Are there any Radio / Electronics experts (or a good understanding) on the site?
I have a question I need answering.
Just ask and see what you get back!
Adrian
yellow violet red
MUF Maximum usable frequency
quote:
Originally posted by SALAD
Are there any Radio / Electronics experts (or a good understanding) on the site?
I have a question I need answering.
Thanks Richard. What is his user name?
What level of radio license do you need to set up a repeater & if you set up a repeater to cover a 2km site that has a big hill in the middle,
does everyone who uses a radio need a license to use it or would your radio license cover everyone else?
Hows that for a question?
Friend runs events over large sites and had an issue over the weekend that they have huge dead spots with the pmr 446 radio's. As you can't
legally run a repeater on 446, he was wondering about upgrading to a proper radio.
No worries, found him.
For events such as that I would consider hiring radios.
You can hire repeater base stations and handportables for weekends or for much longer periods.
You can get licenses that cover small on site systems or ones that cover wide area's, but generally they are fixed and can not be moved around
from site to site.
PMR446 just allows for back to back coverage and has frequencies in UHF and VHF bands. You can not have fixed stations on it.
If for a company that does national shows then you can buy a Licence to allow operation across the UK, but at a price.
There are details on the Ofcom website. a good start may be here.
http://licensing.ofcom.org.uk/radiocommunication-licences/business-radio/.
Adrian
[Edited on 19-10-10 by AdrianH]
Geoff is your man his username on here is wilkingj. hes got garage full of radio gear and an antenna taller than his house in the back garden 
Thanks Ash, Geoff was recommended too.
Got some impressive coverage with PMR446 gear when I was running an internet VOIP > walkie talkie link/gateway a few years ago
Height and clear line of sight is the key with UHF and its quite amazing how well low power can work
using jack plugged mic/speaker wires and power and put walkie talkie on long pole and got some pretty impressive results
AFAIR Ofcom got wind of what was happening ref linking via VOIP to extend the range (over several continents!) and their stance was pretty much as
long as we werent modifying the radios there was little they could do as we were not breaking any rules
It got me "into radio experimentation" and I went on to get my full ticket after a bit of studying (as did a few others that were playing
with the system)
I'm by no means an expert in RF (but have a valid license to experiment with) but will try and help
(have access to some test gear if thats what you need help with..and I'm fairly local)
Regards
Rob
[Edited on 19/10/10 by robocog]
Altitude and line of site certainly do seem to be important for PMR. Up on the slopes I've had massive range (miles) out of some cheap PMRs. Meanwhile the same radios at sea level with a few chunky houses in between the radios struggle to make a couple of hundred meters!
Why not just ask the question and see if we can help.
Cheers,
Bob