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.
__________________
Stewart www.vkportable.com.au www.forums.vkportable.com.au
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
__________________
Pets are welcome but children must be leashed at all times
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 :)
__________________
Stewart www.vkportable.com.au www.forums.vkportable.com.au
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.
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.
__________________
Mark & Linda
A man who asks a question is a fool for five minutes, but ask no questions and your a fool for life!!
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.
__________________
Life was meant to be enjoyed Australia was meant to be explored
Happily doing both to the Max.
Life is like a camera, focus on what's important & you will capture it every Time
