marcspaz

Luiton owns Baofeng and a dozen other Chinese electronics companies. Not sure about the ties to Middle, though. It's been a long time since I was in the retail side of things, but Midland, Cobra, Uniden have all been the same company and almost always made in China.

Yea, I gave it a run today, too. Called CQ DX for about 20 minutes on a few frequencies and didn't get a single reply. I guess mother-natures gift has expired. :-(

Don't know if there are any HF users in this group, but the solar cycle is perfect for low power long range communications in the lower frequencies. I am only running 120 watts RMS with a 1/4 wave ground plane in my Jeep, and I am talking to people in Houston to Detroit, and Maine to the Keys... and everyone in between. Seems like the whole country was on the radio today. One guy in Motor City and another in Houston both sounded like they were driving next to me, the signal was so strong. Anyone on the air down there today? What was your longest contact?

Agreed! My daughter lives in AZ. It's awesome out there. Rausch Creek is about the best it gets on the east coast. It's pretty sad how people ignore "pack it in, pack it out". You are right; it just spoils it for others.

I was thinking he meant Grand Wagoneer. BUT... the old school Power Wagon is pretty kick-butt, too! LOL

Mostly Jeeping in the mountains of West Virginia and Pennsylvania. http://fiveguysracing.com/marc/HardRock/Rubi_W_Lift.jpg http://fiveguysracing.com/marc/RauschCreek/June_2018/images/20180616_115106.jpg http://fiveguysracing.com/marc/RauschCreek/June_2018/images/Image12.jpg

Welcome! I have to say, I got into GMRS for going Offroad with friends of mine... but this forum has really got me digging into GMRS more and more. The folks here are a pretty good group. I have several MTX400 radios. 1 had an issue and Midland fixed it in just a few days with a replacement. The only down falls I have found is, its only narrow band and features are minimal. It really seems like a "Welcome to GMRS 101" radio. You should enjoy it... but when the bug bites, you will be looking for an upgrade. LOL

Yea, I misread the post. I thought they were hammering the repeater rather than tying up the frequency in general.

Ah... bummer. That's even worse.

If I owned the repeater, while waiting for FCC to intervene, I would just shut it off when I hear them get on it. If I can't use it, why should they.

The radio will scan through the tone codes and digital codes while receiving, to find a match. The digital code scan is almost instant, but the TSQL is a bit slower. Once you put it in DPL scan mode, it will continue to scan until the correct squelch is found. However, unless someone is transmitting for 15 to 20 seconds straight, TSQL may take a couple of transmissions before the tone is found. In my opinion, less than 30 seconds isn't bad. Yes, you can run split DPL methods on transmit and receive.

I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the internet. Not sure if that counts. LOL

That's what I was thinking too. "Transmitter" is a very specific piece of hardware. Not really an 'open to interpretation' kind of statement.

I'll send you a PM.

Hey folks! I know I said I was going to wait a few days... possibly a week... before my GMRS-50X1 features review, but I spent hours using this radio today and I had a great time. I figured I would just go ahead and get it out there. For the features review, I am going to start with the Cons this time. Since the quasi-tech review ended with the focus on the negatives, I would like to end this review with a positive vibe. Please keep in mind, this is purely opinion based after using the radio. There are tons of features... I am only going to cover what I believe would be the most common/popular to use among most people. Cons - 1.) While talking simplex to a station that is closer than 2 miles, I had to use low power, NFM and turn the mic gain down to 1. If not, the person I was talking to complained about audio clipping and audible popping sounds. After 2 miles, I could turn the mic gain back up and use WB FM. 2.) The display is going to be both in the Pros and Cons section. As some are aware, I daily drive a Jeep Wrangler. For at least 50% of the year, my Jeep has no roof and no doors. That fact brought out a big drawback for me. The display has no means of adjusting the brightness. Regardless of what I did, while the sun was out and the roof and doors were off, the display was 100% washed out. I literally could not tell the radio was on by looking at the display. At first, I put the soft top on, and the display was still heavily washed out, but was usable. I had to put on my top and my doors with 20% light transmission tint on the windows, before the display was good to use. Another drawback for the display is, there is a lot of very useful information in a tiny little spot. It takes a bit of focus to look at the display and get a feel for exactly what is going on. This is not good if you are driving and want to make a quick change. I found that I had to pull over to be safe while making minor adjustments. 2.) They advertise that it has NOAA radio built-in, but it really doesn't. The VFO covers a frequency spectrum that includes those frequencies. Not a big deal, but it is up to you to manually tune to those channels and save them to memory. 3.) You can't add new GMRS saved channels that are capable of transmitting. On my iCom, I have multiple saved channels for channel 15, for example. One with no DPL, one with tone coding and one with digital coding. Depending on who I am with or the group I am talking with, I need to use different values. With the BTech radio, I will have to manually change it every time. I am assuming this is so they could get FCC type approval. 4.) You can't transmit in VFO mode, at all, not even on GMRS frequencies. This was probably needed for FCC type approval. Still a drag that you can't manually dial to a GMRS frequency and use it. 5.) There are a lot of unneeded features and unusable functions that are locked out. Seems pointless to even have them because they will likely add a lot of confusion to new operators. Examples are Remote Stun which remotely disables transmitting and Remote Kill remotely disables transmit and receive. These are typically repeater management features that a typical GMRS mobile user just doesn't need. While the aforementioned features are present and function, there are a ton of other repeater related functions that are still in the menu, but you can't change them. It almost seems like they took a shortcut and used UV-50Xx software and just tweaked it for this radio. Pros - 1.) Range.... My son and I ran a field test today; both simplex and repeater use. Anyone who has read my quasi-technical opinion review, knows I was less than impress with what I saw. That said, going from my BTech mobile to my son's HT inside his car, we easily talked 5.5 miles in rough terrain and while I was on the blind side of a hill, 100 feet+ below the top of a hill and there were lots of trees, buildings, etc. between us. I was pretty impressed that we got that range with my son's radio "inside" his car, while driving, and he was using an HT that has a maximum power of 8 watts. That was more than twice as far as the results we had with another brand mobile I own... using the same HT. Once we were out of simplex range, we switched to a local repeater. I am 22 miles from the repeater as the crow flies. I was using low power (2.5w) WB FM. My son was 19 miles away from the repeater using the HT, on full power and WB FM. My son gave me the the same signal report as others. He said there was some noise on low power, but when I switched to medium power (18w) I was full quite and great audio quality. Given the RF signal quality I observed with analyzing tools, I am seriously shocked. 2.) While the display washed out very easily by the sun light, the display colors are extremely flexible, allowing the user to adjust the color contrast, making it easier to read as well as using font color to further segment the many items displayed on the screen. 3.) The owners manual states that the device has a 50% duty cycle. There is no power level specified, but I assume in low power. My son and I talked for more than 30 minutes, with most of my transmit time being at medium power and at about 35-40% duty cycle. During our conversation my son reported that there was no noticeable deviation of carrier or modulation. My receive quality stayed great the whole time as well. 4.) The radio only draws 3.5 amps while using the radio at full power, with the cooling fan running. The radio came with large gauge power wires. They are not labeled, but they measure about 2mm. They are likely 14 gauge, rated for 15 amps. That's a plus, as you are less likely to have voltage drop over the length of the wire and the fuse will pop long before the wires become a fire risk. 5.) While its not very useful for most cars/trucks, it does receive commercial FM Radio. This is great feature for vehicles that don't have a radio, such as ATV's, older work trucks, construction equipment, etc. 6.) You are able to monitor up to 4 frequencies and/or channels at once. The ability to mix monitoring VFO and Memory channels can be pretty handy. 7.) A cool feature that this radio has is, you can sync the displays in pairs of two. This can be a pretty neat feature. I set display A (top left) and display B (bottom left) to be in sync. This means when I change the channel on Channel A, channel B changes as well. The inverse also occurs. This allows a user to do things like have the channel Name displayed and the frequency displayed at the same time. You don't have to guess where you are if you are using channel names. 8.) This unit displays the DPL code and method on the screen. This is awesome, because you don't have to guess if your DPL is set or to what value. Its right there to read. 9.) This unit has a feature that is getting more popular; DPL scanning. If there is a group that is using DPL and you want to be part of the conversation, you can have the radio scan tone squelch and DCS values while the other station is transmitting and the radio will detect the value that the group is using. Indifferent - Something that is not really a pro or con... since we can only transmit on the hard-coded GMRS channels, 225 additional memory channels does not make a lot of sense to me. I'm sure some will love it. With the exception of programming the WX channels, I likely wont use any more than that. Summary - Quasi-tech review aside, if you are willing to tolerate some of the technology shortcomings I noticed in my radio (noted in another thread), for a low cost radio, this can be a lot of fun to play with. Sadly, the display washout is a deal-breaker for me, personally. However, I think I am in the minority there. In short, I am not going to recommend or condemn the radio. It's not for me, even with all the cool features. That said, I leave it to you to use my two threads as a tool to make an informed decision. I'm just 1 guy with one radio... but there it is. Thanks, Spaz

Hi David! Thanks for stopping by. I strongly recommend joining the forum and looking through the many threads that include equipment reviews. There are many options and varying opinions. Some of the topics may fall inline with what your intended use, and give you a chance to ask some more specific questions. What, specifically are you trying to accomplish? Such as, what will the radio be used for, type of terrain, what kind of distances are you looking at with regard to the repeaters you want to reach, etc.?

Do you have everything you need? Cable, latest version of CHIRP and laptop? If so, I may be able to meet you somewhere and can help you with your gear.

There is a loose interpretation of the rules that say something like "in an emergency, forget all the restrictions you just read." Again, a loose interpretation... but that is the basics of it. That said, it never hurts to practice, practice, practice. The two best pieces of advice I ever got was... the worst time to look for a lawyer is after you need one, and the worst time to learn how to use emergency equipment is during an emergency.

Kind of surprising to hear. I had a harmful interference issue not too long ago. I went to the owner's and they fixed it in a day. They had patch on the tower and just fixed it. I would think people would want to have their gear working correctly and not causing interference. Saying the FCC doesn't care about GMRS is just plain ignorant. There are groups of volunteers that look for PRS violations and report them to the FCC... and the FCC does take action.

Great suggestion. Great summary of your post too. You reminded me of two items I would like to touch base on again, as well as expand on something else you touched on. First... for non-licensed options, CB radio should not be over looked. It is still HF and when configured properly, you can get outstanding simplex communications, even with the low power restrictions. I have a Galaxy CB with AM and SSB. I have a properly tuned antenna transmission line and a perfect match on a 1/4 wave ground plain antenna (113.5"). On AM with 1 watt RMS carrier and 2 watt RMS modulated power, on a properly tuned system, I am getting 13-15 miles in rough terrain. On SSB, with 11 watts peek power, I am able to talk 22-26 miles, depending on the weather conditions, in that same rough terrain. The second item is, don't be afraid to include a GMRS repeater; even if repeaters in the area have been destroyed in the past. When I was an emergency volunteer, I had a two dedicated, stand-alone mobile repeaters in my truck. One VHF and one UHF. I could either run them from wherever I parked, or I could dead-drop them anywhere with their own batteries and then drive to where I needed to work. Each unit was in a vented container that kept weather off of it, twin 115 amp sealed lead-acid batteries and a 35' portable antenna tower with an omnidirectional antenna AND directional beam antenna to support local repeater comms and long-range point to point comms. The portability is a very affordable add-on to any low power repeater. On 10 watt low power with 50%-60% duty cycle, they lasted for days before the batteries needed to be recharged. Even 50 watt mode, they would run on batteries for more than 24 hours before needing to be recharged. HAM Response - I used to be an assistant emergency coordinator with ARES and answered directly to our local county government Emergency Coordinator. I am NIMS and ICS certified. I think one of the reasons Amateur Radio emergency response seems overly complex for first responder support is because groups and services like ARES are NOT first responders. ARES and groups like them are focused on supporting multiple municipality, mass casualty events and we bring in all aspects of technology to support extended operations in extended responses. The Northeast Blackout of 2003 and Katrina are great examples. We provided phone, video, internet, radio, formal traffic, responder escorts, etc. We had to be not only self sufficient, but able to provide a service in areas and conditions that are worse than being in wilderness with no outside resources. In a situation where OP is discussing... none of that is initially needed and grossly over-complicates the main objective of notification of an inbound crisis that is either occurring or about to occur. That is why the ENS was created. A simple alert system on commonly used platforms; radio, TV and smartphones. Once the event has occurred, that's when the more complex solutions need to be brought in.

My knowledge is limited in the area of "best brand/model", be it HT's or Mobile radios. I would tend to stick with major brands... but I found that even major brands, there are differing opinions. For example, if a user has no skill to do things like soldering or programing a radio, Motorola and Midland would be my first and second choice. However, if you are even moderately competent with a computer and soldering pencil, a whole new world opens up. Based on personal experience, I would stay away from Baofeng, BTech and other divisions of that company. Midland Micro Mobile radios are okay, but they are all narrow band radios. As a side note. I would never discourage new users, but you are much better off with 10 meter radios and 100-200 watt amps. to cover the distance you are talking about. I live in an area where there is rugged terrain all around and I can talk simplex, ground wave, 40+ miles with 120 watts RMS. In my opinion, most UHF radios you will get for FRS and GMRS are the wrong equipment for the job you are talking about without a repeater. You are going to be limited to a mile or two with handhelds. Even mobiles are heavily restricted in rugged terrain. At high elevation line of sight, you can get 50 miles or more with mobile simplex GMRS. Say from a 3,000 ft ridge down into a town in the valley. However, at sea level and low line of sight, you are looking at more like 3 to 5 miles due to ground wave propagation issues at that frequency spectrum. Just an opinion.

I have two BF-F8HP. Those show up in GMRS search results on Amazon, too, but they are advertised as amateur radios on the product page itself. It may be a paid advertising service being provided. Kind of like when you search for a dishwasher, but specifically, only Cascade detergent products are included in the results. The BF-F8HP's have great range for only 8 watts. While standing in my driveway, I can reach a VHF repeater about 20 miles away as the crow flies, and a UHF repeater about 22 miles away. My biggest complaint is, both radios have static come in over the receive, even if me and the other station are 100 yards away. But they were $60 instead of $10, so I was hoping for better audio quality. But, for messing around in the mountains, I'd rather break a $60 HT than a $300 HT.

For an omnidirectional, I would tend to agree, generally speaking. There are only so many "tricks" you can do to make up for a lack of redirecting/focusing energy. Keep in mind that dBi is originally focused around directional antennas. Seeing 100+ dBi gain in a directional antenna is not uncommon. Especially in low power services such as cellular and Ham radio 1 watt global comms.

BoxCar is correct. DB scales (I think there are 7 of them) are all based on a random agreed upon standard. RF is typically measured in DBi. The " i " in DBi stands for isotropic, referencing the standard performance of an isotropic dipole antenna (omni-directional antenna). The power gain of an isotropic antenna is 1.0. Here is where the problem comes into play... true DBi gain is comparing a isotropic dipole antenna to a directional antenna. So, the makers of omni-directional antennas that claim a specific amount of gain, are actually comparing the general performance improvement of their antenna, to that omni-directional dipole baseline. They use size, shape, materials, coils, etc, to get a net improvement in the transmit and/or receive performance and use that measured improvement to advertise its relative DBi gain. That improvement is, for every 6 dBi in gain, you double the range of the antenna when compared to an isotropic dipole antenna tuned for the same frequency. That said, you should be getting a legit improvement that matches that advertised DBi improvement. Mobile vs. base is not relevant. To borrow BoxCar's phrase... gain is gain, and the standard you are testing against doesn't change. Also, keep in mind that as atmospheric conditions and terrain/obstacles change overall performance. If you plan on doing any field testing, you are going to have to test both antennas at the same time, with both stations being in the same location, on the same mount/height/cables/radio/etc.

You are obviously making an assumption based on a collection of multiple posts I have made... and your assumption is wrong. Actually, the radio in question is rated for a 10% duty cycle; 6 minutes transmit, 54 minutes receive. And I mentioned using the radio in extreme use conditions as a cheap/easy means of detecting if the radio will stay within its maximum deviation. If they can have a 20 minute conversation and not hear any deviation, the radios are performing very well. If they don't get the full 6 minutes of transmit before hearing a deviation, then there is a problem. I said that BTechs are junk because I have owned several mobile radios that failed within days/hours of ownership. I never mentioned the models, how I used them or what their duty cycle is rated for. Just to be sure there is no confusion.... I had two UV-50x2's which are rated for 100% duty cycle to build poor man repeaters (also has all remote control features built into it for remote management). I was only using them as mobile ham radios with light-duty use. They both broke extremely quickly while used, literally, for initial testing and configuration. Both radios had less than 20 minutes of total transmit time. The reason I think the handhelds are junk is because they are built with cheap plastic that has basically zero impact resistance. Also the transmit audio quality is terrible. For the same price as the BTech, I can buy something like an iCom or another mainstream, amazing performer that is also durable. The fact that the BTech units drifted a bit after the duty cycle was exceeded was never a consideration in my opinion of the handhelds. If you had good luck... God bless you. I haven't. I think after using radio's for work, recreation, and working in Electronics and IT for 27+ years, I'm pretty well experienced enough to develop a opinion on what is junk. You are welcome to disagree and have your own opinions based on your experiences, but please don't put words in my mouth.