Nets & Club Meetings

At our club meeting last evening Jan 14) , we had a glitch in our plans to play a UTUBE video that dealt with the possibility that inexpensive hand-held radios (HT’s) had what is considered to be “dirty” signals. This means that in addition to transmitting on the frequency it was set for, that it also transmitted noise or interfering on other frequencies and potentially interfering with police, fire, and other important communication systems.

As you know, it is illegal to interfere with Public Safety transmissions and to do so invites the FCC to come to town to investigate. If this interference is a reality, we are obligated to not use radios that transmit this “extra bonus” signals.

The gentleman in the video goes through several exercises that indicate that a number of different radios that he is ‘testing’ do, in fact, also transmit ‘spurious emissions’ that potentially interfere with Public Safety radios.

Now the disclaimer….. If you are old enough to remember a newscaster named Paul Harvey, it is time for us to hear “The Rest of the Story”…

Since we have an accomplished RF Engineer amongst the members of our club (Ed Trombley, N8DCC or ‘ET’ as we call him) and he is willing to bring his Spectrum Analyzer to our February meeting and actually test all of our hand-held radios to see for sure if our radios are dirty as the U-Tuber suggests they might be……

You can find the subject UTube video on the BCARC web page at www.branchcountyarc.org. We suggest that you watch the video to see what the U-Tuber has to say about out of band noise.

Here is the plan for the February 11 meeting:

For the February BCARC meeting, bring with you the hand-held radio(s) that you would like to have tested.

Please ensure in (advance) that:

1. Your radio has a fully charged battery.
2. Your radio is set to 146.550 MHz Simplex. This can be in memory or the VFO.
3. Find a way to identify your radio from all others that may be identical. You can use a sticker with your callsign, a few inches of colored yarn, or other methodology that will work to differentiate your radio from the other dozen radios there that are identical….
4. Keep in mind that all UV5-R black HT’s look alike and we need a method to get your radio back into your hands when the testing is complete.

When all is said and done, we will publish the results of our tests for the benefit of the club members and beyond.

We think you will find this exercise to be interesting and helpful.

73/LC