Lscott

Yeah, the infield was a mess. Looks like they ripped up the asphalt they put down the prior year but left chunks of it, pebble sized to fist sized, all over the place in the walkways. Made walking a bit tricky and if you had a wheelchair it was a poor experience.

The weather was great. A bit warm on Friday and sunny. Saturday it rained a bit early in the morning. By 10 AM everything was dry, NO MUD, partly sunny and it cooled off to the low to mid 70's. Looked like a really good turnout.

Kenwood offers a dPMR446 license free radio that complies with the legal standard for that service. https://www.walkies.nl/downloads/kenwood-tk-3701d-brochure.pdf However I'm interested in a higher power dPMR radio. Kenwood, I think it's been discontinued, had a version of their NX-220/320 radio that could be firmware modified to switch from NXDN to dPMR. The link is for the "E" market code radio. https://www.kenwood.eu/files/file/comms/uk/brochures/nx/NX-220E-320E_Brochure_with_MPT.pdf I have one of the NX-320K, US market code radios. I might be able to force switch the market code using the "engineer" version of the programming software. However so far I've had zero luck finding the firmware.

I would assume so since it is used for commercial radio application. The link below is the main site for dPMR. https://dpmrassociation.org/ The standards documents are found here. https://dpmrassociation.org/dpmr-downloads-technical.html Looking at "Repeaterbook.com" they don't have a selection for dPMR so it's not possible to do a quick search for dPMR enabled repeaters. For example looking at the UK, I might be making a business trip there in the near furture. https://www.repeaterbook.com/row_repeaters/index.php?state_id=GB I was interested in the mode due to the possible trip. They have a license free service there called PMR446. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PMR446 The analog FM looks very much like our old rules for FRS but uses a different frequency range. Remember in the UK the Ham 70cm band is only 430 to 440 MHz. Which prompted me to as some time back if anyone notice European visitors using their PMR446 radios here on the Ham band. It would likely be at major tourist locations like Disney Land. There also two digital voice modes approved for their license free service, DMR and dPMR. https://kenwoodcommunications.co.uk/files/file/comms/uk/pmr446/PMR446-White-Paper-V6_18AUG2016_JT_KB.pdf Since I don't have a dPMR radio I'm looking at taking one of my Kenwood DMR radios and programming it up for FM and DMR on their PMR446 frequencies. https://forums.mygmrs.com/gallery/image/290-nx-1300duk5/?context=new https://forums.mygmrs.com/gallery/image/255-tk-d300e-fmdmr/?context=new Oh, they have the same issue there too with people running non approved radios and power. Their radio commission, like the FCC here, seems to ignore it. There is a message board like this one but mainly for the UK. You can get an idea on what goes on there by reading through some of the threads. https://www.transmission1.net/

The field should be minimal under the radials. And as I mentioned I ran only 1 watt using DMR. Since DMR uses two time slots and on simplex only one is used thus the average power is around 0.5 watts. Next consider one is holding an HT a few inches away from the face with an output power of 4 to 5 watts at about the same frequency on GMRS. So, which one is really worse for RF exposure?

It should be legal to use on the Ham bands here. It’s an open standard that’s published so nothing is secret about it. I would imagine it’s also legal for Part 90. It’s a FDMA modulation emission, just like NXDN which is already used here, but the frequency shifts are a bit different and the digital protocol is too. The bandwidth is the same as the very narrow NXDN mode and fits into the same 6.25KHz channel allocation. The occupied bandwidth of both is only 4KHz.

If you do what others tried, mounted HT antenna on a hard hat, the match sucks, no ground plane. I guess the Tin Foil would fix that. ?

Well this got a lot of comments from people and photos taken at the Hamvention last May. The match was about 1.1:1 or so at our group frequency of 448.5MHz. It’s a 1/4 wave design. Ran DMR at 1 watt so the average power was about 0.5 watts.

It’s a dual band radio. Using the right passcode in the programming software allows changing the band limit configuration to cover the required frequency range. The important question is it legal to use the radio to transmit on those services. Without qualification the answer is no. Anybody who does should understand this fact. After that it’s up to them what they choose to do. It’s not my job to play the part of a radio cop. About dPMR you can find info on the Internet. As far as I know there is nothing that prohibits its use here. When digging around for information on it I haven’t found a definitive reason why it’s not used in the US at least. My guess it’s just a marketing issue and more importantly which CODEC is used. The dPMR standard has THREE different and incompatible CODECS specified with an optional vendor specific one allowed. Whereas DMR, NXDN and P25 all use a specific one, AMBE+2, regardless of manufacturer. This ensures radios using the same protocol can inter communicate between manufacturers using compliant radios. That wouldn’t be true for dPMR radios. dPMR MoU tech lib Voc Bits V1 (2019).pdf

My D878 doesn’t have a problem with it either. Myself I’ve been looking for a couple of radios that can do dPMR, which is used mainly in the EU. I haven’t seen it in North America so far. It’s very similar to NXDN but the protocol is different. Anyway at least you didn’t get stuck with one of those crapy old Baofeng DMR radios.

You might want to check yours. https://radiosification.blogspot.com/2016/12/dmr-radios-to-avoid.html

Mine says “DEA” on the back. For some reason people stay away from me at concerts.

I have a load of radios. Hasn't help me any. ?

You'll need the right charge controller for that battery type. You can look at these. https://sunforgellc.com/product/gv-5/ Look under the GV-5-Li spec's tab. I think the one you want is the GV-5-Li-14.2V model for the Lithium Iron Phosphate type battery packs. The solar panels from these guys seem to be reasonably priced. The 30 watt panel is likely the largest you would want to carry around. https://www.renogy.com/30-watt-12-volt-monocrystalline-solar-panel-new-edition/ If you're looking at the folding semi-flexible solar panels, the ones that fold up and can fit in a backpack, those are nice, AND expensive! https://www.powerfilmsolar.com/products These guys are good for the battery packs. I got the 4.5 ah and the 40 ah packs. https://www.bioennopower.com/collections/12v-series-lifepo4-batteries I've purchased the items above myself, except the folding panels, so I do know they will work.

I'm going to guess the size of the radio with antenna has a lot to do it with it. A radio that fits in a shirt pocket with an antenna that's about 6 inches long is far more convent than a bulky 11M CB with a huge wipe stuck on top. Then you have the advantage of taking it and using it just about anywhere. Then there is the mobile option. If one sticks to the simple 1/4 wave antenna you can still park your ride in the garage, go through the drive through window pickups etc. without having the antenna ripped off the vehicle.

I had thought about the impact on FRS by using those channels. IMHO as GMRS users we pay a licensing fee to use the spectrum. In my view that should give GMRS users priority over FRS users who get to use the spectrum for free. If FRS users also want the perk, well they can pay the fee and buy the appropriate radio.

IMHO allowing some form of digital voice on part, or all, of GMRS is about a better quality of service. Digital voice doesn’t really increase range to a large degree but provide a near noiseless audio signal over more of that range whereas analog FM becomes difficult to copy. While people mention DMR IMHO that isn’t the best mode. In a prior post in this thread I posted an attachment PDF going into some detail on where and how digital voice could be added without a major disruption to existing FM operations. I would encourage you to read it. Particularly the last few paragraphs and links.

I’m all set. I have everything, including D-Star you forgot to list, except for a System Fusion radio. ?

I doubt they’ll be used to speed up getting your refund check sent out. ?

https://forums.mygmrs.com/topic/5720-new-repeater-channels-for-gmrs-in-2024/page/2/#comment-57605

Yeah, and our congress critters let them hire another 87,000 government employees to collect it from you too. ?

It's not just the technology. As usage changes the rules need to evolve too. That's why they were changed in 2017. The FCC was fixing their earlier F'up allowing dual use radios, GMRS/FRS, in one radio to be sold. Almost nobody got the required GMRS license to use the extra channels. So, the FCC changed the rules to make it legal, and now they don't have to screw around with the enforcement issue.