Hilarious ad on facebook

[Bogieboy01]

Guess we gotta up our game on our boofwang handhelds.....just saw this on facebook today....

[hxpx]

Oh yeah, super easy. All you need is a DM-5R and then build yourself a Pi Star hotspot and connect over the internet to a DMR node across the country and - wait what do you mean that's cheating?

[hxpx]

Went and poked around on their website and found this.


Is that just a rebadged $30 UV88 (also the basis for the Radioddity GM-30)? I'm in the wrong line of business.

[dosw]

11 minutes ago, hxpx said:

I'm in the wrong line of business.

 

You're not a scammer. So good for you!

[marcspaz]

I talked 2,039 miles om my HT, from DC to Sonora, Mexico. It was through a repeater on a satellite about 250 miles in the air, but hey....still counts.

 

There are no restrictions on putting a GMRS satellite in orbit. We should start a crowd-funded account to make that happen. 

[tweiss3]

22 minutes ago, marcspaz said:

There are no restrictions on putting a GMRS satellite in orbit. We should start a crowd-funded account to make that happen. 

While correct, I suspect the crowd-funding would be significantly short of the cost to get one up in near earth orbit. I wonder what space dust and the extreme temperatures would do to a "mobile" duplexer though.

[marcspaz]

1 hour ago, tweiss3 said:

While correct, I suspect the crowd-funding would be significantly short of the cost to get one up in near earth orbit. I wonder what space dust and the extreme temperatures would do to a "mobile" duplexer though.

 

When my old club put a repeater up, it cost over $7M. I doubt we would pull that kind of money together on crowd-fund... but it's fun to joke about.

 

I wouldn't put a mobile duplexer in orbit. That would be a disaster waiting to happen. 

[Davichko5650]

3 hours ago, Bogieboy01 said:

Guess we gotta up our game on our boofwang handhelds.....just saw this on facebook today....

An oldie but a goodie. That one's been hammered to death by the Hams, both Happy and Sad over the last couple of years. Yeah, with EchoLink or DMR/C4FM, etc., et al,  I can talk thousands of miles on my handheld.  But I prefer the old school nothing between me and the other guy than the ether...

[Davichko5650]

3 hours ago, hxpx said:

Oh yeah, super easy. All you need is a DM-5R and then build yourself a Pi Star hotspot and connect over the internet to a DMR node across the country and - wait what do you mean that's cheating?

Cue the "that's not real radio"  SadHam comments!  

[tweiss3]

2 hours ago, marcspaz said:

I wouldn't put a mobile duplexer in orbit. That would be a disaster waiting to happen. 

I agree, but I don't see another way to remain within GMRS, unless you use two antennas and mount them like a dipole and only use 1/2W.

I have a trunked P25 P1 "site" in my living room where the CC is 0.05MHz below the VC, RX antennas are pointed up, and TX antennas are left and right away from each other. Works well, but it's only putting out 0.1W.

In theory, its a $7+M idea that would likely just become space junk before it is used.

[hxpx]

1 hour ago, Davichko5650 said:

Cue the "that's not real radio"  SadHam comments!  

I was joking with the digital mode thing since they said "off-grid communications" (although Rapid Consulting's "nationwide radio" uses LTE which does feel like cheating), but on the topic - I've talked to a couple of local hams on a club repeater and they were all about it. It's not their main thing, but they had lots of recommendations if I ever wanted to get into it. Seems like there's quite a few Fusion repeaters around here but they also told me I could just set up a Pi Star hotspot and run whatever I wanted.

[WSHC247]

I get those all the time, I usually just "X" them out. 

[marcspaz]

2 hours ago, tweiss3 said:

In theory, its a $7+M idea that would likely just become space junk before it is used

 

For GMRS... 100% agree. 

[Bogieboy01]

10 hours ago, hxpx said:

 Rapid Consulting's "nationwide radio" uses LTE which does feel like cheating

Yeah, thats the sort of thing that actually got me looking into radios, was the rapid radios ads on my local talk radio, thinking hmmm... that could come in very handy having long range comms for an emergency....but then find out that they all use LTE, so its kinda pointless in a situation where a cell phone wouldnt work....

 

for context on this, my wife is an over the road trucker, so having long distance comms for us is vital.... especially considering that any given truck load that she hauls "could" put her right in the path of a blizzard, hurricane or tornado... Still havent found a viable/reliable setup past cell phones for these types of situations unfortunately... 

[SteveShannon]

3 hours ago, Bogieboy01 said:

Yeah, thats the sort of thing that actually got me looking into radios, was the rapid radios ads on my local talk radio, thinking hmmm... that could come in very handy having long range comms for an emergency....but then find out that they all use LTE, so its kinda pointless in a situation where a cell phone wouldnt work....

 

for context on this, my wife is an over the road trucker, so having long distance comms for us is vital.... especially considering that any given truck load that she hauls "could" put her right in the path of a blizzard, hurricane or tornado... Still havent found a viable/reliable setup past cell phones for these types of situations unfortunately... 

There’s always the National Traffic System.  https://www.arrl.org/nts  Volunteers relay messages from point to point every day.  It doesn’t get much use these days but we have a daily net designed to accept and deliver traffic. There’s also WinLink, which many of us use and which works like email for hams.

[Bogieboy01]

5 minutes ago, SteveShannon said:

There’s always the National Traffic System.  https://www.arrl.org/nts  Volunteers relay messages from point to point every day.  It doesn’t get much use these days but we have a daily net designed to accept and deliver traffic. There’s also WinLink, which many of us use and which works like email for hams.

Thanks for the info, i am getting close to being confident in passing the technician license, so thats one step closer, but my wife isnt too excited about being a "radio dork"....LOL i would likely have better luck trying to skip 11m to her truck cb than getting her to get any sort of ham ticket...

[SteveShannon]

1 hour ago, Bogieboy01 said:

Thanks for the info, i am getting close to being confident in passing the technician license, so thats one step closer, but my wife isnt too excited about being a "radio dork"....LOL i would likely have better luck trying to skip 11m to her truck cb than getting her to get any sort of ham ticket...

I don’t think you have to be a ham to use the NTS.  You just need to know hams who can help you use NTS.

[marcspaz]

16 minutes ago, SteveShannon said:

I don’t think you have to be a ham to use the NTS.  You just need to know hams who can help you use NTS.

 

This is correct.  Anyone can send a message through the Hams.  We do it al the time.  It's our #1 task with ARES.