mbrun

Distance with GMRS is 95% antenna height and antenna, 5% radio. As you continue your exploration of GMRS you will hear that theme over and over. Do not ignore it. I only recently acquired a higher power radio. With all my testing using just a low power HT I now know for certain I can talk upwards of 50 miles in certain directions hitting well placed repeaters using just 5 watts and a good, well placed external antenna. Your mileage will vary. Given the extensive testing I have done in my area I have now lived both the bad and the good. It is nice knowing I operate at only 5 watts, and communicate everywhere I need to cover, and have extra power available to reduce the noise in my signal at distance locations when propagation conditions are not in my favor. At only 5 watts, the means when I am operating on backup power I can operate 10 times as long as compared to high-power. Nice little side benefit too. Welcome to myGMRS. Michael WRHS965 KE8PLM

Cool line! Permission to reuse? Michael WRHS965 KE8PLM

As low as we all remain good practicing stewards of GMRS I am certain we can have a positive impact. Michael WRHS965 KE8PLM

I believe most manufacturers have standardized on the C20 rate for AH ratings. You can certainly do any rate you need, and manufacturers can publish values for any rate they feel appropriate, but as far as standard capacity comparisons that is what I have learned over the years to be the most universal. Michael WRHS965 KE8PLM

You know, that may or may not be true that it will sound distorted. For 10 years I listened off and on to repeaters with my GXT1000. Actually still do. And yes at times the audio has sounded distorted, like someone was overdriving their equipment. But assuming they were all, or mostly all, using wide band equipment, it was rare that what I heard was truly objectionable distortion, perhaps only 5% of the time. Why? I theory that only a small percentage of folks actually speak up and/or so closely to the mic that they take achieve the full degree of wide-band deviation available to them. As a consequence, I theory that the average wide-band user is actually transmitting a deviation that is at or less than the narrow-band deviation, and thus the narrow band GTX1000 is happy as can be. Sounds like another radio experiment in the making. Michael WRHS965 KE8PLM

Thanks. Could you provide me a link to the radio and remote you are using? Michael WRHS965 KE8PLM

I have radio, cable, connectors etc.. to do just that. The radio manufacture supplies Cat5e cable. I just thought I would tap this group to see what experiences others may have had and with what radio models. Thinking of trying 100 and 200’ to see what results I get. Thanks. Michael WRHS965 KE8PLM

The reason you may not have experienced it before when operating two nearby radios on simplex is 1) because both were using the same frequency, or 2) because both radios were not trying to be used for communications at exactly the same time. Desense is the phenomenon that occurs when a strong undesirable signal in the airwaves prevents your receiver from being able to pick out of the airwaves the signal you want it to. You can relate it to a person standing dead-center right in front of a car on a dim moonlight night and the headlights of the car are on high beam. From some distance away you face the headlights but you cannot see the person standing between the headlights because the car’s headlights are overloading (or ‘desensing’) your eyes. If the headlights are exactly what you want to see then you are in great shape. However if it is the person between the headlights you want to see you are clearly out of luck. The reason this can and will affect you at times in radio is that when using two closely located radios, both accessing the same repeater, is that accessing the repeater requires two frequencies at the same time. The transmitting radio is operating on one frequency (the undesired one in this case) while the other radio is listening on the desired frequency (the one coming from the repeater in this case). Hope I did not throw too much mud in the water. Regards, Michael WRHS965 KE8PLM

Glad to hear you have had success. Michael WRHS965 KE8PLM

Thanks G. Wish I had known about the RSSI meter in the radio. If you are ever looking for a road trip to Cincinnati and some field testing, you know where to find me. Would have loved to have had you around to lend a hand and offer additional insight. If you ever do come down, let’s do it when the temperatures are above freezing. [emoji23] Regards, Michael WRHS965 KE8PLM

Some GMRS and amateur mobile radios (perhaps even some commercial rigs) have the ability to remotely locate the radio control head. It seems that the manufacturers may supply standard cables for doing this that are in the range of perhaps 10-20 feet. Probably sufficient for the typical automotive installation. I am curious who of you has experimented with how long you can make and use these cables before you started to achieve undesirable results and what radio you experimented with. This may be more of an idle curiosity than anything, but it does have a practical application. Consider an application where there may be an ideal location to mount an antenna at one’s home, but the ideal location for the radio is 150 cable-feet away from that. That would be a lot of expense for quality low-loss feed-line. Now lets say that the radio electronics could actually be mounted say 50’ from the antenna and that the control head, mic and speakers were remotely mounted 100’ away from that and then interconnected with inexpensive Category 5 grade network cable. While you can be certain that I will experiment with this at some point, I thought I would like to tap this group for existing first-hand experiences. Regards to all. Michael WRHS965 KE8PLM

Good Day G. Yes, I was surprised as well. I was certainly expecting I would have experienced more. No, I did not measure RSSI as I do not own any independently trustworthy equipment that would have given me reliable measure. Nor do I have any confidence in the accuracies of the signal level reporting capabilities on the radios themselves to. For certain, I do not trust the meter on the KG-805G. At times 7+ bars while receiving an unintelligible signal does not compute for me The best I can offer with regards to noise in the area is that both my GMRS and amateur HTs signal dance between between 2 and 4 bars when monitor is opened, and that the squelch control on both radios is normally set to 1 and only rarely opens up without some form of intelligible signal present. Michael WRHS965 KE8PLM

Thanks for posting the link. Michael WRHS965 KE8PLM

All repeaters that I have interacted with, GMRS and amateur repeater alike, all continue transmitting for a short time after someone who has connected to it has stopped transmitting. Some hang for a second or less, others may hang up to 5 seconds. So, if your radio is correctly configured, and the repeater opens up because it heard you, you will hear the repeater transmitting without audio for a brief time after you un-key That hang time is the most common way I know to get a sense of whether you got in or not. Alway give your callsign when doing even a simple test like this. Now, there is more to know. Just because you may have caused the repeater to open up, it does not mean that your signal is strong enough to be usable. Case in point. I have a number of repeaters in my area. I am on the fringe for all of them when I am on my HT. Some days I can get in with enough audio to hold a conversation, on other days my signal is sufficient to open the repeater but audio is so low as to be just noise. Also, if you have two radios, say your HT and your mobile, and you operate one in close proximity to the other, the receiving radio may not pickup the signal from the repeater because you’re transmitting radio is overloading it. You may have to separate the radios by some distance for one of your radios to hear the other when communicating via the repeater. When you experience this, this is what is referred to as ‘desense’. I advocate driving close to the repeater for testing and then driving back to your home to see how things go along the way. So far, I have not identified anything yet that you may be doing wrong, but perhaps my information above will be enlightening. What are you expecting that you are not experiencing? Michael WRHS965 KE8PLM

Good Day. I have this meter I use in my shop for checking battery capacity. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01M5CWR2P/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 I power it via dedicated power supply rather than battery. I then have modular battery cradles that allow me to assemble cells in whatever combination I want to test. I wire the cell(s) up to and through the shunt to a resistive load of whatever size I want. The meter then monitors voltage and current at the same time and calculates amp hours real time. It is ideally suited for RV or Solar power pack work, but I just happen to find another use for it. SkyRC has a cool single cell charger analyzer. I have thought about getting that just for its analytics capabilities. Michael WRHS965 KE8PLM

I admit I have not done this with my radio batteries, but is has been on my mind since an unexpected dead battery during a long walk a few months ago. I have the reasonably convenient capability to vet standard AAA-D cells, just not assembled multi-cell packs. Last year or so I returned I think 2 dozen high-capacity D cells because they measured only 60% of advertised capacity. Ordered a different model and tested them. They were within 5-10% of rated capacity. I kept them. Michael WRHS965 KE8PLM

You’re welcome JAS. Glad you liked it. Michael WRHS965 KE8PLM

You’re welcome Jack. Michael WRHS965 KE8PLM

For simplex, changing codes would not be so bad if there was a default way to change both Tx and Rx PL at the same time in much the same way that the FRS radios current Midlands do, but do it in a way that still allows support of mixed squelch codes. Doing so would would make the radios more user friendly. Product developers do not think ahead adequately when adding features to a product that consumer wants. They figure it is good enough that the product has that feature. In reality they should be thinking how they make this more complicated piece of equipment easy to use. I have been toying with the idea of authoring a product description of what I consider to be the ideal GMRS HT and Mobile radio feature set and methods of operation for different classes of radios. Who knows, maybe the manufacturer’s would read it and takeaway the good and use it incorporate into a some newly designed GMRS radio product. They would however have to approach it with an open mind. Michael WRHS965 KE8PLM

The deficiency is the inability to create and use all available memories in the radio (aka ‘Channels’) to store your choice of valid, legal, combinations of frequencies and tones. In contrast, the Wouxun radios allow you to assemble and store as many legal combinations as you want, up to the limit of total memories available. The BTECH further limits you to storage of valid Rx/Tx combinations in only certain memory slots. This is the same issue that Midland owners face. So the problem comes into play when you live in an area or travel into areas that have many repeaters on the same frequency and need different tones to access them. With the BTECH you cannot preload your radio with all combinations you know you will need. Instead must stop and reconfigure your radio in the field rather than just select a new pre-made memory. An inconvenience at best. Hope that helps. Michael WRHS965 KE8PLM

Thank you! Michael WRHS965 KE8PLM

Agreed. Do also consider that the tool does not take into account vegetation or man-made obstacles, all of which decrease range dramatically so you will need to factor that into your planning. There is another site up in Canada that features pretty advanced calculator that can aid you in estimating repeater coverage. It is run by a professional RF Engineer that is also an amateur radio operator. It is on his personal amateur radio site. I have used it as have others on this site. I am drawing a blank on the address at the moment, but I believe I saw MacJack reference it last. Michael WRHS965 KE8PLM

First off, you are welcome. Second, you make a very fair statement. There is no doubt that the signals in my environment are in fact very much attenuated. That is why I believe the unreliable/fringe zone from 6/10 to 1.4 miles to be such an important zone. Agreed too that if the fringe area were known to be say, 5 times larger, that finer differences would have been able to be detected. I also believe under laboratory conditions small differences would be detected. But this test was all about the practical, in my environment. In the end, I take no exception to amending the conclusion to clarify. Thanks for your feedback. Michael WRHS965 KE8PLM

You’re welcome. Certainly not a lab-grade experiment, but very practical. Michael WRHS965 KE8PLM