marcspaz

The expected behavior is, if the transmitting radio is on narrow and the receiving radio is on wide, than the voice will sound quiet and possibly static-filled. It will also sound tinny due to how the audio filters are tuned. Where the processor normally pulls audio for bass, there is no voice to sample. This is because, best case, only half of the receivers channel space is occupied with data. The rest is noise. In the opposite case, if the transmitting radio is on wide and the receiving radio is on narrow, than the voice will sound overly loud, possibly distorted and possibly have a lot of bass. This is because only half of the transmitter's signal is being heard on the receive side, making is sound over-modulated and the audio segment where he treble is sampled is missing. Based on that understanding, mismatching bandwidth should not cause a variation, starting out loud and shifting quiet. Its either loud and bassy or quiet and tinny, depending on which side of the mismatched bandwidth setting you're on.

Wow... yes, Sir. That is a bit hotter than mine. Looking forward to how the mobiles compare. The owner's manual says the high-side operating temperature is +60* C (140* F). They have to expect the radio will get hotter than the environmental temp, but I can't find anything about it. I have a friend or two who may know. I'll ask around.

It's It's common phrase around my circles. Figured it was a radio thing. Basically it's the guy/gal you is talking extremely loud into their phone/radio because they think you can hear them better. Some of them sound like their mic is in their mouth, too.

Better than hearing "the scream talker". LOL

Understand. Like I said, I'm glad it helped. I would love to know the root cause, but it's good to know that there is some goofy thing out there with an easy work-around.

This makes zero sense to me. I mean, I am glad that picking another code helped you, but there is zero correlation between a digital binary code being injected into your carrier and your audio quality and audio level. Something else is wrong. Just a quick explanation, if you are interested... Digital Code Squelch is a non-audible digital square wave that is injected in between the the audio deviation in the radio waves. It is literally zeros and ones. Injecting different combinations of zeros and ones doesn't change how any of it works, at all. It doesn't matter who originally thought of the binary combination. The radio creates and deciphers the digital code using the exact same process, every time, regardless of the code. There isn't different software or circuitry or methods used if a combination of zeros and one were originally packaged in Motorola radios or not. These are what the square waves look like... This is an actual image from a signal analyzer showing the square wave mixed in between the voice deviation...

60 feet of LMR400 will almost cometely attenuate 5g. (Like 60db)

Nice!

I bought mine from Harbor Freight for $25 when I was building a custom trans cooler for my GT350. I figured it would be "close enough". I compared it to my friend's thermometer that he used for his restaurant, and it was only 0.5⁰ lower on the reading of the pizza oven. I was happy to see that.

I'm curious if you had time to run some IR thermometer readings yet and how it compares to mine?

Try swapping radios. You will get to experience what she hears, to help better understand, or establish if it's environmental interference. Let us know what the firsthand experience is. If you can use your phone to share a video, we may pick up an indicator, too. You may just have a defect in that radio.

I agree with Steve and Randy. If you want a light weight explanation on how this stuff works, you can read about it here... Good luck and have fun.

The XTL5000 is a commercial mobile vhf/uhf radio that was used privately and by first responders. It's pretty sturdy and comfortably goes up to about 850MHz, depending on the version. It was discontinued about 10 years or so. I really like it, especially because it can be remote mounted, but I have many other modern radio with a lot more features. So, like my icom 7000, it just sits in a drawer just waiting for the occasional test ride

I was iffy about mentioning this, since it wasn't asked by Randy, but the last three 30 second transmissions on high power, the amp meter on my power supply was showing the radio current draw was starting to waiver. It would dip about 2 amps and pop back up. I was loosing confidence toward the end, but it survived. LOL

This is what I got. Have to be honest... it's hot, but it "feels" hotter. LOL The IR was a good idea. 5 min Standby = 71.5 (room temp) 10 min Low Pwr (30 sec on, 30 sec off) = 95.7 10 min Hi Pwr (30 sec on, 30 sec off) = 124.4

It's been more than a year since I used mine. I do remember it gets hot, like I thought something was wrong. The guy I got it from swore it was normal. He has been a Fire/EMT truck builder, doing all the electronics. He said there is a temp sensor and if it gets too hot, you get a warning on the head display. I am going to be out for most of the day Saturday, but when I get home, I'll pull it out and run it full tilt for a few minutes. I'll take a few temp reading with the IR thermometer so you have something to compare yours to.

No doubt! The members have a lot of knowledge and great feedback. I'm thankful, for sure.

I sent this to the team. This may be the way we go. Thanks for the link.

So, I found this today and was thinking about trying this system. They state their device resolves a lot of that stuff. https://jps.com/products/qmt-1b/ I'm a little gun shy because I have heard what you stated above from basically everyone. I don't trust online reviews either. What are your thoughts on this? This is good to hear. I read about this today. I may go further down that rabbit hole before spending money, now that a second person is mentioning it. But, isn't a retimer essentially what the GPS clocking devices I read about would do? It's a stratum 1 device that syncs the signals to counter the network latency. I believe all the repeaters are Quantars. I used to think I had money until I started playing radio. Then I realized I am dumb and poor. LOL I thought about doing this myself... but I am not sure I trust them. I found that most of the time, you get an opinion instead of cited code or rules. I would love to go the RF linking route. But I am concerned about LOS as well as the tower space and extra hardware expenses.

So, unfortunately, it appears we can't legally RF link the repeaters outside of GMRS frequencies. Three of the people on the project are FCC licensed General Class commercial engineers with several decades of experience each, and they all agree that the rules significantly restrict open air relay, as we have to adhere to the GMRS frequencies and pairing requirements for any transmission to be legal. Short of using every pair (we have a receive site on every pair) and getting really creative on the voting, the closet we can do is wireless networking, but not every site has the LOS needed. That is what has brought us to the internet option. If we could RF link, I think we would be good to go. I appreciate all the feedback so far. This is good conversation that we can discuss.

Hey folks. I am trying to hammer out a problem with an internet voting system for repeaters. Hopefully you folks can point me in the right direction. I am helping build a receiver-node linked repeater system. We have a legal limit transmitter on a tall tower and the repeater can cover a vast area as far as where it can be heard. However, handheld radios and low power mobiles that are far out... maybe 40% plus out from the center of the coverage area... they can hear the repeater fine, however, they don't have enough power to get into the machine reliably, if at all. We have a bunch of repeaters around the region that we could use as a receiver voter system. We are trying to put it in place over public internet service (we would consider wireless P2P links like Aironet, etc., too) and we are having an issue with networking latency causing the wrong receiver to win. I have read a few places that there is a GPS time sync tool that causes a brief delay for the signals to sync at the voter and re-transmit the proper SNR source. However, I am not finding any device brands or models listed and my Google-Fu seems to be dramatically lacking. All I am finding is new systems well over $7K per system. Do any of you have this type of setup working successfully? Could you make recommendations on either the proper GPS time source model or a proper voting system that accounts for network latency, and won't cost me a kidney? Thanks in advance. Marc

Subbed.

I think you hit the nail square on the head with this statement.

I think you're correct. However, the local, state and federal government gets folks like ARES/RACES, REACT and CERT involved becuse they know that as robust as their system is, it's only reliable on a good day. That said, it's also cheaper for your civilian volunteers to bring their own gear, too. The responsibility of design, purchase and maintenance is covered by us (volunteers).

Just a point of interest, PIV/CAC cards for government employees and contractors cost more than $35 each and aren't valid as long as a GMRS license. If a government agency really wants to have a GMRS repeater for their staff to use, I'm 100% certain they would pony up the few bucks for the employees to have an individual license to use on the government owned radio. Just a thought.