Great video Andy. As a repeater builder/owner myself it's hard work getting all these boxes up and running, but.... it's worth it when you hear people using it and enjoying it as you do. Good on you mate, keep it up.
Unfortunately as time goes on there is less UHF CB repeaters (cavity duplex components for UHF CB are worth 50 time's the cost of amateur radio counter parts) The cost of new duplexers and maintaining old units becomes very cost prohibitive for old & prospecting customers. The narrow band filtering requirements is the major cost. As a result the future for UHF CB repeaters in Australia is unprosperous.
my local repeaters are really active, but I had to watch an etiquette video to figure out how to not get ghosted. donating for a years membership, calling break to cut in and say hi, and listening to learn call signs and who’s who. I’m definitely going to try this handheld tuning idea - thanks andy
Not sure if its different over there in europe (assuming thats where you are), but at least here in the states calling "break" on a repeater is usually seen as bad etiquette if its not an emergency or anything serious where you really need to get through. Typically what I do and what I see other people do is just to put in their callsign between the others transmissions so the other people can pick you up in their conversation. "No, breaker-breaker is not acceptable in normal operating procedure. If a true emergency situation exisits, then a simple "Break" is acceptable." Looks like breaker or break is typically used in an emergency scenario, so keep that in mind, and happy operating! 73s, Sam
Ordered the surecom meter, its surprisingly well made. Love the radio vides. We have a running joke up north east of the M3 mafia lol proper wind up the cardigan brigade. Even made qsl card wearing balaclava with my glasses on the outside. Have a great week Andy. 73 from M3... 👍
I am the repeater keeper / owner of a UK DMR repeater. It's based on a Motorola SLR5500 and a colinear on the side of my home and completely self-funded. During lockdown I decided to go through a couple of learning curves, so started off building a Linux Plex server based on an ex-production IBM server, built a pfsense firewall, added a 10Gbit switch and a couple of other servers, then decided to make the network resilient by adding a fallback internet connection and UPS systems to keep it up in case of power loss, built a QO-100 satellite ground station with GPSDO's on the LNB, TX, RX and up converter and then decided to get the license / build the repeater as there isn't one on the Phoenix network in the area. So the repeater lives in my rack and has UPS and is pretty resilient. Its about 350ft ASL. It's been quite an interesting couple of years. The licensing procedure was really easy with help from the RSGB and pretty rapid and putting it on the Phoenix network was a doddle with a little help from the Phoenix UK admins. I'm really chuffed with the results. I need to do some video's.
Yeah defo do some videos. Sounds really cool! I was really into DMR about 7 years ago and setup a local repeater (self funded) GB7HA which was migrated to GB7BZ in the end. We had ARS enabled using a Linux box running ARSED!😅 and you could ping DMR radios in the area to find out who was active! That was awesome for range testing, it also forwarded GPS info to the APRS network. Its come a long way since then!
Have you seen my other videos?! I love a bit of FPV, I've got a couple of self built quads and my latest one is the babyhawk 2, I'm running TBS tango 2, DJI FPV v2 goggles!
@@andykirby it really doesn't surprise me that you already dabble in fpv, no I haven't seen any of your fpv content, the quads I fly on my channel are all 5" racing and freestyle stuff except for my emax tinyhawk 2, all analogue with fatshark Dominator hd goggles, ExpressLRS control link with jumper t16 pro hall
You said maybe If you stick it on a drone! That’s exactly what I’ve been thinking about doing. I have a DJI inspire 1 that I rarely use anymore and it can lift 5ish lbs. I’m thinking about connecting with 20 foot of nylon string my Tyt-8000d 10watt handheld radio to the bottom in the crossband mode. I will connect a diamond SG7900 supergainer antenna 62inch directly to the radio. The talkie and antenna weigh in at 1.5lbs. Shouldn’t be a problem for the drone to carry it up to as much as 400 feet which is the legal limit in the US I can take the drone up to. What do ya think?
I've found the RSGB repeater coverage maps to be somewhat pessimistic if anything. My nearest 2m repeater ( GB3BI ) can be accessed with 500mw on an HT from 40 miles away quite easily I've found. I think it does sit on a 1200 foot hill though. MM7EGM.
Andy, Can I ask what app you used to program your Ft-5DE or did you do it manually ? Cheers mate. Dafydd M6ULU As for Lewis.. I can spit on him from here (Almost!)
Hi Paul, it's a comet SMA99, check out vertical dipoles as well, would be pretty easy to make and more effective for PMR446 ham.stackexchange.com/questions/644/handheld-dipoles
Andy, have you looked at Helium crypto mining at all? Radio and antenna play involved with it. Getting an actual miner however is a problem globally at the moment. In my opinion your radio and antenna skills seem suited for the tech. Would be fun to watch your take on the tweaking and tuning of it.
I've read HTs put out less watts due to battery voltage drop. So if you had a bench PSU and graphed the differences... You could build a lithium pack with more volts and power the HT 'externally' from a 12v adapter in a backpack, if you need extra steady watts on the go. I'd try it on a cheap radio, it'd be useful for SOTA users with lots of talking, or a power hungry 10W or 25W HT. Maybe use a wire J-pole for safety. I guess you could use a voltage regulator (noisy?) to keep it at peak power. I've seen people use 18v tool batteries but have to drop it to
Really power isn't the most important thing when transmitting. Its all about your antenna. To increase your signal one S unit (The S scale, used for judging signal strength that goes from 1 to 9 if you might not be familiar) you need to double your power output, so the different from for example 5 to 10w isn't going to be massive. Essentially, it doesn't make much of a difference to the person on the other end, but it does make a huge difference on your battery life, haha. Get your antenna up as high as you can, get more well tuned antennas, and even consider antennas that may be directional or have higher gain (Higher gain gives you more effective radiated power, and also helps you block out signals that you might not want to hear/might not want to be causing interference for you).
Antennas will be more lenient in terms of reception if they're not tuned for what you're trying to receive. However, it will always help reception to have a tuned antenna. Basically what I mean to say is that while you can RX stuff on a untuned antenna, you will probably find better results using an antenna that is tuned. (Especially if you're trying to RX weak signals or signals that have alot of noise over them). Also as a note on SWR, with higher power transmitters, SWR is VERY important. If you're outputting higher power and you have a high swr, more power is going to be reflected into your radio and dissipated as heat. Heat kills electronics, and can shorten their lifespan, so if you're for example doing 50 or 100 watts, make sure you have a tuned antenna, or you may end up burning your radios power amplifiers up! 73s, Sam
@@andykirby great videos, good info, I'm gonna have to bite the bullet and get licensed after 40 years on CB / 11 metre and and all those legal and "tolerated" radio use!! Something my late father always aspired to but never achieved. Great channel, not condescending and great fun.... I do have a Pontiac Firebird for sale if you wanna upset Greta Thunberg 👍😉😂😂
They have put up new towers on the edge of our town, look similar to that, they have flat panels densely bunched, one of them has a spiral thing just underneath. Are these 5G towers ? they've put them less than 50 metres from peoples houses.
5:41 now I'm wondering if you could use a wet string as an antenna. Cut it to length, rub it down with salt, and hang it outside in the rain. It might be conductive enough.
There was a type of a military antenna for battleships which basically consisted of a jet of high-pressure salt water which was somehow tuned and used on HF, and then of course could just be switched off and the antenna would disappear. So saltwater antennas are actually a thing!!
On VHF AND UHF you lose a lot from pl259s try tnc/bnc/N Type You could try what is called a rats tail on a handy as the body are plastic so no earth to the hand like on some old ones that had metal sides.
@@glennwillems9924 many studies/articles about the characteristic db loss of UHF connectors (PL-259, SO-239 & barrels/double female). Depending on the source of info & assuming proper installation, it is held that the loss of a PL-259 used for 11 meters is around . 1 or . 2 db per connector. Also look at a coax calculator.
@@glennwillems9924 In the true spirit of amateur radio … why not experiment yourself ? From my own experiments on 2m I think that you may well be pleasantly surprised with your findings … 73
Send lewis my way, I'll show him some solid 600 - footers. He might have to hop across the pond, but I assure you: he won't be disappointed. We'll even do them at night!
If the telecommunications companys are using these relay arials , they make a huge stack of cash get them to fucking pay for the maintenance and upkeep of them , always bleeding the bloody poor lot the only reason I mess about with CB radio is I'm dead broke I can't do shit go places so anonymously I listen to the crap on cb radio
