marcspaz

Merry Christmas everyone! Hope you all had a great day! Michael... I was on 14.235.

I recorded Christmas wishes from a new friend in South Africa. We chatted 12,700+ km / 7,900+ miles via HF radio. I apologize for the audio sync problems. I rushed last minute to record a conversation with Lyle, which led to me having some issues with the radio display feed being frozen and the time sync between voice and video being off. I will record another one later, after I fix my video codec issue, but I really wanted to share it anyway. Merry Christmas everyone.

I use either Diamond K400 heavy duty (for heavier antenna or more than 50w) or Comet CP-5M. The Comet maximum power is 50w, IIRC.

Great... the second I left this thread, this was the first ad to pop.... SMH. LOL

This step always tells the real story. I have seen some mobile installations that have had 20+ feet of 16 or even 18 gauge wire with crimped extensions and crimped eye-loops at the battery. On the radio side, they experienced a 1.5v to 2v drop when in standby and 3.5v to 4v drop on the radio side when they key up.

Not in your specific example, no. There should be no correlation. While ducting occurs adjacent to the surface, your communications is localized and likely had/have stations that are too close to each other and too low of an elevation to really be impacted.

The document says it was released November 25 of this year. Here is the whole thing. Media Contact: Will Wiquist will.wiquist@fcc.gov For Immediate Release FCC BANS EQUIPMENT AUTHORIZATIONS FOR CHINESE TELECOMMUNICATIONS AND VIDEO SURVEILLANCE EQUIPMENT DEEMED TO POSE A THREAT TO NATIONAL SECURITY New Rules Implement the Bipartisan Secure Equipment Act of 2021 -- WASHINGTON, November 25, 2022—The Federal Communications Commission adopted new rules prohibiting communications equipment deemed to pose an unacceptable risk to national security from being authorized for importation or sale in the United States. This is the latest step by the Commission to protect our nation’s communications networks. In recent years, the Commission, Congress, and the Executive Branch have taken multiple actions to build a more secure and resilient supply chain for communications equipment and services within the United States. “The FCC is committed to protecting our national security by ensuring that untrustworthy communications equipment is not authorized for use within our borders, and we are continuing that work here,” said Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel. “These new rules are an important part of our ongoing actions to protect the American people from national security threats involving telecommunications.” The Report and Order applies to future authorizations of equipment identified on the Covered List published by the FCC’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau pursuant to the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Act of 2019. The new rules prohibit the authorization of equipment through the FCC’s Certification process, and makes clear that such equipment cannot be authorized under the Supplier’s Declaration of Conformity process or be imported or marketed under rules that allow exemption from an equipment authorization. The Covered List (which lists both equipment and services) currently includes communications equipment produced by Huawei Technologies, ZTE Corporation, Hytera Communications, Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology, and Dahua Technology (and their subsidiaries and affiliates). The new rules implement the directive in the Secure Equipment Act of 2021, signed into law by President Biden last November, that requires the Commission to adopt such rules. The Commission also adopted a Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking seeking further comment on additional revisions that should be made to the rules and procedures prohibiting the authorization of “covered” equipment. It also seeks further comment on potential revisions to the Commission’s competitive bidding program. The Commission is also seeking comment on future action related to existing authorizations. The new rules follow a series of other FCC initiatives to keep U.S. networks secure. In addition to today’s actions and maintaining the Covered List, the FCC has prohibited the use of public funds to purchase covered equipment or services, launched the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Reimbursement Program to remove insecure equipment that has already been installed in U.S. networks, revoked operating authorities for Chinese state-owned carriers based on recommendations from national security agencies, updated the process for approving submarine cable licenses to better address national security concerns, and launched inquiries on IoT security and internet outing security, among other actions. ### Media Relations: (202) 418-0500 / ASL: (844) 432-2275 / Twitter: @FCC / www.fcc.gov This is an unofficial announcement of Commission action. Release of the full text of a Commission order constitutes official action. See MCI v. FCC, 515 F.2d 385 (D.C. Cir. 1974).

@Lscott at this point in my life, I have come to distrust anything electronic. There is a good chance that if electricity can flow through it, someone can use it improperly against you, without your knowledge.

FYI... still trying to find out how this impacts the radios we use for GMRS and Ham radio. “For these three companies, we will require them to document what safeguards they will put in place on marketing or sale for these purposes, and we are putting in place a freeze on all of their telecommunications and video surveillance equipment authorization applications until that work is done,” EDIT: I removed the link and just attached the document. Not sure what went wrong with the link. DOC-389524A1.pdf

Temperature inversions and inversion levels are what causes the refraction (largest impact on the refractive index), lending to what we call Tropospheric Propagation and Tropospheric Ducting. Makes sense to postpone blasting when there is an increased risk of high power(ish) RF in the lower atmosphere.

I voted no for a few reasons. I don't want the sticker on my truck. Someone close enough to read the sticker is likely going to overload my receiver front-end. I don't always have the radio on and it's on varying frequencies when it is on... to name a few.

Honestly, you are describing a situation well inside LOS. Unless there is something in the way that you didn't mention, 10 miles from a summit to a valley should be a cake walk even with just a few watts and a vertical antenna. Normally you would use a beam to reduce the reception of signals/noise from directions other than forward, while increasing listening ability and focused power in the forward direction (which you obviously understand at this point). However, those forward listening advantages are accomplished by enhancing the ability to hear more of the refracted and scattered emissions you are receiving from beyond LOS, that didn't fly off into space or get absorbed by the terrain. Or at least reduce the ambient noise so what you do hear is easier to understand. Your forward transmitting advantages are accomplished by putting more focused energy into the atmosphere in a forward direction, thereby likely increasing the amount of RF that is refracted and scattered beyond LOS, that didn't fly off into space or get absorbed by the terrain. That increase in refracted and scattered energy would, theoretically, increase the ability for a station without a beam to receive your signal. So, to sum up, it sounds like you are already in a massive over-kill configuration. If there is no heavily diluted "over the horizon" communications to enhance, you won't benefit from using beam antennas.

Mike W. told me one if the troublemakers around here is mobile and just drives around DC metro and messes with people on the repeaters. Part of me thinks "don't feed the monkeys and the will go away" and another part of me feels like we should do a fox hunt. They might be doing the same thing I do. Every GMRS/FRS and MURS frequency is being used by local retailers and restaurants around me. They all use tone codes and the repeaters do too. Most of them can't hear the repeater on the cheap handheld radios while in their building, so we don't interfere with them, but if you aren't running tone squelch, you will hear them all day. So, we "tone them out."

Outstanding!

What OffroaderX said. LOL Do you mean why can’t we use digital voice on GMRS?

I was eating some Wendy's chicken nuggets when I was typing. LOL

Man, I had a TRS-80 model 1 from 78 to 82 until. It launched my career as a computer scientist. Love that system.

Just my opinion, this is really all that matters. If it works, sounds good and you're happy, nothing else really matters.

If you go to their submission for change on 6-21-21, the C2PC letter asking to go to 16kc from the 11kc, the documents very specifically say that no hardware changes were made to the transmit and receiver. It's not the full 20kc, it's 16kc by software. It could only go to 16kc and still remain in compliance.

You can put me in the Midland camp, too. I have used a lot of different radios over the years and they seem to hit the mark with reliability, advertised v. actual power, and ease of use. If you only want a few watts, the MXT115 is good, but I recommend the MXT500 and MXT575. They were natively designed to be wideband, they have a lot more power (enough to actually make a difference in range), and the audio quality is much better on both transmit and receive. The down side is, they can be a bit pricey. While the newer MXT275 can be programed to run wideband, the circuits were not originally designed for it. This means you are working on the edge of the capability, which leads to weak performance in wideband.

I like courtesy tones for digital radio, where there is no obvious break, but not for analog. I prefer a slightly extended squelch tail on analog. Dealers choice, as the say.

RG174 is terrible for UHF. There is more than 20dB of attenuation every 100 feet. I would use as little as possible. Even at 6 feet, you are cutting your signal by about 65%-66%. The loops in the wire have zero impact on your antenna performance, nor any noise. There has been issues with cheap cables being used for HF (no where near where GMRS lives) with people accidentally making RF traps and creating very high SWR issues by using very cheap coax and looping many, many 10's of feet of coax in about a 1 foot diameter. With GMRS, its almost impossible to accomplish this on purpose. Unless you are making loops that are a few centimeters in diameter with almost unshielded wire, its even less likely that it will happen by mistake. Something seriously odd is happening in your Jeep. Is there any chance you have access to another radio to test with, to see if its the radio or Jeep? For what its worth, when I have the roof and doors off the JT, once I get to about 20 mph, there is a static energy that gets created and it opens my squelch only on repeater channel 19. I have to use a TSQL instead of TN, so I don't have to hear static while I am moving. This is only with my MXT500. None of my other UHF radios have this issue while receiving on that frequency. If I put just the roof on, just the doors on, or both the roof and doors, the issue goes away. And it doesn't matter where the antenna is, either. I can even take the antenna off the mount and I still have the issue. Since the TSQL at least stops the noise, I just let it go, but it was pretty annoying.

I sent my MXT500 in for service. They fixed it and had it back out in the mail to me, literally on the same they they received it from me shipping it to them. Got the radio back before the end of the next day. In my opinion, they have fantastic service! As far as if any channel is set to wide or narrow, you really need to check in the menu of the radio. Each channel is set independently and we really don't have any way of knowing what yours, specifically, is set to. As far as wide or narrow and the radio's receive sensitivity, there is no relation. I don't have an answer for you why they seem to appear different between the repeater channel and the simplex channel. Only that the bandwidth setting isn't it. Eh... it doesn't quite work that way. Overdriven is a function of signal strength. The bandwith doesn't have an impact on signal strength. Non-linear demodulation by the discriminator circuit causes distortion. In wide band, the radio will transmit and is configure to receive a signal that is 20 kHz wide. In narrow band, the radio will transmit and is configure to receive a signal that is 12.5 kHz wide. The wider the bandwidth, the more data the signal can carry. In voice radio, that data is your voice. So, the wider the bandwidth, the better the fidelity. Without getting too far into the weeds, if a narrow band radio receives a wide band signal, not all of the audio is captured. This causes a signal to sound like it has a little more base and louder than narrow signals. If we go the other way around, and a wide band receiver hears a narrow signal, about 38% of the bandwidth the receiver is listening to has no signal. The empty space is filled with RF noise and the discriminator circuit ends up outputting audio that is both slightly higher in tone and lower in volume. Again, I can't really speak to this exact situation, but I don't believe a repeater was used in that case. Anyway, same rules apply as above. Bandwidth differences don't cause that issue.

For troubleshooting, run the radio on a separate battery and see if the noise is gone. Also, if you unplug the antenna from the radio, is the noise gone? Without getting into a bunch of technical BS about capacitive and inductive coupling and introducing noise, mounting a mag mount on a plate that is sticky taped to the hood is likely contributing to your issue. I strongly recommend this type of lip mount. Also, if you absolutely insist on a bonding strap, go from the hinge bolt to the body like the points in the photo.

I'm still convinced there is something wrong. I have owned Jeeps most if my life. My last 4 JK's and my current JT all had antennas mounted to the hood and I have never had noise on any of my radios. Also, I'm assuming you have a JL or a JT, which are already grounded. Adding a bonding strap isn't going to change anything.