It was originally known as the engineers band. Like you say all that available was home brew and converted PMR radio's. The PMR gear is by far built to a much higher standard. It is a great band!!!!!
Hi Lewis, glad to see you on 4. We’ve had a 4 metre net up here in the North East for over 2 years now, usually around 6-10 on every Monday evening on 70.425 FM 👍🏻
Good video Many years ago I used to use a 70mhz pmr (licenced freq ) here in a Australia as part of a car rally Communications team used to work very well . They had both simplex and repeaters Always thought it was a good band interesting the locals here in Australia a pushing for a 70mhz segment so far have had no luck -john vk3wr
You forgotten to add that the 4m band was originally a UK only band! Radio Amateurs in the UK got this band in 1956 to replace the lost 5m band. In the last 10-12 years the number of countries in Europe having the band were low but today almost every country in Europe has it. Additionally, countries in Africa, Middle East and even Central Asia has the 4m band! Even the Falkland Islands has it!
Another interesting video Lewis 😁. Last time I was on 4m was over 30 years ago using a converted PYE Europa that I purchased from the Longleat amateur radio rally.
@@M0XTA1 they are saying ATSC 3.0 will allow better broadcasting on VHF-Lo, but I doubt it! That being said, it would be interesting to apply for an experimental license (Part 5) for this band.
@@FrancisLitanofficialJAPINOY I don’t understand your point. The ATSC channels are 6MHz wide. I know you just listed the pilot frequencies, but there will still be interference to the channel elsewhere in its 6MHz bandwidth.
Quite a bit of 4m activity on the midlands, I have a few PMR radios which I use regularly - usually the Motorola GM350, but also Tait 2000 and 8000 series. In the summer months I regularly have contacts on FM into Europe - probably S51 is my best DX. 73 G4VZO
Thank you for posting this video mate! I really appreciate it! I’ve been promoting the 4m band since I first came on it in 2009 and in my area 4m activity wasn’t that great. I helped to get many amateurs on the band but it’s not enough! Here in the London, Surrey, Essex and Kent area, 4m FM activity like you demonstrated on your video needs to increase a lot more! Me promoting the 4m band fell on deaf ears by many amateurs I know. They keep on winding me up or telling me that “The 4m band is dead” or “No one on it” which is preposterous and is not true! I’ve always been met with scepticism and negatively by amateurs regarding 4m and it needs to change! We all need to be more positive and try and encourage ourselves and others on the band to help increase activity on 4m FM! I hope this video will do just that and I’ve promoted your video on many U.K. Amateur Radio groups! So I hope you will get many more views and encouraging more onto the band at the same time! Selim M0XTA
Hi NPC - from my experience the choppiness you get when 2 metre mobile due to multipath is far less of an issue....Top Band mobile is fantastic in that respect too. Also I find the ground wave more persistent through and over difficult ground e.g. through forest and over low hills where the 2 metre line of sight just doesn't cut it. I live on the side of a hill adjacent to a forest and working stations 6 miles away over the backside of the hill is impossible on 2metres even using loads of power. It can be done on 4mtrs. Finally, if you like mucking around with radios getting them to work on the ham bands 4metres is ideal as there's a lot of cheap ex PMR gear around. All the bands behave differently and it's fun discovering which band works best for what you're trying to do.
@@npc9352 Because I feel that it’s a band we have had for over 60 years and in most of that time Amateurs haven’t utilised it enough and I feel more activity and more amateurs using the band is needed up and down this land.
Thanks for the video showing the use of the 4M band there in the UK. Seems a bit like the 220 (1.25M) band here in the states especially with regards to available equipment. I would imagine it has aspects of 6M and 2M as far as signal propagation Always enjoy your stuff Louis. 73, K0AZV
Like he said I don't have 4m in the USA but I've had a similar experience here with 6m. You can get super far contacts when there is a band opening. We also have a 5 site 6m repeater simulcast system in my area that covers the north eastern and south central part of the state that's fun to use.
When you get a lift on the 4mtr band the range can be astounding. I was chatting to a local from Epping using my Pye Westminster when his over was interrupted by persistent QRM....which turned out to be a station in Malta with whom I managed a quick QSO!. Aerial was a dipole and power around 12 watts. Is this the farthest contact for a Pye Westminster I wonder....
Hi - yep have a few Cambridges too. I'm a big fan of the valve PA. I use a Garex 2 metre rig too which Garex created from ex PMR Cambridges. Pete Longhurst can still supply ex PMR Icom 4 metre sets at good prices.
i used to use an ex prison service KEY pmr handheld which was like a wide brick from Titterstone clee hill. used a 1/4 wave counterpoise wire and had some good contacts on 4m.
What good timing - I literally just put my 4m folded dipole back up yesterday and powered my PA4DEN Philips FM1000 up for the first time ever last night.
Nice video Lewis. There’s a few more 4m sets about these days, such as the IC7100 and Ic7300, so hopefully more people who have these but who maybe have never considered the band will give 4m a go, in particular when the sporadic e season arrives. Cheers & 73 M0EUK
I wish we had access to the 4m band here in Australia. I've got a client with a 70/80 Mhz repeater (yes the duplexer is HUGE) and it give fantastic coverage.
Nice to hear of some activity on 4 metres, very much under used generally, and has some nice results if you stick at it. Heard many people talk about it, so most be worth a try. Thanks for mentioning it Lewis, 🙂👍
Hi Lewis, great video, I have a modified ex met police pye Olympic years ago and a 1/4 wave mag mount . When get the shack going get it up on the are . Regards 73s mark
Maybe a good idea would be to hold a relay net to circumnavigate the uk, with each station in the chain adding their callsign to the list, see how long to get around the uk?
If your getting a handy, the standard "ducky" is not much better than a dummy load. Get a whip from Spectrum Communications (Or Mydel if you're getting it from Martin Lynch, same thing) They're 20 inches long, flexible, with a loading coil about 8 inches from the bottom. Work extremely well. 73 de Tony
Was definitely one of my favourite bands in the mid to late 90's and we just used to rag-chew tecchy talk as then it was all home-brew or modified PMR.
It's a nice band is 4m. It used to be very popular among homebrewers as there was no ready-made gear available. Lots of fun to be had with old Pye Cambridge and Westminsters back in the 80's. Sadly I can't operate on the band from home any more as the noise level has jumped up. When I used to have a Westminster in the works van, on a Saturday morning I would spend a few minutes parked up in Hyde (east Mancs) and work a few stations over in Prescot, Rainhill and Huyton (Liverpool), with just 10 watts to a quarter wave magmount. 'Four' seems far less prone to screening by buildings etc than 2m or 70 cm.
Here in the US the 70 mhz band (72-75 mhz) is predominantly used for radio controlled cars, toys, and some wireless baby monitors. We have the 6 meter band 50-54mhz FM, AM, SSB - it's called the "magic band" because of the signal propagation - often several hundred to over 1,000 miles
The UK got the 4m band as compensation for the loss of the 5m band to Band 1 TV. 5m was 56MHz. We didn't get 6m and got 5m because the first harmonic would have been in the middle of the Police band that was in use then.
Love the video m8....Never knew on this & im well up for 4m... We need to get this up and running like the 8@8 or some form of 'net'.. Im really tempted now to buy one of those RT9000D's... It would be awesome if 4m became buzzing... 73
I had a dabble on 4m a couple of years ago and there was a surprising amount of local users, unfortunately the band is now unusable at my home due to interference but I hope to get some /M and /P operating done.
I had 4m wiper out years ago by a neighbour's faulty white meter heating timer. Ofcom found it, I replaced it for them. No interference and their heating worked properly again.
I used a converted Pye Bantam which I had to repair first for quite a few years going out walking in the hills and a pre-arranged time to contact two stations in the Stockport area over 30 years ago using a quarter wave telescopic whip. Interesting as I walked around hearing signal levels change. A.m. is dead now and I've had about two contacts from here since so it's just sitting here doing nothing. My furthest was into Scotland from a local hilltop after hearing a broadcast station close to 70.26MHz at home on the whip, probably Polish so conditions were good, I took a a h/b 3 element beam and he was in the hills doing the same. Perfect 5.9. each way at around 200 miles, not bad for my half Watt out. I went on Werneth Low a few times and got the two stations in Stockport on my whip. Not much activity in those days and xtalled only on 70.26 MHz. I'm hoping to put 4m and 6m ssb/cw on my h/b rig if I can, to which I'm just adding 60m. G4GHB.
Hi Bill, I remember a QSO with you back in the 80's when you had your AM Bantam and I was on my FM Westminster. A bit of off-tuning did the trick. Glad to hear you're still about and I see the odd letter from you in Radcom. I'm still in Dukinfield. Cheers Andy G1HBE.
@@andyhowlett2231 Oh, hi Andy. I thought when I saw a comment from Andy about my Bantam and thought he's in Dukinfield. I think we had a QSO from this QTH as well but I seem to remember you didn't get a great signal from me, then I got a Westminster and we worked a few times. RadCom no more from this month, I suffer with broadband QRM at S8 from 160m to just below 18 MHz and don't want to just read about radio! My hobby is destroyed since 4 years ago. Only 60m seems o.k. Sometimes noise on 2m as well. RSGB should be hammering at BT and Ofcom every year about it. Ofcom (no power to do anything) after 3 hours here said it's my unbalanced phone line. BT said they would charge me to take down their offending line. The Minister for broadband likewise had no idea what I was talking about. Bill, G4GHB.
Several years ago, I picked up a Motorola GM350 & GM950, for the 4m Band. In the U.S., 70 MHz (68 - 88 MHz) falls directly below the FM Broadcast band. It's set aside by the FCC for a variety of things, including R/C Airplanes, Remote Links for the Commercial Paging Industry, Utility Well Status/Reporting, & Radio Astronomy, just to name a few. Sadly, there is no 4m Amateur Band in the U.S. It's unfortunate, as it would be very interesting to study propagation in this area of the spectrum.
Interesting video. Nice to see a bit what 4 meters is like across the pond, not having it in the US. I think our Channel 5 TV, falls in that frequency, and still is used for some low band VHF digital TV stations here, though low band VHF is susceptible to noise. Most VHF stations on HD TV in the 🇺🇸 US rather use high band VHF, channels 7 to 13 for that reason. Retevis makes a lot and I have some of their equipment too. 73, Ray W2CH
Yes and if it wasn’t for VHF TV in the states you guys would have 4m by now. Here in Europe we’ve switched off VHF TV and we only have UHF TV, of course...
TRY HRD-831 or HRD-808 FM transmitter and transmit to 70.5 MHz from your MP3 player and see if distorts the sound from FM broadcast band to Narrow FM band like 4M band transceivers.?
hi there , my name is rick trim , 2e0rai , i recently purchased the retevis 9000d 4m , i have been trying to find a review on you tube but yours is the only 1 i can find , would you have any info on 4m clubs or nets that are around my area of dorset ? any info greatly recieved 73s for now
where i live , that band is now off limits to hams or at a setting of 5 watts erp. this is due to the usa turning on a certain type of radar that inhabits that band in the usa this is a shared band as the us military is the primary user and the ham is the secondary.
@@M0XTA1 n ever going to happen unfortunately - too much money iun the mobile phone world for that to happen. they sold off most of 600 meg and kicked the wireless mic busines out of it for cell phones, and now they're talking about removing 3 gig and other microwave bands for the same thing from the amateur community... money talks
Very interesting. We don't have the 4 meter here in the US, but there was an attempt to get it going about ten years ago. Apparently the station license expired and a renewal application was denied for some reason. According to this article, it might have been able to transmit transatlantic? forums.radioreference.com/threads/we9xft-70-005-mhz-cw.180335/ - 73 de KE8RLR.
Nice Qso Lewis. Just reactivated my G6 call after a 35+ year pause. Nocked a 2mtr colinear togeather today, it's rough (Wire in conduit) but works and will do until I can afford a beam. Been considering 4mtrs wonder how it will fair up here on the edge of the penises.
In the USA, Canada - and I think the UK as well, each of the amateur radio bands have specific calling channels/frequency. In the U.S. for 2 meters the FM calling freq is 146.5200mhz, for 70cm FM it's 446.0000mhz. I don't use the other bands, so I don't know off hand what the freqs are for the US 10m, 6m, 1.25m, 33cm, 23cm bands - but each of those have at least one for each mode FM, AM, SSB. Hope that helps.
Nice video Lewis. I used to do a bit of 4m FM mobile in the early 90's with an AKD and found coverage better than either 6m or 2m. 70 MHz seems to be a bit of sweet spot for propagation. I've not been of 4 for years but hope to get back on the band later this year from the Stafford area. 73 de G0DEZ.
Interesting. i have done quite a but of research on early USA police mobile comms in the 50's and 60's.o n around 42mhz,, their "low band"... apparently 100+ miles communication from police car back to base was possible. i guess the huge expanses of flat undulating landscape helped in the rural areas.
Hi Lewis, yes, a girlfriend of mine back in early 1990s mother was a district nurse here on Anglesey. She had a radio in the car to comm with ambulance, local surgeries etc. I think it was manufactured by Philips. It’s possibly in the attic!
@Richard Millican Hi Richard. Our Devon Fire Service used frequencies just above UK Ham top frequency of 70.500MHz. The Fire Service was scheduled to move to Tetra (Airwave), and maybe have done so already.
Interesting but I have enough to get my head around at the moment as a newbie without even more bands lol. Got to stop my brain going blank when the surprise of people actually replying to me on dx happens :-). 73 M7BLC
I STILL USE FM TRANSMITTER THAT TRANSMITS RUSSIAN OIRT FM BAND, JAPANESE FM BAND AND NORMAL FM BAND USING HANRONGDA HRD-831 bought from Aliexpress. 0.2W FM transmitter that transmits estimated 6 - 7 house neighbourhoods length.
The 54 MHz to 88 MHz has been for low band channel 2 through 6 9n the TV There were digital links that occupied the 72 megahertz range and I don't know exactly what they were or are but the best knowledge I have is they carried to point similar to microwave transmitter links and the data was for control systems and it was all digital I do not believe any amateur or analog voice or even digital voice is allowed between 54 MHz and 88 MHz with the exception of television use I have seen a lot of amateur and commercial radios coming from Asia that have ranges that here in the US are not allowed to be used such as the 250 to 300 MHz range and the 300 to 350 and the 350 to 420 I also see they have radios that do 520 to 660 megahertz which almost all of that has been reassigned for 5G These radios are great for finding bandwidth that is not in use such as the 300 band which is reserved for military aircraft there's pretty much nothing in that band and it's real tempting to set up a radio in that band because there's no interference and you get a long distance using an analog radio at 45 Watts you can easily get 60 MI but if somebody picks you up and figures out that it's you the consequences are dire
@@FrancisLitanofficialJAPINOY cool. The 300 band is military aircraft in the US. But I have seen a few people who bought the 350 to 400 MHz radios from Asia and are using them. The 350 band is empty and really great for people looking to not get interference from anybody else but it is US military aircraft and not supposed to be used by civilians
@@M0XTA1 It depends what the question is asking! (i) The radio in Lewis’ video is FM only. (ii) All modes (i.e. FM, AM, CW, SSB, Digital) are permitted on 4m Band (70MHz).
No. It’s usually 6m FM is quieter than 4m. There are people on 4m! I dunno what area you are in but maybe if you want to help increase 4m activity yourself, you need to talk to amateurs in your local area and encourage them onto the band if you think it’s dead? Selim M0XTA
@Craig Corson Hi Craig - I am a Limey, and I’m guessing you are a Yank? The word “low” is Northern England dialect for “hill”, most likely stemming from the Nordic language of Denmark and Scandinavia (the land of the Vikings - who had significant influence on the culture of Northern England). I guess, therefore, that it’s not one of those words that eventually made it across the pond. After all, it’s often claimed that UK and USA are two nations divided by a common language!
Seems like a lot of throwing calls around ? On 160m I throw mine start chewing through ten min and throw a call again but I hardly throw it after every over. Don’t get me wrong, like the vids and rather see those contacts vs old ant sites 🤣😉keep the info coming and yes play more radio ☺️
Some of us still play by the old rules - Callsign given at start and end of every over plus every 15 mins if your over lasts longer. That rule has been relaxed here in the UK in the not so distant past, but hey... you know... old habits die hard. And to be honest it doesn't hurt. Too many nets these days go on for far too long without any identification of either the net or of individual stations participating. Just my opinion. Regards de G1EKW
@@JulianGrammer Hi Julian. Au contraire. Under the old rules, UK Hams were NEVER required to transmit their callsign at the start and end of every over. Hams were ONLY required to transmit their callsign at the START of communications, and if the period of communication was longer than 15 minutes, at the end of each interval of 15 minutes. You are quite correct, this was changed (circa 2006) and the new rules (Rule 13) required that the station “is clearly identifiable at all times” and “the callsign is transmitted as frequently as is practicable during transmissions" (i.e. no time stipulation). However, many long-in-the-tooth UK Hams who haven’t read their Licence Terms since the WWII still believe the 1945 rules are still current! For me - I find there is unnecessary overuse of callsigns, most particularly during nets, when the content of the net sometimes seems to be more callsigns than conversation! Fellas - remember - only YOU have to transmit YOUR callsign when required. When handing over, just say back to you Jim, David, whatever!
Overlapped VHF CHANNEL 4 (67.25 - 71.75 MHz). Also used HANRONGDA HRD-831 FM TRANSMITTER FROM 60 - 108 MHz, set FM transmitter frequency to 70.4 MHz (if AUX device in low volume, you can hear some MP3 music into 4M HAM TRANSCEIVER. Simmilar to 4m HAM, 78 MHz CB RADIO in Thailand. It also overlapped Russian OIRT FM BAND (65 - 74 MHz)
