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Radio and headset/earpiece


pottage7
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you miss understand what im saying, you are completely right. the actual wave is fixed but what i was trying to get across is that at 30mhz a wave length is 10m but if you build a 7.5m antenna it will only transmit 3/4s of the wave length. my original point of thinking is that if you cant up the power than you could try increasing the size of the antenna and therefore more of the wavelength will be transmitted

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Yes.

At 446 Mhz, the wavelength is about 67cm. All PMR446 radios come with a little stubby antenna which has an electrical length much less than 67cm. If you could increase the antenna length, then you would improve its antenna gain/efficiency and therefore its effective range. That is why they do not permit this to happen.

 

It is also why PMR446 is pretty rubbish in terms of range.

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most decent quality handheld radios allow for you to put a bigger antenna on them though, it's completely legal as long as you're not transmitting at greater than 0.5W. in real terms a bigger (or I should say more appropriately sized) antenna will help far more with reception than transmission.

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Initially OFCOM tried to insist on an integrated antenna so it couldn't be modded.

 

I think that has now been relaxed.

 

Many cheaper sets on the market still have the integral antenna. At 500mW output power, I don't think you will notice much of a range difference between the stubby and the largest whip or helical antenna you can fit and still maintain portability for Airsoft use.

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While we're on the subject of modding handsets, can you get better reception via the black magic of earthing some part of the circuitry or case? I vaguely remember the CB craze back in the day and people did use to do some odd things...

 

Obviously "earth" and "portable" are usually mutually exclusive, but we're not talking about much in the way of voltage and even less current, so the human body would act as an earth.

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No because they work on a balanced output. CBs didnt. military field radios sometimes need an earth especially on HF frequencies which need a longer aerial due to the lower frequency.

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