SvenMarbles
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Posts posted by SvenMarbles
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2 hours ago, WSAW350 said:
I still kinda new at this GMRS thing, but the reason I eventually got a 50 watt base station (KG1000G+) along with a base antenna 20' up in the air is because I don't live in a desert or a mountain top with only a few dozen houses/buildings in a ten mile radius giving me an unfettered line of sight. My impression is that the extra power can push the signal past the hundreds of houses, buildings and trees in my area to hit a repeater or simplex comms beyond a few miles. And I'm sure the guys with a clear, unobstructed line of sight can do this with just a pair of handhelds. But I can't in my area.
As an exercise. Try turning down to medium and low and see if there's a difference to what you can do with your static station.
I've found that the only variable that can be managed is antenna height. You can change what you can do by moving your antenna higher. But the result of each height increment between 20 and 50 watts will be exactly the same. If you can find time to test that, I'd be very appreciative.
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24 minutes ago, WRYZ926 said:
As I have stated several times, there is a place for using 50 watts. I need to use 50 watts to talk to two guys that are 18 miles away and 23 miles away when on a simple channel. My antenna is the lowest at 18 feet above ground while the other guys' antennas are at 40 feet and 60 feet. Yes we have a clear line of sight over the terrain and trees, but just barely. We would not be able to talk to each other on low or medium power.
The repeater is a different story. It is 21.5 miles from me and in between the other two guys. The big difference is that the repeater antennas are at 400 feet above ground.
Interesting. Well if that’s the case, and I’m in no position to tell you that your empirical experience is incorrect, I’ll concede on that.
I’ve done my share of tooling around and doing all sorts of field testing and have never experienced the thing of 25 watts falling short (through a relatively open terrain path as you describe) and then 50 watts having another result. It just kind of seems to me like the elevations of the parties involved and the terrain in-between is what it is and is either going to allow readable contact, or not. It’s not been my experience that you can just plow through anything with a few more watts. 50 or 5,000. The hillside always wins.
Again. For 4xx UHF. I recognize that other bands have other nuances..
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11 hours ago, marcspaz said:
@WSAK691 I want to touch on the EmComm stuff a bit.
I have a 50w UHF station, a 110w UHF station, 50w VHF station, three 50w VHF/UHF repeaters, a 300w VHF station, and a 100w HF station. I have solar and batteries delivering enough power to run at 100w with a 50% duty cycle, 24 hours a day for the life of the batteries (translate to many years). And the reality is, in a real emergency, which I have worked many, I promise you are not going to be anywhere near 50% duty cycle.
All of my stations drop to 5w, except my HF radio which will go to 0.4w. Even with no batteries, I can run any one of my radios on low power and pure solar for peak direct light hours. That can be 5 to 7 hours a day, depending on the time of year, weather, etc.
I mention all this to highlight the fact that just because a radio can produce 50w, 100w or more, that doesn't mean you have to run them that high all the time. In fact, the FCC rules and generally good practice for not causing interference, is to use the least amount of power required for reliable communications. I would rather have the power in case I need it, rather than not having the option.
If you're going to spend the effort and money, there is very little cost or time difference when building a 40w power source and a 1,500w power source.
I completely understand the logic of “it can do 50 watts, and it can do lower power as well” so why not?
My question though, even with that being said, when would 50 watts on 462-467 be appropriate? When does 50 watts do a thing that 25 watts (or even less) didn’t? I’m not saying that there aren’t such circumstances, but speaking strictly anecdotally, I’ve never found an instance of it. The the limiting variables of the 4xx UHF band properties are going to be your barriers well before needing more power will.
So when you’re setup with one of those 50 watt installs, I’m assuming you’re also going to have the supporting accoutrement to be able to supply that radio at maximum power level, even if you may opt to mainly run it lower.. But you’re geared up to be able to. So that was a cost..
Also, I’m just going to be straightforward. As far as what you said about using only the power needed to accomplish what you’re doing. I really don’t believe that’s standard practice. I’d bet everything that most people are just going full bore on high all day.
All that the point of this post was attempting to get across is that I believe that there’s a great deal of GMRSers that are all about that 50 watt model. And I believe they run them that way, all day. And I don’t think very many people realize how much power draw they’re using all the time, for no practical benefit..
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I frankly completely ignore the standard "baked in" weather functions on any of the radios that I have. If something was goofy about the way it's implemented, it would hardly move the needle on how I felt about the radio as a whole. It's likely I might not ever even discover it.
Here's my weather mode. VFO, punch 162.whatever and it's always right there loud and proud.. I do that regardless of it there's a weather button on the radio or not lol.
How's the radio? Does it radio well?
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13 hours ago, WRXP381 said:
Just get a 712 comet it’s 9bd and will blast 200mile in 20watts. Why do all this junk to get 15miles. A hand held 5 w will do 30miles line of site. Yagi is not needed to do 15miles in any woods. Just put a 10’ comet 712efc as high as you can
There are all varieties of use cases for antennas. Yes that Comet 712 is a prime antenna. It's also a massive beast! It's an 11 foot tall vertical. Some people might not be able, or want to have such a prominent antenna. There's also the matter of needing very robust mounting for it, wind load, etc..
A UHF yagi on the other hand, is a small and light thing that can squirt the RF just as far and as strong with equivalent decibels, just only in the desired direction at the time. And it's the size footprint as a shoe box. If you don't mind going and pointing it at the repeaters or direction of receiving party, I think it IS an option for some to consider, again, if they might not be able to mount up a big ole 11 foot tall monster antenna.
In my case, I've already got other antennas for other bands and I was able to side-mount this one onto an existing mast in a way that it can swivel. I just take the parallel run of PVC pictured and give it a twist. It's super simple to construct something like this, I don't sweat a wind load on it, and it'll get into a repeater 30+ miles out as good if not better than a 712 if I've got it pointed at it. They're also excellent on the RX side of things.
- WRPT980, SteveShannon and WRWE456
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No, you don't need your own repeater. You may just want to make your station very good. I'd be curious to know where you are located geographically. You might think that 17 miles it too far to reach, but you'd be surprised. I routinely talk on repeaters over 20 miles away and sound good on them. With a handheld. There's just a handful of things to know and you can do it too.
You don't need to spend thousands, or even hundreds to be able to shoot a signal pretty far off.
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Well this topic sprung back to life...
Here's another thing to consider. IDK about anyone else here, but sort of married to my interest in having domestic radio is a concept of preparedness.
A 50 watt station needs quite an amperage draw. If you're not about "what happens when things go dark" and you're just a comfy radio desk plugged into mains power type guy. sure. Blow out 50 watts. Even if 70% of it is a waste. But is your station operable when that's not the case? When that supply needs to be plugged into something to give you 12 amps stable?
I like a station that can run on batteries. With gain and directional antennas, I can be every bit as loud as anyone with 10 watts. And that can be fueled by the sun.
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4 hours ago, WRYB563 said:
Wow is short for, “Thank you for explaining the issue with hams on GMRS.” The issue is not the hams.
Hams are 100% the issue.
And I completely recognize that I just tipped the gas can and lit a match by saying so. Your profile is only 50% complete on MYGMRS until you add you ham radio call sign, so I recognize that i'm about to be in a fist fight with an upset beehive.
IDGAF
I know what's right and what's not.
Hams don't like to be told that they're out of line in the world of radio because they've been used to being the "radio dudes". In this case they're actually the away team. This is actually not a ham band. It's not for hams.
I know it's crazy to imagine. But there do exist radio people, who know and do radio, who don't hold a ham ticket. I know,.. it's nuts. Can't even be bothered to take a day off of work to sit for an exam by some self serious medically retired guy in a library and get 26 right out of 35 multiple choice.. IDK,.. We just don't do it.. Our idea of applying radio as a hobby doesn't require it. But we do have wives, sons, daughters, brothers, sister, etc who we'd like to be on the radio with. ,....and we don't want to always be like "WHISKEY TANGO BRAVO ZULU 554!!" on the radio all the time just to get on.. We don't call out CQ to eachother.. And we don't say 73's! (yuck)..
Some of the parties on the license might not even know what kind of radio they have when colostomy bag Larry asks, and I don't think they need to feel weird about that. They're just trying to relay a practical message to another party on the license when someone else in town hears traffic and thinks it's the 440 net.
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7 minutes ago, WRYB563 said:
I agree. I think there’s been this MASSIVE misunderstanding about what GMRS is for. And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that GMRS is “family radio service adjacent” and that the licensing is “for a family”.
I believe if we took the both of our disagreement here to the Supreme Court, we’d get a 9-0 in my favor
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Saying “wow” is saying nothing at all.
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2 hours ago, WRYB563 said:
The broader point. From my limited experience on GMRS, talking about radios is not uncommon - either from hams who are interested in radios, or new non-ham GMRS operators who want to learn more about their new hobby, and non-hams GMRS operators who enjoy using their radios and want to learn more about ham radio. I agree with Steve, that behavior is independent of radio service, so how are hams negatively impacting GMRS?
Obviously we’re all spread apart across the country and every area isn’t going to be exactly like another. Anecdotally, I’ve had instances where my wife got on the mic from her car and tried to raise me on the radio at home and had her get chastised about “interrupting the current conversation” even though she said “691 traffic”. I heard the whole thing. She got a little bit bullied by the local circle of hams that like to be on GMRS for some reason.
The point is. What we were doing is actually what THIS IS FOR. If you want to just be hobby radio guy, no problem, but YIELD. Ham radio is 22 megahertz south. Same properties as the 462 if you just like that band for some reason. Even though, frankly it sucks and VHF is better and I’m jealous of it. I’d do a goofy dance if the day came that the FCC announced that MURS spectrum became more channels on GMRS. Coax losses up here are brutal.
Hams have nice little slices across all of the favorable bands. Just go there..
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15 minutes ago, WRYB563 said:
Call me confused, but how is discussing antennas uncomfortable for families?
Are you confused about the broader point I was making? Or just the antenna part?
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16 minutes ago, kidphc said:
I have done a little research. Not a huge amount. Mainly because I thought I could do ham, lmr and gmrs on the same antenna. Which you can't i would have to buy ham antenna, lmr/gmrs antenna. Which would have been $$$.
It uses what looks foil like flaps arranged in a circular pattern with dielectric material between the flaps. So it looks like it creates a circular polarization pattern, great for fm radio and satellite comms.
Although I am really skeptical about some of his claims. Josh from ham radio crash course did a comparison of it to some tried and true dual-band mobile antennas. It in fact did seem to reach out and hear better than most of the whip style.
I have no experience with it.
Why didn't I plunk monet down on it?
1. I needed flexible antennas. Parking garages and trees. That antenna is a rigid tube.
2. Couldn't tune the damn thing. Not a deal breaker if done properly from the factory. But i like tuning mine and being able to get replacement parts cheaply.
Guess if you really want to know you will have to whack the crap out of your credit card. Personally, that is almost as much money as used Motorola mobile or mid tier to high-end radio.
Sent from my SM-S901U using Tapatalk
It is as much as a radio, but in my experience antenna>radio. I’ll actually spend more money on antennas and have less expensive radios.
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I've been doing some looking into this antenna. The creator of it claims that it's predicated on a fundamentally different method of antenna science. I'm not in as deep with antenna science as some are, but it has to do magnetic field resonance, making use of variable polarities, and not just the electric/vertical polarity like typical mobile verticals do.
The claim being made by the creator is that not only is this antenna a smaller form factor, but it's actually superior. It'll provide a more stable and readable signal in areas where conventional antennas will flutter, drop, etc. Because the gaps get filled by angular/horizontal polarities and the magnetic portion of the signal carrier. Or something to that effect. It's claimed that this antenna (the 2m/70cm version) can work the ISS and satellites while driving and not having to change the orientation of the antenna. Again, because of the use of variable polarities..
Is it snake oil?
It's a $200 antenna for the version needed on GMRS. If it does what it says, I've got no problem paying that. But does it?
Just curious if anyone here has had any time with one...
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13 hours ago, WRYB563 said:
I've read comments like this in several posts, and seen it in different videos - what does this mean? What is the difference in etiquette on a ham repeater vs. a GMRS repeater?
I suppose it gets to what the difference between what Amateur radio and GMRS is. Ham radio is a place to be about radio. It's radio for the purpose of the hobby of radio. Each individual holds a license, and typically gets on to speak to random-other hams. The substance of the conversation had is secondary to the simple matter of "we had a contact". "My equipment talked to your equipment and that's neat".
GMRS was actually intended to be a more practical radio service. It's why a license is for an entire household. Families, saying "hey add this to the grocery list", or "hey are you almost home?". Not necessarily for 70cm rag chews about antennas. If you wanna do that, get 26 right out of 35 and 440 is there for you..
Some of us are both of those things but just kind of wish there was a thing we could have our wives, kids, and siblings on for the family talk and not feel like we're stepping on toes, even though we're actually the ones in the correct spectrum.
Hams moved in on GMRS, because it was there and novel. Now we have these guys all over it seeping the ham flavor all over it and making it uncomfortable for our families to be on.
- JBRPong, kapoijerj334, gortex2 and 2 others
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No more than a Motorolla MDC tail does. But for some reason that's not as taboo at a roger tone.. Despite it being also completely vain and ancillary, and very popular among people who'll yell about a roger.
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So the story behind this antenna is that I actually didn’t even want it.
I was simply looking to pick up an NMO mag mount base because the antenna that I was interested in was a Melowave Shadow antenna, but don’t currently have an NMO platform for it to be on. After shopping various options everywhere I spotted this Chinese bundle of what appears to be a copy of these Shadow/Ghost style antennas. But it included the mag NMO base that I was after, for less than the price of just only the base everywhere else I looked ($25 to my door from Amazon). I pulled the trigger and figured I could just pitch the antenna part in the trash and still be ahead of the game..
Obviously though, being a radio nerd that I am I had to at least have a look at it. I connected it to my VNA and surprisingly it has a very nice dip across the GMRS portion. 1.3-1. I then took it for a ride checking into some repeaters in my area and got really good reports. Receive copy was great as well. Repeaters ranged from 10-26 miles away.
If you read some of the user reviews online for this antenna, it’s not great. But here’s the thing about it. It’s being sold as a “ham radio, 2M/70cm dual bander”. It’s even labeled as such with a sticker right on the antenna itself. There’s no spot on VHF that is even usable for this antenna. SWR is like 6+. Even on 70cm the numbers are on the high side of the usable slope. So if you bought this antenna for those purposes, it is bad. But fortunately and luckily for GMRS users, this antenna lands resonant (by dumb luck?) at the GMRS region.
This antenna is sneakily, and possibly entirely by accident, a quite good GMRS mobile antenna!
Has anyone else tried one out?
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We have a really nice selection of wide coverage repeaters where I am, and only 1 of them is a s*** show. Naperville 575. Mostly thanks to 1 guy really. He just enjoys the radio hobby as a problem maker, but he’s done a good job of getting people to show up to his house asking him to “come outside!!”.
Aside from that, everyone else is really chill. The other repeaters are actually even a bit too ham flavored for my liking.. We’re doing 70cm ham nets on our stuff over here, with calls, and “ham speak”… etc.. Both suck equally imo…
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It doesn’t really seem like there are any very good repeaters for use inside of the city of Chicago. Out in the western/south suburbs we have a number of excellent and wide covering repeaters. The city itself though seems pretty sparse, with the handful of 10 mile diameter coverage things..
Just curious if any of those repeater guys out in my area have any ambitions of getting something set up nice and high to do something for the city itself? The ham clubs have some nice ones that do well. But up until now there doesn’t seem to be any good stuff for the GMRS side..
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It’s literally my base desk radio. I talk all over the region with it. 11 watts GMRS off of battery. USB-C and solar rechargeable. 11db gain antenna outside,.. means roughly 66 watts erp after coax loss..
I have 4 more of them. 3 in the cars and one still boxed just in case. Yeah they’re the best I’ve found yet… I try them all.
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Thanks for the tips. I think I'm realizing that I need to do a better job of weather proofing my connection points as well. It's a soggy say here and my SWRs are .3 higher than they were yesterday,.. despite no other change.
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So here's the deal with the H8. it is both a ham radio AND a GMRS radio. depending on which model you buy, you'll be shipped a version with a firmware version for each. But it doesn't matter as far as the harware goes. There's a key press at startup that'll put your radio into either Ham, GMRS, or fully unlocked mode..
The TD-H8 is the radio that I use full time. I operate mine in unlocked mode with "software tuneups" that make it do 10.5-13 watts.
If you have questions about how to work with an H8, I'm your guy.
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It’s possible, if you’re willing to operate your HT as not an HT. Get an N9TAX slimjim antenna (GMRS version). Screw it on and sling it up someplace. It’ll hit your repeaters as long a those repeaters are worth a damn..
New to all this. Question.
in Technical Discussion
Posted
Yes it is. Various brands/menus will say things a different way. Output (transmit). Use that for your outgoing tone/DCS.