Lscott
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Everything posted by Lscott
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I've had several good chuckles with my buddy. We both have our EE degree's. Where he's at they employ a lot of EE's with MS and PhD's. He says the guys come to him and ask how to do simulations, he has a lot of experience using Saber, which by the way is a heck of a mix mode complex simulator. I have to laugh because people with more degrees than a thermometer are asking him how to do stuff. We had a Chinese PhD work in our department for several years. One day a board experienced a failed LED on a board he was working on. The guy spent some time downloading data sheets for LED's looking for a replacement. The Lab manager simply asked him why he didn't just get one out of the parts drawer and replace it. Sad but true. The education, or lack thereof, people are getting in schools is shockingly poor in some cases. We were looking for somebody to do embedded programming. Had a lot of candidates with graduate degrees apply. One of the tests required the candidate to write some code to turn on an LED. We even asked them what processor and or development environment they have experience using, then had it setup when they arrived. Shockingly most couldn't do it! Some of the more interesting questions I asked was how do you turn two LED's on "simultaneously", nobody got that right. The idea was to see how well the candidate understands the connection between what the software does and how it affects the hardware. This was key to doing debugging on real hardware. You have to walk on both sides of the street so to speak, software and hardware. We hired a young female EE out of school. She has been learning how to do schematic entry and PCB layouts. I told her the real learning comes when the prototype board she did arrives and she needs to get it working on the bench. That's when you learn where you made all your F'ups.
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Are GMRS repeaters required to identify every 15 minutes?
Lscott replied to WRAX891's topic in FCC Rules Discussion
It'll end up like 11M CB. FCC gave up chasing down everyone failing to ID and just made it a license by rule, i.e. license free, service. Less headache for them. -
To continue with the discussion you have to decide if you want to go with purposely built GMRS radios or commercial radios that can be programmed to operate on GMRS. The purposed built radios are generally of Chinese manufacture and are affordable. The programming software is available and mostly easy to use. Looking at commercial radios typically means buying used equipment. Programming commercial radios is not like Ham gear or the purpose built GMRS radios. There are more options, many you won't need, and a steeper learning curve. The advantage is you have a radio you can tailor to you preferences better. If cost is a factor there are some budget friendly radios to be found in both areas.
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How big is you wallet? Some of the guys here run radios in the $2000 to $5000 plus range, top of the line commercial grade multi-mode analog/digital new and used equipment.
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From the album: Misc. Radio Gear
This is the Kenwood TK-D340U. It is an analog/DMR 32 channel radio. There is a VHF version too. There also are the NX-240V and NX-340U radios, which looks nearly identical except they do NXDN. https://comms.kenwood.com/common/pdf/download/DMR_TK-D240V_D340U_K_letter_1124.pdf https://comms.kenwood.com/common/pdf/download/05_nx240v_340u_K_1117_typeD added.pdf I prefer radios with a display however the price on this used DMR radio was too good to pass up. I've used this side by side with my Anytone D878 radio. The Kenwood seems to work better. It was able to more reliably decode DMR signals the D878 failed to even detect. That shows you the commercial grade radios do perform better compared to the cheaper Chinese radios, and the D878 wasn't that cheap! The TK-D240V/D340U along with the NX-240V/340U radios have been discontinued, and the replacement is the NX-1200/1300 series. -
The alternator “whine” is a few hundred hertz’s and might be screwing up the tone decoding on the repeater end since it’s in that range. The sub-audio-able tone filter in the radio might prevent you from hearing it. This is just my guess.
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I thought this thread was about getting a commercial radio license, not for motor vehicles. My mistake.
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Not surprised. The radiation pattern is crap. Most of the power is at very high angle relative to the horizontal. I modeled a 1/4 on a ground plane operating on the third harmonic, which is what you would be doing.
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People learn the most from their mistakes. It's like the little kid in the kitchen. Tell them don't touch that, it's hot. Turn your back and a few seconds later you hear the scream. Time to get the band aids out. Next time you tell them something is hot they'll believe you and leave it alone.
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I have no idea how many were tested. I was doing my usual thing looking for documentation on the various radios I have. I found the test data during one of my search sessions. I keep a folder with all of my radio info in it. One of the hardest things to find is the service manual/schematic for the cheap radios. Usually the commercial types I had far better luck finding stuff. I had zero luck finding the service manual anywhere on line for my Ham TH-D74A. I finally got a support tech from Kenwood sent me one complete with schematic. I passed that around to several people who wanted a copy. Also posted it on a user group too.
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Yeah those Baofengs make great dual and triple band radios. You can transmit on several bands all at the same time!?
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Likely they could, and it would be manufactured in China anyway to keep the cost down.
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Well you learned it doesn't stand for the old rock band " Creedence Clearwater Revival" ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creedence_Clearwater_Revival
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The attached file, found on the Internet, is a test done on the often recommended UV-5R radio. This is the FCC section dealing with emissions on the Ham bands. https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/47/97.307 Section "e" is worth reading. Particularly about transmitters of 25 watts or less. That would include portable radios. UV-5R VHF Harmonics Test.pdf
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I can smell it way over here, and I have my COVID mask on too.?
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This is like the old joke about how 3 people can keep a secret. It works as long as two of them are dead. That seems to be the only way it’s going to happen on GMRS, agreement on a travel channel.
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Figures. I have a Kenwood 2022 price guide showing the discounted price and list price. When I was soliciting quotes I sent the section of the price guide to a few to see if I could get a better deal. One vendor commented it was a good price except Kenwood just increased them. From their quote it was about $50+ higher. ?
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Kenwood doesn’t appear to be going to the 2023 Hamvention this year. All sorts of speculation why that is.
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I think for the money they are a good choice. The long delivery times IMHO is due to them saving critical chips used in the higher tier models, NX-3000's and the NX-5000's, which I suspect are more profitable too.
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Which amps were those?
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I sent out a bunch of requests for quotes on a new Kenwood NX-1300DUK5 radio. I had more than one vendor tell me the radios are unavailable due to chip shortages. The last email from one said Kenwood advised them they won't see any until late summer. I found one vendor that had some of the analog only models in stock, and purchased the DMR feature license key to upgrade it before shipping. By the way if somebody wants a new good quality commercial grade radio for GMRS these are nice. They are not going to be exactly cheap, even in the analog only version. https://forums.mygmrs.com/gallery/image/290-nx-1300duk5/ I read about the cheap Baofengs being shipped without a chip, I think it was for the FM broadcast feature, a while back. I also haven't got my Bluetooth remote for the D578 yet. That's been a couple of months on that too. Anyone else having issues with ordering and getting delivery on radios?
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With a utility pole, if installed right, you don't need a big cement base to anchor it like you would with a more traditional metal tower. I had a discussion with a coffee group buddy about a tower recommendation for his house. I suggested a 30 to 40 foot tubular crank-up design. Those you normally don't need guy wires. Being a crank up tower they can be lowered enough that a step ladder can be used to access the top for maintenance. Also when very strong storms roll in the tower can be lowered to minimize or eliminate potential damage from high winds. Also some neighbors may not like looking at the tower either. You don't want your house to look like something out of the X-Files. Keeping it down when not in use can promote better neighbor relations too.
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A few people have used a wood utility pole as a cheap antenna tower. Of course the issue is lighting protection and how do you get the antenna up there and service it later. You can use either certified climbing gear, or better rent a bucket truck for a few hours. Oh yes, you will sooner or later have to check/repair/replace the antenna and cable, maybe more than once, at some point. This goes for any place you put your antenna. That might change your mind on the mounting location.
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What’s in a Faux Nagoya (not a question)
Lscott replied to Sshannon's question in Technical Discussion
Some people feel the switch to SMA, from BNC, on HT's was a mistake by the major manufactures. The opinion is BNC connectors are physically stronger. -
From the album: Misc. Radio Gear
This is my latest addition to the radio collection. It's a Kenwood NX-1300AUK5 upgraded with the DMR license, and the enhanced 40 bit ARC4 encryption option license (DMR only), effectively a NX-1300DUK5, so it will do both analog FM, wide and narrow band, and DMR conventional operation. This radio can also be loaded with the NXDN digital mode, which requires another feature license being added to the radio. The radio will do analog FM and either one of the digital modes depending on which firmware is currently loaded on the radio. It will only do one digital mode at a time. https://comms.kenwood.com/common/pdf/download/NX1K_Specsheet_K.pdf This radio has the 400-470 MHz band split so it's a perfect fit for Ham 70cm and GMRS. You only need one radio to cover both services on UHF. Currently digital voice is not authorized on GMRS so the DMR feature is only usable on the Ham band. Although it's not Part 95E certified, Just Part 90, it can be used on GMRS if it's programed carefully. So far the FCC hasn't been clamping down on Part 90 radios used on GMRS but it's not a guarantee they won't later. One nice feature is the radio can do front panel programming as a standard feature when enabled in the programming software and the code plug loaded into the radio! You can go and read the radio with the programming software and change it. You also need the software to enter the alpha tag, otherwise it's set as CH-xxx where xxx is the current channel number. Not perfect but many commercial radios you can't program from the front panel at all, or if you can it's an extra cost item and you're still limited to narrow band FM. Well I got lucky and purchased a factory NX-1300DUK5 used from a seller in Texas for a very good price. Considering the radios are very hard to locate due to the chip shortages this was a very lucky find on a well know auction site. It was a complete boxed system with an extra aftermarket battery pack all for about half the price a new radio would have cost. I paid $400 for the new one BTW in the photo. The used radio is in like new condition. It was being sold by another Ham who purchased it new to experiment with DMR with a buddy. They both upgraded to the NX-5300 so he didn't need his any more, sat around unused, and sold it.
