I got a baofeng but my nearest repeater is 10 miles away, on top of a mountain, and even up there I barely hear anything. What do you guys use?
Comms
I got a baofeng but my nearest repeater is 10 miles away, on top of a mountain, and even up there I barely hear anything. What do you guys use?
I just stick a copper wire in my mouth and a ground wire to tye water pipe in the basement in my ass and then run a bias voltage through my body.
I can hear the elves.
I use DMT vape pen for elf comms. Works great.
>I can hear the elves.
I find shrooms work well too
You're a funny guy anon.
Is this a general? Im looking for a radio that can receive on 800mhz to 100mhz. Basically any freq that i want to plug in. Im a total noob
Rx only? Any uniden scanner would do the trick.
Rtl sdr if you want to decide digital
>Rtl sdr
Is this just a usb plug and play? Id like something mobile that I can put on my rig or in my pocket
Theres certainly some way to use it on mobile device but if you actually need it on your rig you've got bigger problems than how to code your app
Yeah, there's barely any amateur radio VHF/UHF traffic in most areas, even with the coverage advantages that repeaters have (not only due to the coverage of individual repeaters but also due to clubs linking repeaters together to cover even larger areas). Repeaters I can listen to cover 150k+ people when you consider the wide coverage mountain top repeaters and linking repeaters in multiple cities as far as 100 miles away, but I still hear more activity throughout the day on CB channel 19.
What do you mean by barely hear anything? Like is it coming in quite or staticy or is there noise? Or do you mean no one is talking on it? If it's the former it's probably your antenna or you're in a geographic bowl or you're not going outside with it. If it's the latter that just means no one is talking on it.
I heard nothing but static and NOA until I drove up a mountain with a repeater on top but even up there, I only heard a couple people talking.
If you're hearing static when no one is talking then something is wrong. Are both your radios like this? Have you tried using the official antenna that comes with it? I bought a couple antennas off of Amazon that are worse than what came with.
It’s not static on every frequency. It’s just when I scan it always just lands on a staticky frequency or NOA. Except when I went on the mountain. I have one radio with the rubberduck and one with a longer antenna
In the settings you can set it to skip specific channels which you should do for NOAA and if it keeps getting hung up on the static channel set it to skip that too. There are also settings that allows it to permanently stop on a channel after picking up a tone or for it to keep going after 5 seconds. You might be getting geographically cucked. I would recommend watch some youtube videos on what settings to change. The stock boyfangs I got years ago almost got thrown out the window because I didn't know how to finesse them and I felt like I bought paper weights.
Have any of you fricked around with meshtastic LoRa?
No i have no fiends that walk around with free TAK server on a pi
Yes
Based. Give me a QRD on your setup
I don't really use Meshtastic all that much anymore. Moved over the AP mesh radios for high speed data rates and more flexibility
Reflashed Rocket M2/M5
BB2590/2557 for powering both AP and EUD (will quick charge while connected to either 2590 or 2557)
PoE to 12v to BB battery wiring harness (all parts of harness except the 12v BB battery adapter are available on Amazon for around 50)
EUD (S10E) running ATAK
The whole setup including 1 radio can be had for as cheap as 100 dollars if you forgo the military battery setup (use a cheap USB c lithium pd battery pack instead) and buy a field return AP and use router antennae. Extremely fragile (the antennae) if you go that route, but it WILL work
I managed to source some legit MPU5 antennae. Extremely expensive, but much better than the cheap wifi router type antennae that I've been using. Will be here next week to try out
Becoming a walking RF Hotspot is not that wise in a tech heavy warzone. Your get vaporized in about 10 minutes.
This is why Data burst is a thing. Your carrier signals are giving you away.
why do you drive up the mountain where the transmitter is?
are you sure you've understood the whole concept? cause it certainly doesn't sounds like it
I just drove up the mountain because it was the closest repeater and I was 2 miles away from it when I was running some errands. It is entirely possible I don’t understand the concept, but that’s the first and only time I heard people talking on my radio.
the point of a repeater on a mountain is that it has line of sight to a huge area. they also use higher power than handhelds
so even on 4xxMHz they should be receivable for dozens of kilometers/miles
you can look up their exact frequencies and tune to them. most activity is usually on evenings/early nights
they scanning on the the baofengs is mostly useless unless you have only a handful of channels/frequencies programmed
Try a different (better) antenna. A real Nagoya Na-771 or an ABREE folding antenna is the way to go.
Nagoya are trash and the chinese folding crap is worse.
What you do is get a diamond srj77ca (or whichever variant is the correct terminal for your antenna port)
And the only way to test how good an antenna matches the radio, is to probe the battery voltage with a multimeter while transmitting.
Shitty antennas will allow so much reflected power the batt voltage will spike well over 11 volts during transmission, like all the fake nagoyas and shitty abbree folding ants.
Truth..Diamond for the win.
My nearest repeater is similarly spaced, and quite dead.
I tried listening to the local police/ems freqs which were quite active, but literally everything was just drug overdoses and people beating their wives into submission, seemingly all day/night long, so it got really depressing really fast so I stopped.
Now I just keep one in the kitchen and one in my outside workshop so my GF can page me when I get too wrapped up in working on things and end up out there til 11.
I have zero need for dmr or aprs or any of that shit, all I need is a vhf/uhf ht that has a decent IP rating and has a better receiver than a chinkfeng
is the yaesu ft-65 what i want?
help me /k/, I'm new at this.
>want comms from A to B
>distance as the crow flies: 9 miles
>point A is my house in town, by a creek, surrounded by other houses
>point B is my farm house, by itself on a plain by a river
>small mountain range between them, but I happen to own some land at the top (point C)
>height diff A to C is ~1,000ft, height diff B to C is ~2,000ft
>distance A to C is 4 miles, distance B to C is 5.5 miles
what's the easiest way for me to establish handheld radio comms?
maybe some antennas?
I got a couple Baofengs and they kinda work if I'm near A but at higher ground and also near B but at higher ground.
>I'm not in the US
>I don't want to interfere with other people's radios (mostly the drug guys but also some trucking guys and a couple mining companies)
>I have grid power at A, and solar at B. I could maybe install a solar panel at C if needed.
What exactly is your use case where you need something handheld for communication between sites at that long of a distance and can't use a cell phone?
apart from moving to low frequencies, because the kind of bend around the earth, but require different equipment, there's no way around placing a repeater at point C
the good thing: that's easily done by wiring two baofeng together
i have tried the 2x baofeng and its been a bit shit.
they also unintentionally spew your transmission on other frequencies so you may piss off others without even realizing it. if thats not so much a concern or you have a good filter in line then you should also note that the audio quality between the two fengs' on C will be not the best also, plus any noise from the solar mppt charger for the battery etc.
If you do go down this route then another thing to note is that you will want CTCSS or DCSS so nothing can accidentally key up your repeater by accident - even noise.
Actually. this may be a good and cheap test to see if the whole thing is plausible.
If your going to armchair this for a while before starting. play with some free software called "Radiomobile" which will allow you to plot the transmission path and ensure that there's no hills or shit in the road.
If this all works out, get 2 icom 400Pro
https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/155105780941?hash=item241d0664cd:g:eaAAAOSw2Lhi7IvX&amdata=enc%3AAQAHAAAAkOZOnD5Mfo1LR1xXLbm5Wun1F751BtjGMOoNCiuAi5ZMp9VmJMJoN2uTwe6Y0lwo5vr6%2BVxv9UfFnxVHIFrlVtyGTbc3B1pzYx6sWzT5GsbptcegIjx%2Bkc36aIxcelz2bzBOqLYcQyUAayKsZIe2NhhZKdPNec4HdxX%2BVxd5XBRj%2Bp8s9mZMAtp8UweTZgvZ5g%3D%3D%7Ctkp%3ABk9SR_7Zk-PXYA&frcectupt=true
and then get a diplexer.
https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/265461464594?hash=item3dcebc7e12:g:ofoAAOSw7Jpgzdyi&amdata=enc%3AAQAHAAAAoOmj6BWQbchprtHivGscbD1KNE7ysoUHNjiZ3tiK9vOURNSOB4Q3EawhlSRNmNF49mshPRiE4%2FFwC%2BscLsKIJXFjHZNb0FupTlxmrYr9VOTGwm55Y2rNYKBQqP8H87bAH1GF6plZ39SOZY0ldBfN3aJlnEiPIYb5NBhQUsLVSjqn%2FMbXREkhKQ95DSR5GL4NnKhP%2Fj%2FnDlzwX9gX80I4%2BjY%3D%7Ctkp%3ABk9SR5yonOPXYA&frcectupt=true
and a good antenna. something like this
https://zcg.com.au/product/broadband-uhf-sidemount-dipole-304-stainless-steel-400-520-mhz-250w-n-type-female-0-dbd-290mm/
(or even get yagi that points at your house and a second that points at the farm and split them)
or if your super lazy. get a pre made repeater.
https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/255646881955?hash=item3b85bdd8a3:g:UucAAOSwf2li35Gu&amdata=enc%3AAQAHAAAAoBGPSdXBqU3sp6zSgMN1xwoXJMZrwIzhXH4l7iRoBe19JyU2O5%2BgXApSW3nU%2FbEY7%2F1swquLxekrBCpshyqmRoB5kCxnGgqT5Js%2FWCTCLlNiWA5MualXXfs6KY53ee9P6ScxsvPrQPtmH1g77qrz5Cm4FbStMwGTwK53QfQw%2BeGVeBDbX2WoJ34A%2FBq4OpGVS9j35jrdYCEoSQ0macZ%2FXgU%3D%7Ctkp%3ABk9SR_7Qy-PXYA
>dropping over a grand (after considering solar+batteries for powering the thing) on something that you're going to leave on property that isn't yours and hope it doesn't get taken or vandalized
lol
think OP said he owns some land on C
And is illegal as frick and FCC will actually go after illegal repeaters which are also trivial to find since you just have to key it up.
>they also unintentionally spew your transmission
They don't, with no duplexer you would need to have crazy separation from the antennas like in tens of meters for that to work right.
>what's the easiest way for me to establish handheld radio comms?
CB.
>maybe some antennas?
I have stated before in these threads that sensitivity trumps x-mit power. If you don't want to learn what the specs actually represent and buy a better radio:
>i asked what time it is
>not how to build a clock
And I can understand that, then you will need to rely upin antenna gain, to compensate for your shitty sensitivity spec. Pic related.
>t. trigger word: 32apsk
Btw, I'll sweep the BF9 factory antenna for S11 next week and post some insertion loss screen caps if you guys are really interested. It will be my first upgrade. Carrying around a Yagi directional isn't a long term solution for mobile comms, jez sayin'...
If I really get motivated, I've been thinking about sweeping the xmit for spurious to 1GHz with 1, 3 and 5KHz modulation. And for real fun take it over temp and see where it breaks, but I'm like that.
you need to have friends to use one of these anon.
So I have some cheap handsets and would like to take a step up the wattage ladder. Can anyone recommend a dirt cheap base station slash mobile station? I'm not planning on becoming a hamster, it will just be a toy. But I would like it to be a functioning one.
>I want X
>but I don't care about doing the other work necessary to actually see the benefits of having X
Why?
>Why?
Why not?
This is like wanting to buy a rifle for longer range shooting, but having no intent to start shooting anywhere that isn't a 25 yard indoor range.
>proving there are no exceptions to stupid
Seriously, pg. 9?