repeaters on top of others, and maybe additionally they could space out those linked things as well..

I've known about the section in part 95 that mentioned not "linking repeaters to telephone systems" and the sort of ambiguity around whether or not that would apply to linked repeater systems via internet. But this paragraph here seems to be pretty straightforward. Just an observation,.. Radio people seem to have a funny relationship with "rules". It's all ham radio decorum, say your call, use of proper equipment, and you'll be chastised for any deviation, etc. And then on the other hand, "yeah it states that in part 95 but it's not being enforced so,.."

I just read that this morning as well. I wasn’t sure if that was a new ruling or if that language was always there.

I came across this from the FCC this morning. (paragraph 3) It seems to remove any ambiguity from the language in Part 95. https://www.fcc.gov/wireless/bureau-divisions/mobility-division/general-mobile-radio-service-gmrs?fbclid=IwAR3boNx4H1NaI0AJDJgCvTIgCqrIs9Bru0DGkxxr66zRtQrUn-zXSWP0t9s#operations

It’s not distinguishable to the human ear as long as you’re assuming that both radios were already positioned in terrain to copy eachother fine. That’s not the exercise. In actual use cases of running mobile radio, you go up grades, down grades, back behind things, and all variety of constantly changing attenuating variables. The difference of being scratchy but readable in stretches, and not being heard. That’s the difference of a complete order of magnitude increase in ERP. Your conceptualization of point A to Point B radio coms sort of paints the mental image of 2 guys at a desk radio 4 miles apart. And assuming that, you’re not wrong. But there are all variety of use cases. Some like GMRS as a ham radio hobby facsimile, and some like it for actual in-field coms.

Got it. I guess it wasn’t registering with me the whole S-meter part. So what you’re saying is that 1 S-unit increment is very significant.

I’m confused what you mean when you say the difference between the two radios is a half of an S-unit. Which two radios? One with 6db gain antenna and one with 3? Is that in a hypothetical flat plane? The difference of ERP gain increasing by an entire order of magnitude is the difference of being heard or not in various terrain circumstances. I use a 10 watt radio at home. Through 50 feet of LMR-400. About 7.2 watts reaches the antenna for an ERP of 57.6 watts. When I plug in my 4 watt Baofeng with the same formula, the ERP is about 23 watts and I’m not heard in areas that I was scratching into before. Or, I’m scratching in where I was loud before. It matters..