Not sure mate, they are pretty basic but will do me for what I need.
It says they have a 3km distance so can't imagine them being to powerful.
They are 80 channel and for $29, can't go wrong.
Im heading down to Aldi too to see if I can score one of them too.
Cheers
Brett
-- Edited by Shogun on Thursday 22nd of August 2013 11:29:40 PM
Shogun said
05:14 AM Aug 23, 2013
Just got myself a set of the Oricom UHF portable radios at Repco today.
Not to bad for $29.00. Basic but work well.
Brett
copper1 said
05:22 AM Aug 23, 2013
Hey Brett 3w or 5 might head down tomorrow and have a look have been waiting for the Aldi UHF to come on sale sat morn already have the aerial from evil bay.
VKPORTABLE said
11:52 AM Aug 23, 2013
Don't believe the garble about 3, 5, 10 Km range to much. Unless you're standing on top of a mountain. With UHF a good thing to keep in mind is - Line of Sight, if there is something large between you and who you want to talk to, you may have problems communicating.
Depending on the power output, with a hand-held under normal conditions your range will be variably, highly depended on your surrounding topography and clutter (trees/buildings). If in a clear, let's say desert or country area with no structures or trees then it 'may' be possible to achieve the 3Km stated, don't get upset if it doesn't happen though.
The lower the power the less the range - although having said that the difference between 3 Watts and 5 Watts will not be noticeable in general use, anyone that tells you that 5 Watts as opposed to 3 Watts is going to give you greater range hasn't much of an idea. To increase your signal strength marginally you need to double your power.
For example: 2 > 4 Watts - 4 > 8 Watts and so on.
Another great thing about hand-helds is the antennas that come with them are invariably not resonant on the frequency in which they are operating, and are of a broadband design. If you removed (if able to) the supplied one and made a 1/4 Wave resonant (tuned) to 477MHz you would in some cases see an increase in range. If the radio get's hot while you are using it and talking for awhile it's either the antenna is not resonant or the radio has bad heat dissipation, or both.
Wombat 280 said
05:07 AM Aug 24, 2013
I think I read 0.5 watts. It's the ariel that gives you the range buy a good ariel and you may get a little more distance line of sight. They do work well for convoy work or a helping hand when reversing with the aid of mother but not much more
Shogun said
04:05 AM Aug 25, 2013
They are only for an emergency Wombat, so ineckon they should be fine :)
Got myself the aldi UHF and having it installed Wednesday. Looks ok to me so will see how it goes :)
VKPORTABLE said
09:37 AM Aug 26, 2013
Wombat 280 wrote:
I think I read 0.5 watts. It's the ariel that gives you the range
Half a watt, gawd your doing to work some serious DX with that arn't you? You would want a terribly high-gain antenna to get any decent distance out of 500 Mw.
It's a bit of a misconception that a lot think that a higher gain antenna will provide you with greater power. Transmitter output power and ERP (Effective Radiated Power) which comes out of the antenna are two different animals.
For example: With a transmitter output power of 0.5 Watts (or 500 Milli-Watts, depending on how you want to say it) with a 5 DBI antenna will give you an ERP of 964 MW, or just under 1 Watt. A 12 DBI antenna gain would give you 4.83 Watts. I'm not aware of any hand-held antenna that can provide this level of gain, it is more the domain of large co-linear verticals and yagis.
If you have connectors and coax in-between the transmitter and the antenna then these will also effect the amount of power reaching the antenna. For most typical installs in vehicles, with 5m of coax and assuming a resonant antenna the loss is going to be 2.118 DB, or 1.6 Watts, so therefore you only have 3.4 Watts getting to the antenna (this is not taking into account loss of connectors, PL-259's are a lossy contraption) your ERP will be 15.1 Watts with a 6.5 DB gain antenna, or 6 Watts with a 3 DB antenna.
To get any practical increase in signal you need a 3 DB increase at the transmitter, and then your still talking a minimal increase. So to increase your signal marginally with a 5 Watt transmitter you would need to increase the transmitters output power to 10 Watts, next increase would be 20 Watts and so on.
Antenna gain in basic lay-man terms is the antennas ability to radiate RF (signal) from the radiating element (antenna). Greater the gain the flatter the radiation angle, lower the gain the higher the radiation angle. So in very mountainous areas high gain antennas will actually decrease your range rather then enhance it due to the angle of radiation they exhibit.
Anyway I could go on about all this until I fall asleep, y'all just lucky I need a coffee refill :)
Mark said
11:32 PM Aug 26, 2013
ZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
-- Edited by Mark on Monday 26th of August 2013 11:34:46 PM
Shogun said
05:25 AM Aug 27, 2013
The .5 watt is only the portable UHF, which is for having contact around the van, the main uhf unit i got from aldi is 5 watt and has the same specs as the gme and uniden.
I'm happy with both purchases :)
Mark said
06:36 AM Aug 27, 2013
Shogun wrote:
The .5 watt is only the portable UHF, which is for having contact around the van, the main uhf unit i got from aldi is 5 watt and has the same specs as the gme and uniden.
I'm happy with both purchases :)
Good for you Shogun, if it does the job it's a great purchase. Hope your new MH is going well and all that you expected.
Shogun said
04:27 AM Aug 28, 2013
Thanks Mark
I agree, Im not really the techie type and if it works then Im happy.
Heading off thursday for a month up around northern Victoria and southern NSW which will be great fun :)
Cheers
Brett
Mark said
03:35 AM Aug 29, 2013
Shogun wrote:
Thanks Mark
I agree, Im not really the techie type and if it works then Im happy.
Heading off thursday for a month up around northern Victoria and southern NSW which will be great fun :)
Cheers
Brett
Enjoy your trip and stay happy.
Regards
Mark
aussietraveller said
05:06 PM Aug 29, 2013
Wondering what the advantage is in an 80 channel unit over a 40 channel unit other than a lot more channels Caravanners and truckies are still working within the 40 channel range so is there any real benefit in outlaying the money to but an 80 channel unit.
VKPORTABLE said
06:24 PM Sep 2, 2013
aussietraveller wrote:
Wondering what the advantage is in an 80 channel unit over a 40 channel unit
None, except for the additional channels and the fact that from now on you won't be able to buy 40 channel units because they are only making 80.
Not sure mate, they are pretty basic but will do me for what I need.
It says they have a 3km distance so can't imagine them being to powerful.
They are 80 channel and for $29, can't go wrong.
Im heading down to Aldi too to see if I can score one of them too.
Cheers
Brett
-- Edited by Shogun on Thursday 22nd of August 2013 11:29:40 PM
Just got myself a set of the Oricom UHF portable radios at Repco today.
Not to bad for $29.00. Basic but work well.
Brett
Hey Brett 3w or 5 might head down tomorrow and have a look have been waiting for the Aldi UHF to come on sale sat morn already have the aerial from evil bay.
Don't believe the garble about 3, 5, 10 Km range to much.
Unless you're standing on top of a mountain.
With UHF a good thing to keep in mind is - Line of Sight, if there is something large between you and who you want to talk to, you may have problems communicating.
Depending on the power output, with a hand-held under normal conditions your range will be variably, highly depended on your surrounding topography and clutter (trees/buildings). If in a clear, let's say desert or country area with no structures or trees then it 'may' be possible to achieve the 3Km stated, don't get upset if it doesn't happen though.
The lower the power the less the range - although having said that the difference between 3 Watts and 5 Watts will not be noticeable in general use, anyone that tells you that 5 Watts as opposed to 3 Watts is going to give you greater range hasn't much of an idea. To increase your signal strength marginally you need to double your power.
For example: 2 > 4 Watts - 4 > 8 Watts and so on.
Another great thing about hand-helds is the antennas that come with them are invariably not resonant on the frequency in which they are operating, and are of a broadband design. If you removed (if able to) the supplied one and made a 1/4 Wave resonant (tuned) to 477MHz you would in some cases see an increase in range. If the radio get's hot while you are using it and talking for awhile it's either the antenna is not resonant or the radio has bad heat dissipation, or both.
Got myself the aldi UHF and having it installed Wednesday. Looks ok to me so will see how it goes :)
Half a watt, gawd your doing to work some serious DX with that arn't you?
You would want a terribly high-gain antenna to get any decent distance out of 500 Mw.
It's a bit of a misconception that a lot think that a higher gain antenna will provide you with greater power.
Transmitter output power and ERP (Effective Radiated Power) which comes out of the antenna are two different animals.
For example: With a transmitter output power of 0.5 Watts (or 500 Milli-Watts, depending on how you want to say it) with a 5 DBI antenna will give you an ERP of 964 MW, or just under 1 Watt. A 12 DBI antenna gain would give you 4.83 Watts. I'm not aware of any hand-held antenna that can provide this level of gain, it is more the domain of large co-linear verticals and yagis.
If you have connectors and coax in-between the transmitter and the antenna then these will also effect the amount of power reaching the antenna.
For most typical installs in vehicles, with 5m of coax and assuming a resonant antenna the loss is going to be 2.118 DB, or 1.6 Watts, so therefore you only have 3.4 Watts getting to the antenna (this is not taking into account loss of connectors, PL-259's are a lossy contraption) your ERP will be 15.1 Watts with a 6.5 DB gain antenna, or 6 Watts with a 3 DB antenna.
To get any practical increase in signal you need a 3 DB increase at the transmitter, and then your still talking a minimal increase.
So to increase your signal marginally with a 5 Watt transmitter you would need to increase the transmitters output power to 10 Watts, next increase would be 20 Watts and so on.
Antenna gain in basic lay-man terms is the antennas ability to radiate RF (signal) from the radiating element (antenna).
Greater the gain the flatter the radiation angle, lower the gain the higher the radiation angle. So in very mountainous areas high gain antennas will actually decrease your range rather then enhance it due to the angle of radiation they exhibit.
Anyway I could go on about all this until I fall asleep, y'all just lucky I need a coffee refill :)
ZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
-- Edited by Mark on Monday 26th of August 2013 11:34:46 PM
I'm happy with both purchases :)
Good for you Shogun, if it does the job it's a great purchase. Hope your new MH is going well and all that you expected.
I agree, Im not really the techie type and if it works then Im happy.
Heading off thursday for a month up around northern Victoria and southern NSW which will be great fun :)
Cheers
Brett
Enjoy your trip and stay happy.
Regards
Mark
None, except for the additional channels and the fact that from now on you won't be able to buy 40 channel units because they are only making 80.