Baofeng radio questions - 8w vs 5w UV5R

soulie said:
as i said.....for wholesale and retail ,you cannot sell it unless approved .
Click to expand...
yeah look, the shops selling them is doing so illegal, a battle I am not even going to try and fight. That is Icasas job. What I can do, is my part for myself, and for that I got a license. Its a nice hobby and I really enjoy all the people in the BARK club.
 
Tinuva said:
yeah look, the shops selling them is doing so illegal, a battle I am not even going to try and fight. That is Icasas job. What I can do, is my part for myself, and for that I got a license. Its a nice hobby and I really enjoy all the people in the BARK club.
Click to expand...
exactly ,,it will never be curtailed ,if you can build your own even better ,enjoy the hobby its good fun ,ive been involved since Marnet days in the military .but these days its a dying thing unless heavily motivated by peers and friends ,for farm use though essential .even if you sell your home built unit on ,whos gonna query it . nobody .
 
Very interesting thread...

What happens with all the repeaters etc if there was a national blackout?
Would comms still work locally/internationally?

(total noob but very curious)
 
Muttley said:
Very interesting thread...

What happens with all the repeaters etc if there was a national blackout?
Would comms still work locally/internationally?

(total noob but very curious)
Click to expand...
Some repeaters run completely off battery and solar. The one repeater here in the western cape, the eskom bill was R3.5k per month. The western cape repeater group then opted to cancel that eskom power and now run of 2 solar panels and battery entirely. Will have to see how this work out this coming winter.
 
I see my el cheapo Nagoya antenna for R40 only measures 37.8cm....The genuine ones measure 39.6cm...
Will the difference in length make that much difference?
 
Jam Sandwich said:
Lol...I might have to dremel this R40 piece of engineering then and see whats in there....It kinda feels like bicycle shifter/brake housing anyway.... :laugh:
Click to expand...
depends entirely on the design ,and what channel it for ,way to complicated for a forum answer ,you can shorten an antenna and have high efficiency or lengthen it and lose efficiency ,no one size fits all .some recieve brilliantly and have losses on transmit ,other recieve poorly but are very good at transmitting .
see if you can find info on antenna capture area ,but will have to sort through the arguments for and against .
 
The other thing is, if the SWR is bad on the antenna, some of the power (more if worse swr) is reflected back to the radio. Eg. long use on a bad antenna will eventually damage the radio electronics. Maybe not so bad on low power radios, but definitely bad on high power radios.
 
Took that knock off Nagoya antenna with me on a ride this morning...obviously I wasnt transmitting but to be honest I found no noticeable difference sitting on the hill using the long antenna or the short one...Got the same traffic using both...
 
Jam Sandwich said:
Took that knock off Nagoya antenna with me on a ride this morning...obviously I wasnt transmitting but to be honest I found no noticeable difference sitting on the hill using the long antenna or the short one...Got the same traffic using both...
Click to expand...
When I use a fake nagoya (its branded something else), I get worse reception than the original antenna. So for me, I never going to use the fake ones it seems. The originals work good enough.

That said, looking into maybe building a flower pot antenna.
 
Jam Sandwich said:
Took that knock off Nagoya antenna with me on a ride this morning...obviously I wasnt transmitting but to be honest I found no noticeable difference sitting on the hill using the long antenna or the short one...Got the same traffic using both...
Click to expand...
@Jam Sandwich - how's the journey going?
 
Left Of Bang said:
@Jam Sandwich - how's the journey going?
Click to expand...
Lol...I'm still waiting for the local CPF guy to get back to me...thats almost a month so I'm likely just going to sell it on now..Ive had a bit of fun with it and learnt some interesting things, built a couple of aerials but down in the valleys where I stay I dont really pick up much traffic unless I take the radio with on a ride and sit on a koppie somewhere..
 
Bit of an update here.. Been testing out the radio with a friend... Getting around a 5km radius on and off in quite a hilly and Rocky area. The cheap ass Nagoya I bought seems to transmit better than the stock antenna but on the reception side it seems to introduce a lot more static...to be expected I suppose for what I paid for it.. .but I am pretty impressed with the little stock antenna... Seems to perform quite well... When I took a ride and a bit of a walk up to the highest Pont in our area the signal was still nice and strong around approx 8km away from my friend.

My home made external antenna also works quite well considering it took all of 20 minutes to put together with bits of crap out of the workshop. Some galvanized wire..screws and washers.. Bit of wood to mount it to and some random coax cable..
 
Jam Sandwich said:
Bit of an update here.. Been testing out the radio with a friend... Getting around a 5km radius on and off in quite a hilly and Rocky area. The cheap ass Nagoya I bought seems to transmit better than the stock antenna but on the reception side it seems to introduce a lot more static...to be expected I suppose for what I paid for it.. .but I am pretty impressed with the little stock antenna... Seems to perform quite well... When I took a ride and a bit of a walk up to the highest Pont in our area the signal was still nice and strong around approx 8km away from my friend.

My home made external antenna also works quite well considering it took all of 20 minutes to put together with bits of crap out of the workshop. Some galvanized wire..screws and washers.. Bit of wood to mount it to and some random coax cable..
Click to expand...
Sir hope you doing well, would like to ask if you are using 1 watt transmitter is it a must to apply license from icasa?
 
Splesh said:
Sir hope you doing well, would like to ask if you are using 1 watt transmitter is it a must to apply license from icasa?
Click to expand...
There are those PMR radios UHF band that don't require an Icasa license however the Baofeng UV5R you need a licence (I think some Baofeng radios are sort of banned in RSA)
 
I have a couple of ZARTEK ZA-730 UHF radios at home which we use to communicate when necessary.

My one Zartek's battery seems to have died now.

Instead of finding a replacement battery for the Zartek, are there any recommendations for getting another radio instead?

I see there's some mention of cheapish Baofeng radios in this thread; Are these still a no go?

I mainly want to use the new radio to communicate with the Zartek on UHF channels, but I'm not sure how to go about programming a different brand/make radio to the same frequencies as what the Zarteks use.

Besides the radio, where is the best place to source programming cables and the software?

Thanks!
 
Frankie23 said:
I have a couple of ZARTEK ZA-730 UHF radios at home which we use to communicate when necessary.

My one Zartek's battery seems to have died now.

Instead of finding a replacement battery for the Zartek, are there any recommendations for getting another radio instead?

I see there's some mention of cheapish Baofeng radios in this thread; Are these still a no go?

I mainly want to use the new radio to communicate with the Zartek on UHF channels, but I'm not sure how to go about programming a different brand/make radio to the same frequencies as what the Zarteks use.

Besides the radio, where is the best place to source programming cables and the software?

Thanks!
Click to expand...
Baofeng UV-5R for life, this man here knows radios and it is his favourite of all of them.
Cheap and easy
 
I have the Baofeng UV-10 which was a limited edition release, but basically the same thing. Love it
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter