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!

Radioddity CB 27 PRO Initial Impressions

I love radios, that should be no secret by now. I’ve sort of done things backwards lol, I got my ham tech ticket first and I’m pretty heavily set up with vhf/uhf stuff. Oddly enough I’ve been really late to the party as far as one of the oldest and most common radio services in the USA, the CB or Citizens Band. I’d acquired a couple of old CB’s, really old boat anchors and an antenna. I played with them, one only receives and the other one is totally missing a wiring harness. So, the one that Rx only was acting wonky and shocked me and I was done! Besides I have a mobile antenna and no plans on wiring up a boat anchor from the 70’s in my truck…

The CB 27 pro!

The solution? Behold, the Radioddity CB 27 pro! Initial impressions are good, very good! This isn’t the cheapest CB on Amazon, but at $60 it’s close! It is the cheapest AM/FM CB, FM was just recently opened up as an fcc approved modulation option in 2021 is my understanding. So that’s an added function of this little unit. It’s debatable how useful that’ll be. Apparently it is useful according to NC Scout and Joe Dolio, not many people on CB, even less with FM so if you have two CB’s or more, a base/mobile at the toc and someone on your team with a CB HT that does FM, it’s one way to achieve “security through obscurity”. Yeah I want a CB HT now, amongst other things… Brushbeater store does have the QYT am/fm cb HT’s available. CB HT’s on general are actually more expensive than CB mobile units. CB Mobile units are all over the place in price too, you can pick something up like I did for $50-60 or people sometimes spend $200+ on various types.

This little guy, what’s not to like here? Nothing really for me. I like it a lot. This mini mobile has a super loud speaker, sounds great, imo you won’t need an external speaker. It’s a really simple little thing, CB’s in general are. The scan is pretty fast. I think it’s really great actually, you have 40 channels aka 40 different frequencies this operates on in the 11 meter band. 4 watts of power, that’s it, cb is 4 watts. Channel 6, the Super Bowl is still apparently a thing. Someone said on twitter ‘it ain’t a cb unless you have a vox mic down in Alabama transmitting up and down the entire eastern seaboard”. Also apparently Kansas… I have to laugh, these guys and their amps just blatantly flipping the bird to the fcc! Me I don’t know anything about that, like I said this is my usual “I bought the cheapest radio on Amazon” and I just want everything plug and play type review. Anyway Boris is more about listening than transmitting, although that’s fun. But it will not be fun in shtf. Listening is 10x 1000x more important than transmitting.

Here is the complete modular radio bar, I was contemplating a separate article but I’ll just drop this here real quick instead. I just slapped together this little base/riser that just fits on the dash of the van, I call it my “radio bar”. Free, stupid simple but it works perfectly! Everything is modular here, I’m just plugging into accessory power, both radios have acc power jacks. If you’re familiar with the qyt here it is in comparison with the cb 27 pro. Both of these are very compact radios. They’re roughly half the size of many larger mobiles. The next phase is to experiment with more batteries and building a couple of different portable power box designs I want to build. This about is a wrap. This little radio is light years ahead of legacy CB’s from the ‘golden age’ old junk boat anchors. I’m happy so far, and definitely this seems like a great way to jump into cb for a very minimal investment! Until next time friends! 73, breaker breaker!

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…

Portable Power and the Anti Jammer Rig Part 1

I may be getting the QYT mini mobile soon. So the plan here is ultimately to build a portable all in one radio setup in a small Harbor Freight ammo can. So to start with this project is going to be as super simple and cheap as possible. So of course I’ll begin this article by rambling on tangentially…

Already this project has led me down a rabbit hole. It was really inevitable, also necessary to go down this rabbit hole. What I’m talking about is portable power sources for 12 volt devices like radios. Of course the scope of possibilities is really wider than that. A couple of my Twitter mutuals have shown me portable power stations in ammo cans they have acquired or built. I really don’t have a ton of knowledge or experience, probably just enough to be dangerous! It’s a big field, the different types of batteries out there. Some of these setups use lithium ion power tool batteries. There are adapters available that step down voltage from various 18-20v power tool batteries to 12vdc power. One note on these is to make sure the transformer has or add low voltage shutoff protection so you don’t damage your batteries. I will definitely be building something like this at some point. I will be using 20v DeWalt batteries because that’s what I already run. I don’t have nearly enough batteries so I won’t be running this initially. DeWalt batteries aren’t inexpensive, and the feedback from twitter about aftermarket replacements is that they are not good. But seeing these portable power stations with USB ports, 12v outlets, they’re very cool and I’ll definitely have to build one. These are the only lithium ion option I’m considering because lithium ion batteries can be dangerous.

Another option aside from the DeWalt or other tool batteries are different various small batteries. I’m familiar with these batteries from things like Power Wheels toys, emergency lighting, or stair climbers if you’re familiar with any of these things. The simplest of these, also the cheapest are SLA or sealed lead acid non spillable batteries. I’m probably going to use one of these initially for this project. They have lead, they are heavier. They are not the most efficient. Like I said, they are available for the least cost, and I have confidence that the charger I already have will work for them. Similar to these SLA batteries but lighter and more power dense are Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries, LiFePo4. I’m not sure my charger will work with these. I may need a charger that specifically can charge LiFePo4 batteries. Some of the batteries I’m looking at do say they have some built in battery protection/charge control circuits so I may be wrong, they may work fine with my charger. However I really want to be sure and I believe it better to be safe than sorry with batteries.

So I’ve covered some options for off grid radio battery power. I’ve covered some charging options a little bit however these are 110vac grid up charging options. What about grid down charging options? Right now my only option is to use my vehicles to charge things. I have to run tests on the feasibility of this. Basically now I’ll just have to plug in 110vac chargers like the DeWalt charger or a Baofeng charger into a power inverter in the vehicle with it idling. We use the vehicle with USB adapters to charge cell phones as well. It seems to work, it’s the only option I’ve got right now. I have a Battery Tender brand solar panel that plugs into the 12vdc outlet in the vehicle that’s supposed to charge the vehicle battery. I really need to test this better! I need to hook things up and get my meter out and see what the numbers are. I would like to get some kind of portable solar panel and charge controller that can charge 12v batteries like the SLA batteries, or hopefully LiFePo4 too. I’ve done a bit of research but I have so much more to do! A lot of this will really require a bunch of testing to see what kind of real world results I get. Looking at solar panels I definitely will want one that’s big enough with plenty of adapters. There are little ones with USB only but I definitely need adapters, I’m not just trying to charge phones here.

Screenshot

Screenshot

OK now that I’ve spent three long paragraphs rambling on about changing options let’s finally get into it. What I will need initially is the radio, the battery, the box, some coax, an antenna, odds and ends like connectors, grommets… I think I’m going to order the BNC gooseneck antenna available over at the Brushbeater store. Annnnd actually our story takes a turn. I talked to the man himself and the BNC gooseneck will not work. With a little more research I found I’ve actually stumbled on a bit of a problem. I’m not the only person to attempt to build such a beast as this backpack radio. The gooseneck antenna is intended for HT’s. So I suppose I can see why it wouldn’t work. It has no ground plan. It’ll probably resonate wrong attached to coax, the coax will become part of the antenna. So it appears it just may not be practically possible to attach an antenna to the unit that can be used on the fly. One will have to stop and deploy something like the jungle antenna or a J pole/Slimjim. If that’s how it is it just may have to be that way. Perhaps a high powered enough HT with a good upgraded antenna is the ultimate practical radio to defeat jamming on the fly. 10 watt units like the Baofeng ar152 or TYT th uv 8000 especially seem to offer the most power. These HT’s will likely be very effective at overcoming COTS jamming. Between the power and simply being able to operate on a frequency the jammer is not on. Both are probably good choices.

Screenshot

I found these little rigs with a quick search. It’s pretty much exactly what I’m talking about, what I was trying to build, but really better because it’s all integrated. It’s actually only marginally more expensive than the QYT in a box concept I came up with originally would cost! So I would LOVE to get a hold of one of these to play with.

So I’m pretty sure I’m getting a qyt so where does that leave me? I’m re evaluating my build. Perhaps, it really looks like I’ll have no choice but to use this as a stop and setup real quick off grid radio vs. an on the fly hi powered radio. So I’m still planning to build something out of a Harbor Freight ammo can. It’ll really wind up being a power source box, with my own little twists, that can hold the radio inside, water resistant, and then hook up and power the radio also. What I’m building WON’T be an anti jammer rig really. It’ll have the power and frequency range jammers won’t bother it, but it won’t be set up to be deployed that way. Maybe it could? Perhaps, but I think it’ll work better with the revised design. For now this will be something light and compact to carry, but I will have to stop, set up and deploy an antenna.

I actually think the first thing I’ll do is run the QYT in the van. I believe the QYT and the Radioddity both come with cigarette lighter plugs. So my plan is to just use them in the van but figure out a clean and temporary way to mount them. I’ll need an antenna for the QYT and I need a CB for my CB antenna. I just don’t feel like semi permanent mounting the radios in the van. I don’t feel like messing with the 2m Kenwood I’ve already got semi permanent installed. It’s nothing I can’t undo but it’s more work than I want to do. OK I’m about done with this rambling article. This mess is almost stream of consciousness, absolutely me brainstorming out loud. The good news is I have a plan on what to get, what to build and how I’m going to set it up. A partial plan anyway, subject to change of course as I build things and figure out something doesn’t work, or perhaps something that does I didn’t yet think of. I suppose this is the beginning of a multi part series. I am planning on doing a multi part series of how I build all this and my impressions testing it. I will be doing this as radio’s and various parts to make them work arrive. So stay tuned, no pun intended. It is about to get less theoretical…

Happy Easter 2024, He is Risen! and Radio Musings…

Happy Easter everyone! It’s the most important day in Christianity. Indeed the most important day in the whole history of the world. This day is the end and the beginning of the greatest story ever told. I am a Christian am called to spread the gospel. I’m a low key kind of guy. I really don’t feel right putting it in your face or demanding. I just am a passionate believer and I am called to spread the gospel as a missionary disciple. You only have to do one thing, you only have to accept one God, declare Jesus Christ as your lord and savior.

Ok on to my hobby… Super mundane compared to the other topic but I have to have something to write about. It seems like a lot of new stuff is on the market, same as the old stuff… That’s really not fair, entirely. There DO appear to be 32 new flavors of Baofeng/Pofung/B Tech radios, most of which, in typical Baofeng fashion are a repackaging of the exact same thing. Mine are all older, the original uv82 and uv5r models. I do think a lot of the change is driven by the fcc going after the ‘unlocked’ B radios a few years ago. It seems like a lot of these bfangs are now slightly modified and sold as compliant GMRS radios. Without having done any testing myself I can’t speak definitely on the details of any of this. They’re saying on twitter that some radios after a certain build date can’t be unlocked. Apparently some can by pushing a correct sequence in? I don’t know. I of course prefer the unlocked radios for scanning and preparation purposes. I am a ham, I listen way more than I transmit. I do not cause harmful interference for anyone. But some do so in swoops the nanny state. I have heard newer build baofengs are ‘cleaner’ than old ones. One of my X mutuals is running one of the many newer repackaged B fangs, can’t remember which ones but he likes them…

Certainly there are good and bad points about the B fang. It’s a super cheap entry into radio, Amazon has been having crazy sales lately. You can learn a lot and it’ll do a lot more than most realize. A lot of folks have complained about its durability. Well, it IS a $25 CCR (cheep Chinese radio) so lower your expectations. I’ve actually had good luck with my various baofengers, some of them have gotten knocked around pretty good. I’ve only had a fail in one out of 7. But what if you want to upgrade a little bit, spend a little more although we’re still talking the $60-100 or so range. NCScout has been very enthusiastic about the Baofeng AR152. It looks like a military radio, the guts are basic baofeng however. He is finding it more rugged I understand, and it has a HUGE battery and extended battery life. The AR152 I don’t believe is waterproof however… Still, the endorsement of this radio, 10w power and huge battery make it a contender for HT’s I’d like to try.

Speaking of waterproof, I had a chance to talk to PNWGUERRILLA the other night on twitter. I was already aware from his vids he wasn’t a big baofeng fan. His experience in the damp climate in the Pacific Northwest is that the Baofengs were failing a lot due to not being waterproof or water resistant. His own choice of radio currently is the Radioddity GS5B. It’s an IP67 waterproof radio, 5w Tx power. It seems very interesting, to me. Another one for the I’d like to try it list… I did notice that B fang is offering an ip67 rated model, the uv9r pro. It’s a lot less expensive vs. the Radioddity option, I’d be interested in comparing these.

Speaking of PNWGuerrilla I was watching another video and noticed one of the guys using a TYT th-uv8000. I’m interested in trying a couple of TYT HT’s. I’ve had good luck and very positive impressions of a couple of TYT mobile radios I’m running and I’d like to try their HT’s. They offer a basic dual band, the th-uv88 at around the b fangs price point and I’d be interested in comparing this to a uv5r. I actually think the TH-UV8000d is at the top of my HT wishlist. Good reviews, 10w power capability, and cross band repeater function built in. Idk it is very interesting and I want to try one. TYT also makes some DMR HT’s, these look interesting too.

Quansheng has a new HT out, the UV K5. It’s very affordable, and they say it offers airband receive capability. This one sounds interesting. Apparently it has a Roger beep that sounds like a frog? That should be fun… Wouxun (ocean!) has some options available but they seem a little more pricey than everything else I’ve discussed. This is really going to have to be a part one of two post. I only covered a few dual band HT’s I’m interested in. I actually have quite a bit more ground to cover so stay tuned for part 2…