Blaise

Sorry to join in late, but I've been watching this fight for a while, and I've boiled it down to 2 apparent positions: "20 is great because I remember using GMRS decades ago, so I assume that everyone else will remember that somebody decades ago said the frequency currently assigned to 20 was a general calling channel for repeaters, so this will be easy to 'sell' to the three other people who used GMRS back then." "19 is great because I remember CB when people used it, so I assume everyone else will remember that CB used 19 as a general calling channel, so this will be easy to 'sell' to the three other people who still think CB is relevant." If I have an opinion, it's that both positions are arbitrary and the fight is dumb, but one (19) is legally inaccessible to nearly 20% of the US population because of the "lines" drawn with Canada, so that one is slightly stupider...

Hipsters are doing this in NYC right now. Swarm to live in the "cheap" meatpacking district, then sue the hundred-year-old slaughterhouses because of the smell...

I feel like intentionally cutting residents off from emergency transmissions and news *has* to be illegal!

So if you put your GMRS antenna on your TV antenna...

Well… I don’t hate you. And everybody *already* thought you were weird....

Also, radio frequencies aren't ionizing radiation, so there is no risk from exposure *unless* the flux is high enough to heat your skin. No one's cooking with a ten watt microwave...

I can tell you from experience, if you carry a radio and put on a black shirt that says "STAFF" on the back, you will definitely get a lot of attention from those "chicks". For the duration of the concert, anyway...

So when I first got my license, in 2021, I discovered that I lived in a GMRS dead-zone. I could scan for hours a day, and maybe hear a conversation (that wasn't kids with bubble-wrap FRS units) twice a month. There were 4 repeaters close enough to connect to, two of which you could only find if you turned on stale/offline on the map and two of which were private/membership, and they were all basically unused. Toward the end of 2022, a couple of new repeaters popped up, I started hearing conversations on the repeaters once in a while, and some simplex conversations would turn up from time to time while driving. I even talked to a few folks on repeaters. Now, in early June of 2023 I pick up repeater conversations multiple times a day, simplex all over, and I just went to the map, and without turning on stale/offline repeaters, there are *12* in range and open for general use. What the heck happened in the last year?!?!? I know GMRS is growing in general, but this is explosive!

At the risk of once again sounding like an ignoramus, what is a "TRA"?

Exactly this.

Is this a thing? I've been using a 5 watt ht around the house and yard, and it works great when I'm on the second or third floor, but at ground level, it's got maybe a 1/4 mile range. I'd love to be able to leave one for my wife so I can talk to her when I'm in town with my mobile, but 90% of the time, she wouldn't hear me. I know a relay would solve this, but it would be super-limiting since we'd only get to use that one channel/code, so communicating with others or scanning channels would be impossible. It occurs to me that if I had a base station in the attic that we could use remotely from the kitchen or yard, we could easily communicate with my mobile or local friends from maybe 5-7 miles, which would be super useful, but I'm not aware of the existence of such a magical device. Do they exist?

This one brings me joy, too!

QUD! (Quite Unnecessary, my Dude)

Am I the only one who enjoys imagining what those hammy initialisms stand for? I read "QFT" as "Quite Fucking True". I have no idea what it really means, but I like mine!

I buy all my radios on the dark web with crypto. Does that count?

Yes, I was teasing just to make the point that you *don't* take your discussion to emotional hysteria, like we see so often in say this thread (and so many others)...

That's actually amazing. I've been wondering all morning how I'd explain to my wife why I was buying a bunch more test equipment to do the same thing! I want to try it across city and inside buildings, too...

There you go! NOW you're attacking the person, instead of the argument. This is an excellent example of how to start a proper fight!

This is interesting to me. (Not the fighting part, that you are really bad at!) As I've mentioned before, the naive "physics" viewpoint is the one I'm approaching this topic from. Physics says that if your signal is currently penetrating x inches of material at y flux (Or maybe I should use variable 'S', in this context?), doubling your power will allow it to pass through x * 1.6 inches of material at y flux. Since it seems like the primary limit on how far a UHF signal will be readable at is how much crap is has to pass through, this seems like it would apply. This of course doesn't take into account other variables I may be unaware of, but I keep bringing it up in hopes someone will clue me to the missing variables...

I will repeat my previous reponse, because I can't seem to find a way to combine quoting: Virtually no one using a handheld radio is in a surrounding that puts them LOS to the horizon. Handhelds happen in woods, in cities, and in buildings. What matters is that if all the clutter would only allow a 2W transmission to penetrate a mile, it would allow a 5W transmission to penetrate 1.6 miles, which is a big deal. Come on now guys, this fight won't work if you just reasonably post your (WRONG) opinions! You have to get some inappropriate emotion into it!

And no one cares about s-units, they *do* care that their handheld can be heard 60% farther away through woods or city! Sure, and I have a solution that works, but only for spherical ducks in a vacuum! Virtually no one using a handheld radio is in a surrounding that puts them LOS to the horizon. Handhelds happen in woods, in cities, and in buildings. What matters is that if all the clutter would only allow a 2W transmission to penetrate a mile, it would allow a 5W transmission to penetrate 1.6 miles, which is a big deal.

I think in modern radio-land, it's, "If it ain't broke, add more features 'til it is."

OK, my turn to start a fight: The difference between 2W and 5W is an increase in receivable transmission range of nearly 60%. That is neither minuscule nor even negligible!

It's not outside the bounds of reason. A number of consumer-electronics boards from China have been found to have stealthy modules on them that scan bluetooth and wifi around them and attempt to exploit any open access to "phone home" with geolocation info and maps of local devices. However, I feel like a niche product like a hand-held radio would be one of the *last* places they'd invest that kind of effort.

Prefaced with "I Am Not A competent Chinese speaker": I spent several months in Bejing and surrounding cities a few years ago, and had a lot of trouble with pronouncing words from their English transliterations, so I asked a lot of people to help me nail individual words down. In doing so, I acquired some slight facility at pronouncing Mandarin words from transliterations. My best take on "Wouxun" would be something like "Wuu - zhuhn" - where the "uu" is kinda part-way between "oo" and "uh". And since it's impossible to get inflections from a transliteration like that, the best bet would be to pronounce it as flatly as possible, with no difference in emphasis between the two syllables...