Hey, Downs! I hate to revive such an old thread here, but I'm planning on doing this setup now fairly soon.
I've used repeaters in the Dallas area, and I've gotten mixed results on different occasions in different conditions; but then again, I'm using the stock rubber duck and no other additions - I was wondering, the way you have things setup, do you usually get pretty good feedback going down the road and good frequency receive/transmit? Is your audio pretty clear?
Look forward to your response!
Yeah the BAOFENG rubber duck is garbage. This thing. It's practically
You can grab a NAGOYA 701 (8") or 771 (16") for less than 20 dollars on Amazon. I've really gotten to like the AV-85 antennas that now come on the UV-82s and the BF-F8HPs. You can get them for about 5 or 6 dollars and some folks testing has shown performance as good as the NAGOYA 701 antennas.
All of my feedback has been positive both simplex and repeater. I attribute this mostly to my headset setup. Most times they can't even tell I'm on a motorcycle unless I forget to close the visor. When my buddies and I are riding and running Simplex audio is crystal clear but all three of us run the same SENA setups.
I love those Baofeng UV5R radios, my entire family are paraglider pilots and we use these radios. They are great value, we have had them a few years and never had a problem, they also will go out of HAM range and allow us to use the paragliding authorized frequencies 158.400 MHz. I am a licensed Ham, and my wife and daughters have all passed the USHPA license test and have licenses to use the 5 authorized USHPA frequencies. We have 4 of the radio, we tried several other cheap Chinese makes, but they all had issues, the Baofengs have been the only radios that work reliably. Highly recommend them.
Gary
Those paragliding freqs aren't AM? I did Ultralights for about a year and we operated on standard airband frequencies all the time. I used a little talkabout a few times to coordinate with my at the time girlfriend when doing long flights or just poking around the airfield. I just ran a Yaesu FT-310 on a mount for that stuff and kept the talkabout tucked into a pocket on my flight suit.
What are these used for? Are they like a CB radio on steroids? Like a desktop HAM?
They are used for short range local comms. They are like a CB radio in the fact that they use radio waves haha. CB radios tend to be much larger and clunkier and the frequency range they operate in isn't nearly as suited for local comms like these little UHF/VHF radios. CB also operates on AM (Amplitude modulation) vs FM for most UHF/VHF handheld radios.
I've found that the range on these radios is more than adequate for most riding situations and take up less space and weight than a CB radio.
These operate on the same bands a Base Station or mobile HAM radio would operate at but at lower power. HTs are limited on power for various reasons the biggest being the amount of battery you can pack on board, the available area to act as a heat sink and RF exposure limits. Anything much past what these Handhelds operate at and you don't want it to be that close to your brain haha. You limited to 1500 watts total power. To put that into perspective most HTs run on 4 or 5 watts. Or about 300 times less power than is legally allowed. But most VHF/UHF radios dont' operate nearly that much power. 50 to 75 watts is pretty standard for mobile and base station radios set to "high" power.
I still have a CB mounted in my Jeep but the only reason for that is some of the local Jeep clubs still use CB but not many. With the proliferation of the little HAM handhelds and the ease of getting a HAM technician license (I spent 5 dollars to take a 35 question test I completed in 10ish minutes and the FCC had my callsign loaded the week after) most clubs are pushing for their membership to get these radios and make the switch. In recent years CB has become almost useless except at very close range due to a variety of factors. IMO the biggest one is the proliferation of high power inline amplifiers that guys have taken to using (illegally) on their CBs which basically blows out the whole band.