WRTC928

The physics of UHF RF waves suggests there may sometimes be things attenuating your signal which could be overcome by a few more watts. The only time I've personally seen it matter was trying to hit a repeater from inside my house with a stubby antenna. (It was just an experiment to satisfy my curiosity.) On 5 watts, I could open the repeater but couldn't be understood. On 10 watts, I could be understood but with a weak signal and a lot of noise. Outside the house or with a better antenna, there didn't seem to be any discernable difference. So, yeah, it might matter...sometimes...maybe.

I'm just jerkin' your chain, man.

I was responding to WRSX236's suggestion that "filter code" is a more appropriate term than "privacy code". My point is that whatever you call it, we'll still have to explain how it works to new users.

It's all good and fine for us to want to call them something else, but the fact is that the term is used by the makers and sellers of the radios whether we like it or not, and that's the term the user will see when they buy the radio. We can call them something different if we want to, but that won't make it any easier for a beginner to understand -- we'll still have to explain that a "privacy code" is really a "filter code", which is exactly what we've done here.

It's like the "Do Not Disturb" sign on your hotel room door. It won't keep people from knowing you're in there or hearing you having noisy s*x, but hopefully it will keep them from interrupting you.

The 220 (1.25 meter) band is absolutely still a part of the amateur radio allocated spectrum. It's true it doesn't get a lot of use, and maybe we could lose it in the future, but AFAIK, there are no actual plans to remove it from ham bands. There's a 1.25 meter in Oklahoma City, although it's pretty quiet, and a friend and I use 1.25m as our personal simplex band.

Well stated.

I have the ham version of that radio (Anysecu WP9900) and it's a decent radio. I swapped it out for one with 1.25 meter capability, but it got the job done on GMRS, 2m, and 70cm. Having all the controls in the handset is quite convenient. It's a PITA to adjust the volume on the fly, but that isn't an issue for everyone. I wasn't entirely happy with the sound from the little speaker either, so I plugged in a USB-powered speaker with a volume control knob. Being USB-powered, it can give you all the volume you want and the knob makes it easy to adjust.

What am I? Chopped liver?

That's a very good explanation. Thank you.

I didn't get this old by leaving things to chance. That's why I have a cell phone, a satellite emergency beacon, and CB, GMRS, and ham radios (and the appropriate licenses). It's only overkill until you need it.

I have a half-dozen or so that came that way. I don't remember if the BF-f8hps were in a different size box, but they didn't come wth a longer antenna anyway. I'm not sure because I only kept the boxes for radios I haven't used. Anyway, my point is that if it was advertised with a 15" antenna, the seller certainly could have included one by one means or another. Thus, it's most likely that OP's radio was supposed to have one and it got overlooked. The antenna is so cheap to the seller that it probably wouldn't be worth the negative feedback to advertise it falsely. Again, I'm not trying to show anyone up or be a . I'm just providing accurate information.

Somewhat related to my comments about the Comet 2x4, on the roof of my car, the Austin Metropolitan tri-band antenna performs quite nicely across 5 bands. Well, at least 4 bands. Like the Comet, I haven't tried it on MURS, but it has an acceptable SWR. I can't tell that it gives up any distance to the Comet on 2m or 70cm. It does cost me about a mile, maybe 2 miles in some directions, versus the Comet on GMRS, but IMO that's not enough to quibble about. On 1.25m, it actually outperforms the 52" dedicated 1.25m antenna on my truck. I already had it ordered before I thought to test the 1.25m SWR on the Comet and it's several inches shorter than the Comet, so I just swapped it without trying the Comet on 1.25m. As I said above, I probably will someday.

I was very impressed with the Midland Ghost antenna. If I didn't need an antenna for multiple bands, I'd still be using it. Where I do most of my driving, distance is limited mostly by terrain, not by the antenna, so I can't say for sure whether you'd give up some farz with it, but it's definitely worth a look. The Comet 2x4 is a remarkably good antenna. If I didn't want to use the 1.25 meter band, it's the only antenna I'd use. Mounted on the roof of my car with a good ground plane, it has good SWRs (~1.2-1.4:1) and good performance on GMRS, 70cm, and 2m. It also has an excellent SWR on MURS, although I haven't tried its performance on that band. Surprisingly, it has a very good SWR on 1.25m as well, but I haven't tested its performance on that band. It's not claimed to be tuned for that band, and I'd be amazed if it performed well, but I'll probably try it someday.

+1 on the speaker mic. The sound on them is legible but tinny and the PTT button is waaaaaaay too sensitive.

I'm not trying to be confrontational, but you are demonstrably wrong. I bought this radio in October for a project I didn't end up doing and it has been packed just the way I received it since. This is how the radio came with the antenna wrapped around the inside of the box. As you can see, it comes out of the box almost perfectly straight. I have gotten several this way and all of them lost that little bit of bend eventually.

By "dual receive" do you mean capable of listening to two frequencies at the same time? What Baofeng calls "dual monitoring"? If so, then yes, the UV-5r can do it and according to its advertising the UV-18 can too. If we're splitting hairs, the Baofengs don't actually listen to two channels at the same time; they flip rapidly back and forth between them, but for most people's purposes, it's close enough.

And why would they? They have their hands more than full trying to rein in people who are creating genuine problems. I don't know if it's ever happened, but I could imagine it being added onto the list of charges if they had to hunt someone down for being a troublemaker. As I always say, be polite and things will probably be fine...but be capable of "action" in case someone doesn't respond to politeness.

I thought that, but I just wondered if anyone thinks they should be.

So, to expand on the subject a little, what about a situation where the entire system is self-contained such as a portable setup? Battery, radio, and antenna, but no connection to outside power. What does that need for grounding? Obviously, it doesn't need to be kept at the same potential as the house, since there's no house and it's not getting power from a shared system. Since you have a pole holding an antenna up in the air, does it need something for lightning protection? Is there a way or even a need to equalize potentials among the components?

I was assuming they could. That's what I mean that there's no security with a radio signal. I can see where that might prove useful if you're working with a large group of people where some things need to be heard by everyone, but some things only need to go to a subgroup. I have no use for it now, but there were times in the past when I would have found it helpful. Interesting to know.

I'm aware of the use of DTMF codes to send instructions to a repeater or other device. Are you saying they can be used HT-to-HT or mobile-to-mobile to determine who receives your signal? Yes, I know there's no such thing as true security with any unencrypted radio signal, but I can envision situations where it would help reduce confusion.

I'm of the opinion that you shouldn't break the rules by accident. If the radio isn't type-certified for GMRS, I think the user should at least know that. Apparently, some people wouldn't use the radio if it isn't type-certified, at least so they claim. Probably nothing official will happen to someone who makes a pest of him/herself, but they'll certainly earn the hatred of a lot of fellow radio users. Of course, pests usually don't care or they're even happy about being hated, so that's not really a deterrent. The person who figures out how to put an a-hole filter in a radio will be able to buy a private island.

This is incorrect. Almost every Baofeng I've bought had a 15" antenna -- not folded but bent around the interior of the box. I'm looking at one right now. Upon removing them from the box, they spring to life. In fact, they usually try to jump out of the box as soon as I open it. So far, I haven't seen one that took so much of a set that it wouldn't straighten out.

It sounds like the Baofeng just doesn't have the "legs" to reach the repeater. Even given the same nominal wattage, some radios just have a little better reach than others.