this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2023
1097 points (90.8% liked)
Technology
58303 readers
14 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Maybe the price of the transceivers would go down, at least, lol. I have a general license and I just mess around with a Baofeng for the most part because I cannot justify buying a better radio. Tempted to get a QCX-mini or Pixie kit for a project... Unfortunately the like... $1000+ transceivers are just way out of budget for me, and I'm not sure I'd get enough use out of it to warrant the expense.
I hear you. I have a handful of HT's, all are 2m/70cm, same as the baofeng's... I have an alinco and an ailunce, plus two baofeng's. I picked up a small 20W mobile unit for my car, around $100 or so, all told, plus an antenna. Maybe $150 for everything? A little less?
I've been looking at the software defined radios on Ali Express for HF stuff, all low power. I think less than 10W, but you can go global on 10W on the right band with the right conditions. They're usually up for around $350 USD? They're small too. Good for POTA. I think they can go from 6m up to 40m. Something from the big brands that can do that is usually in the 1200+ range. I think that's similar to what you're talking about. Someone local here that I've met has one and he's been lighting up parks constantly with it.
I want to experiment with DMR more. My next project is to build a hot spot, since the closest DMR repeater tower is a bit too far to pick up. I can sometimes get it at the lakefront (it's across Lake Ontario from me, in Toronto VE3WOO if I recall correctly), and I'm in the Niagara area.
I would like to get a DMR repeater in the area and I've been talking to a local club about it. So it may just be a matter of time. In any case I'm weird. I use FM a lot still since that's what all the VHF and UHF stuff around here uses. There's some fusion/dstar stuff but no DMR.