gmrs and other radio adventures

[solarbird]

So I’ve been getting my radio game back together, since in adventurous times – particularly times with the possibility of particularly severe emergencies and communications troubles – it’s very good to have access to and practice with backup comms that will work under almost all circumstances.

I’ve also been brushing up on my Amateur radio skills, tho’ really in both cases this comes down to “buying and/or making antennas,” which has meant a bit of both, but particularly making antennas.

I feel like I’ve got the GMRS kit into decent nick. I need to make a longer-term version of the attic antenna rig; while I can do about as well in the highest front window, that setup is somewhat inconvenient and has to be taken down every day. So if I can just have something just set up full time somewhere out of the way, that’d obviously be much better. I’ve got it all worked out at this point, too; all I really need is cable. And to build a functional duplicate of my latest GMRS antenna.

There’s been a bit of a learning curve but at this point I can reach the West Seattle repeater on 15, the Beacon Hill on 16, the Queen Anne on 18 – hugely important, the busiest repeater, an unknown repeater on 19, the Maple Leaf repeater on 20, and the Snohomish repeater on 22. I can also occasionally reach the Redmond repeater on 17, but that’s kind of a best-conditions ping and I don’t know how useful it’d actually be given how weak my signal must be even when it does get picked up.

Also, I’ve gone ahead and coded up North Bend on 21, just to have it there even though there’s no way in hell I’ll ever reach it from here.

Meanwhile, over on the Amateur bands, the new 70cm/2m antenna – this one, I bought – has made a huge difference and really broken me out of my UHF Hole. I’ve been adding Amateur repeaters as I verify I can reach them, and I even managed to get the local 1.25m relay into parrot mode so I know my voice is audible for sure now.

So far tho’ GMRS is much more active, probably because it’s much easier and because the license doesn’t require a test. You can just buy one for $35 and it’s good for 10 years. And it works with FRS which requires no license at all.

It’s also far more limited – no HF component at all, just UHF, just FM, no arbitrary frequencies, just channels and repeaters – but low barrier to entry is most definitely a good thing here.

I’ve got more posts I want to get caught up on but tonight I just wanted to get something – anything, really – out there to celebrate digging my way out of this RF hole which is where I live. So, uh…

RADYA! Yeah! xD

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

Comments

[sistawendy]

TIL about the existence of GMRS!

[solarbird]

One of the nice things about GMRS/FRS is that cops can't fuck with you over it.

(FRS - since I didn't say it - is Family Radio Service, and little FRS handhelds still cost like nothing and despite that work extremely well. I paid like $10 each buying a three-pack two years ago. That same three-pack is $45 now, thanks to Shitstain, but $15 is still a pretty low barrier to entry.)

See, in some areas, if you bring an Amateur-class radio to a protest, cops can add on having a police scanner in the pursuit of whatever made-up crime they've decided to charge you with. It's an extra layer of charges. Even if your individual handheld unit can't scan police frequencies, they can still hold you longer while they "determine" that. Plus, those things cost money and they might decide to just steal - excuse me, "seize" - it.

But with a cheap little fixed-channel radio there's none of that bullshit. Even if they steal it from you, it's $15. Super worth it.

[stickmaker]

Back when I was into SWL (short wave listening) I had a full-wave 10 meter (IIRC; it's been many years) dipole in my parents' attic. It was a bit longer than the available space, so the ends overlapped a bit, though I was careful to keep the two wires well separated vertically. That shape didn't seem to have any effect other than some loss of directionality. This gave me good reception at a wide range of frequencies. It also had the advantage of being cheap! My only real expenses beyond the bare wire were the coaxial connections at the juncture of the dipole and at the radio and the short run of coax cable through the one, small ceiling hole just above my station. I even used this antenna for a bit of transmitting, though I mostly just listened.

[tornir]

You've got wooden RSJs...

I've built an inverted V antenna for a friend out of solid copper enamelled wire, suspended from the joists with fishing line looped through eyelet screws so it was clear of any surfaces.
Worked a treat, giving better Rx/Tx performance than his mag mount on a cookie tin.

Was cheap to make too.

[solarbird]

Do I? Cool! What's an RSJ? ^_^

(seriously I don't know what an RSJ is lol)

I'm gonna make a bunch of Amateur antennas, I think. For GMRS the... I don't want to say universal? But certainly most common polarisation is vertical because almost all units are HTs (which people hold vertically) or mobiles that use vertically on vehicle roofs.

Tho' I'll admit, I don't know how much of an issue it really is, given the other limits of UHF.

Mostly I just want to get something in the attic now. ^_^

[tornir]

RSJ = Roof Support Joist; the A-frame thingies holding up the sloped exterior roof.

Inverted-V is basically a quarter or half wave dipole with each element facing downwards at 45 degrees. You can make them multi-band by attaching different length elements parallel to each other.
Gain pattern along the axis is better than that of a vertical dipole or monopole.


Imagine the coax feeding up to the centre, which was hauled up into place by a length of fishing line going through an eyelet screwed into the apex of the RSJ, and the ends similarly attached to the ceiling joists.

Guy I built it for couldn't get permission from his landlord to mount an external antenna, so he was looking for something that didn't look like one to anyone looking in the loft.

[rmd]

Have you played around with Mesh at all? There's generally two flavors - Meshtastic (more ad-hoc) and MeshCore (with repeaters and routery things). It looks like there's a fair bit of activity in the area out there and I'm guessing that if there's a disaster that causes a lot of communications infrastructure interruption that mesh stuff might be more accessible for some folks than ham stuff, particularly for community level mutual aid stuff.

[solarbird]

A little. MeshCore has won out in this area, and I'm trying to coordinate with a neighbour but they keep going silent.