FARS!

So yesterday I did a lil write up on the license free radio options available. It was kind of bland, the whypeepo boiled chicken of radio articles. So I didn’t mention the most important part that everyone REALLY cares about. To quote the Great Randolpho from notarubicon productions, how many FARS! can your radio get? Of rather how far can your transmission go? Ok let’s spice this up kick it up to spicy cheesy enchilada style…

The short answer to how many Fars can I get is, well, there is no short answer, it’s complicated. If you’re expecting really long distances or cellphone performance, you’re likely to be pretty disappointed with a harsh reality check. 2 way radios just really quite don’t work like that. Especially if you’re playing around in the license free realm, these little radios just don’t have much power and antenna options may be limited. So barring some unpredictable propagation effects, most likely on CB, you are realistically getting perhaps 1-3 miles, on fairly flat terrain. Those are the results I’ve gotten here, using stuff like uv5r’s and FRS radios with stock rubber duck antennas and low power. It’s pretty flat, where I’m testing at it’s Kansas, in suburban terrain on uhf. VHF and UHF like MURS and FRS use are line of sight. The wavelengths are too short so they don’t bounce between the ionosphere and the ground. The higher and more clear of clutter you get your antenna, and the better antenna you have, basically the more fars you can get! If there’s too many big buildings or terrain features than it may block a u/v signal so you can’t communicate at all. Basically one must understand the equipment and it’s abilities and limitations.

To illustrate the layman’s understanding of radio. A friend of mine in another state was curious about talking from Utah to Kansas via radio. Mind you he’s not a ham nor a radio guy at all. I had to quickly dispel his notion that hooking up a couple of CB’s was going to work for this application. Unfortunately to talk across multiple states, both of us will need a General license, we will need HF transceivers, antenna tuners, we will need the right kind of antennas, good antennas. We would probably need a propagation map, watch the solar cycle, have to have something of an soi to see which bands open up… This stuff is beyond me still I’m only a technician. Suffice to say hopefully you get the picture that to get many fars you will actually have to learn quite a bit, spend some money and practice. Me personally I do want the HF capabilities someday. This is the skyward bounce stuff here we’re talking about. This is where people are even talking around the world. HF is what people think of when they think of old school ham radio even though they really know nothing about how it works.

This DOES lead to confusion because people say ‘the boofwang is a ham radio’. Well yes, because it transmits on the amateur frequencies it is a ham radio. It is still a u/v radio, it transmits on frequencies adjacent to the license free frequencies with slightly more power. It’ll simply transmit out of band some on frequencies it or you aren’t necessarily supposed to use. But it is still VHF/UHF and so its performance is going to be very similar to MURS/FRS/GMRS walkie talkies but with slightly more power. So just because the Baofeng is a ‘ham’ radio it won’t talk to Japan or somewhere distant. It doesn’t cover every radio band to scan/listen, not even close. It’s just a walkie talkie, or HT in ham speak. It does offer a lot of advanced capabilities to the ham radio operator. However a lot of this can be confusing/intimidating to the non ham user. A lot of people I think get a Baofeng, look at it and think what do I do now?

Somewhere between the world of $20 HT’s and Amateur General and Extra type full on HF there are a lot of neat dual band mobile radios out there that have a lot more power than any HT. They have better options for quality feedline and antennas too. Now these mobiles are going to be GMRS or HAM, I don’t think there’s much out there for license free MURS or FRS equipment but both are cheap and easy to get. The Tech test is pretty easy to figure out, easier than general imo. GMRS has no test. So even with your HT’s antenna height is king! So if you go up on a golden hilltop, or your roof or some other tall building it’ll have a huge effect on the reach of your signal. We are talking about V/U line of sight here just to be clear. Definitely getting a good mobile radio and antenna combo, and getting it up there, it can make a massive distance in fars if fars is what you want. It’s still line of sight, but I’ve gotten contacts at 40+ miles, that’s with a good VHF mobile at around 146mhz. This is all assuming you want fars. You probably think you want fars if you’re new. Maybe you do need them. I suppose even humble me wants the fars capability in my toolbox. Of course I’m a nut, I want all the radios and I want to, aspire to learn all the radio things! Seriously though, as I progress in radio I transmit less and less. Hams refer to low power as QRP operating, Boris is qrp af. I got into radio long ago because of NC Scout, who is now a bestselling author. He also has an online shop with gear for the prepared American. I can’t recommend his books enough. I suppose that going back to the brushbeater blog that has always influenced my philosophy on radio, as a preparedness skill, practical uses vs. just the sad mad hams yakking. So really a lot is to be said for knowing how to keep your radio signature low down as possible, operating on low power, using stubby antennas, using obscure frequencies, hopping frequencies, using separate frequencies to Tx and Rx, brevity matrix, there’s lots of stuff you can do to secure your comms, and you don’t need any fancy encryption. I suppose one must keep in mind anything you transmit can be detected if someone is looking. So listening is generally 1000x more important than Tx. So where does that leave us? Boris is over here, the anti fars, eavesdropping like the KGB.

So much so complicated… I didn’t even get into cellular. Phones operate up in microwave frequencies, shf, above U/V. The cell towers are basically like little repeaters, they’re everywhere. I did not get into meshtastic or lora or whatever mesh networks. I did not get into repeaters, nor dmr digital. Really I have no experience or more than layman’s knowledge except for repeaters, I’ve used a couple. Thing is I’m really not that interested in the whole repeater thing beyond I monitor them sometimes. As you can see though, very complicated. I’m mostly trying to come at this from the simple license free side and how it fits in pretty close to vhf/uhf amateur bands and also I think there are some uhf business allocations. As you can see I like low power. So I see handing off a simple soi, and a simple low power radio is great for non radio people. Perhaps the principle disadvantage to the license free as I see it is that there are so relatively few frequencies and they’re so well known. Otoh not a lot of people seem to be using them around here so that opens up a relatively decent amount of channels. It’s all a matter of perspective I suppose. Well until next time friends!

Radio Review: QYT KT8900d Initial Impressions

It finally came! Shoutout to one of my X mutuals. I don’t think he wants to be named, thank you ser! I’m very excited because I’ve wanted to try one of these mini mobile radios for quite some time. These offer some pretty decent power in a very compact package at a very reasonable price. There are several versions of this radio. The original KT8900 dual band, the KT8900r tri band and this KT8900d being the newest version I believe. The 8900d model appears quite a bit different from the outside than the older models. It has a much bigger display. It is sometimes called a quad band but that’s a bit of a misnomer. Technically this is a dual band quad watch radio, VHF/UHF. Ok so let’s get into it.

This radio comes packaged nice. Basically like any other cheap Chinese radio but I must say they do a nice presentation imo. The radio has a quality feel right out of the box to me. When you turn it in it almost sounds like an 80’s video game, like Galaga! The speaker is Loud, indeed a fantastic speaker in this little unit. So the look and feel did have me hyped right off the bat. I already had the stuff to hook this radio up immediately. It comes with a pigtail on the radio with a clear plastic connector. This has a DC power ‘cig lighter’ plug that connects to it, so you can keep this radio portable and plug it into any vehicle. The clear plastic end matches some other wires I had that were already adapted to Anderson connectors so I just plugged this into my power supply and hooked up my antenna. I was on the air in minutes getting acquainted with this little radio.

I had read/heard these little radios are basically the same as operating a Baofeng. Indeed I have heard they are basically a Baofeng with an amp so they’re putting out around 20w. I can confirm this operates very similar to a Baofeng. If you’re familiar with operating the Baofeng then this will become a fairly easy and natural radio to operate. Indeed with the quad watch I believe one can think of this as a ‘super Baofeng’. It’s basically like two Baofengs in one with 2-4 times the power. This to me gives it quite a bit of versatility. If you’re doing net control, or you are transmitting and receiving on different frequencies or bands with different groups, there’s a lot of versatility. I’m happy to report this little radio, at least my particular example, it’s fully opened up. It’ll Rx and Tx on FRS/GMRS and MURS frequencies I believe. Now, it’s not illegal but it IS, or unlawful? to use this radio to transmit on these frequencies, because it is not approved. I’m no sad ham. I’m not telling you what to do nor do I care. Not legal advice! I personally WANT opened up radios. It’s something I like very much about my 50w TYT Quad Band. Otoh my 2m Kenwood only does ham bands. Which is whatever for me but one could get in trouble if you didn’t have your ham ticket.

I suppose the Baofeng heritage is both the good and the bad of this radio. It’s what makes it affordable, and familiar to use. You do however indeed get some of the same drawbacks as the baofeng. I am saying this in comparison with a few other mobiles I’ve tried from Kenwood and TYT. This radio of course really isn’t comparable to these other radios, that must be kept in mind. The TYT TH9800+ is functionally closest to this radio. It really does quite a bit more, and it has twice the power. It’s also twice as big and nearly three times as expensive. So not really designed for the same market. The other TYT, the TH8000 and the Kenwood TM281a are both mono band radios. They are both bigger, more powerful and significantly more expensive. The QYT scans slow compared to any of these radios, and doesn’t seem to transmit as far. Of course it’s got half the power. Like I said I’m really not trying to compare a Corolla to a Lexus here, it’s absolutely no knock against the QYT, just like it’s no knock against the Corolla that it dosen’t have the Lexus performance. It’s not supposed to! I like Baofengs anyway, I’m no sad ham! They have worked pretty well for me actually.

So I’m overall quite impressed with this little radio. I have big plans to test it out! So far I’ve just made a quick uhf contact with a Baofeng, and I’ve scanned and received a little bit. I’ve hardly scratched the surface of testing this one. I do have plans for this one! Initially I had thought of turning it into a backpack radio, however I don’t think that’s going to work out. It WILL work but it’s not going to work as an ‘on the fly’ unit. I’ve had to reimagine the design I envisioned a little bit. It’s going to be more like other designs I’ve seen, which of course I now see why they built their portable systems the way they did. I believe that before I endeavor to build the portable rig I’m going to get a mag mount antenna and put it in the van, or any of our vehicles I choose actually. I have a CB magmount, I believe I’m going to put both this radio and a mini mobile CB I’m looking at in my van. I plan to explore the modularity and portability of this little radio to its fullest potential. Initial impressions are great, I’m having fun, stay tuned…