Radio

I have five radios around my home and workshop. Two are reproduction types that look antique.
I really don’t want a digital radio. Does anyone want them?
What will happen to the mountain of discarded radios that we won’t be able to use?
Has anyone thought of the waste of resources?

We’ve only got digital radios, but I detest the idea that everyone should be forced to switch over to them.

It’s a huge waste of resources and will continue to be. I’ll look for the figures, but it costs a lot more to run digital than it does to run analogue.

There’s also the issue of coverage, which isn’t as great as claimed. People living in more remote areas can have difficulty picking up the signal and even in London we find it cuts out inexplicably sometimes.

I usually drive my cars until they are 10+ years old, but the AM portion of the radios seem to get worse and worse over time. I notice when I get a rental car, AM works perfectly.

The most common reason for AM reception problems (and this is probably what is happening with age) is poor ground contact at the antenna. It is a big problem with fender mount antennas but also appears with roof mount antennas. The bad ground brings in all sorts of electrical noise because the coax becomes part of the antenna system. Scouring the body with Scotchbrite where the antenna mounts can work wonders, and applying silicone grease can keep it that way.

I’m trying to figure out if there is a downloadable font that looks like the new radios in the new Chevy’s. I have found a bunch of LCD fonts but they just don’t look like that. Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks.

It looks to me like Arial Rounded MT Bold. If I were making a poster and trying to imitate that is what I’d use. You might need to slightly thicken the strokes to get it just right.

I’d like to know the typical range I could expect between two similar 5-watt radios (without the use of a repeater) in a typical urban environment with moderate trees and buildings.

hand held to hand held, urban location, VHF – FM….. perhaps 5 miles. Both antennas must be perfectly vertical to prevent polarization loss.

Remember that VHF and UHF is line of sight communications, with some really rare exceptions.

Why do police radios have such bad sound quality? You would think with the new technology that the sounds would at least be phone quality.

By the time I retired a few years ago, radios had improved far beyond what I started with in the early sixties. Sound quality now is pretty good. The problem now isn’t the quality, it is where you are trying to radio from (poor reception) and, more than likely, mush-mouthed cops and dispatchers that talk to fast, too low for the mike to pick up, or have some gawd-awful accent.

I Have an iPod Touch and I have downloaded the application A+ Police Radio Free, and it allows me to listen to police radios in different countries like New Zealand and the U.S.A., and also Australia. It let’s me listen in four Australian States, Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia and New South Wales. I don’t want to get caught listening to this if it’s illegal, so could you please help me?

It really depends on your local laws. Some places it is totally legal, others totally illegal, other fine at home, but not in your car or outside your home.

When were radios invented?
Who invented radios?
What are their significance?
Did they help in WW1 and WW2, if so, how?

Please can you try to answer some of these questions,
I can’t find any helpful websites to find these answers.
If you do come across any good websites about radio and why it is significant then can you put it in your ’sources’ box!
Thank-you in advance
Bea x

The original radio was called the ‘wireless telegraph’ and was used to send messages with dots and dashes, just like Samuel Morse’s device. An Italian named Gueliemo Marconi is/was usually credited with the invention of the radio/wireless telegraph, but he was sued for stealing Nikola Tesla’s work, and had to pay millions of dollars of damages to Tesla.

http://inventors.about.com/od/rstartinventions/a/radio.htm

Later, voice and music was sent over radio, and that was a huge leap in entertainment technology, and, of course, military technology. Radio is the basis of both RADAR and something called the ‘proximity fuse’ which helped win WW II.

I have a few GP340 UHF Motorola Two-Way radios, which need to be licensed before I can legally use them. I have not yet tried the programming software, but…

Can I set the frequency channels to the PMR channels in the range of: 446.103125 MHz to 446.196875 MHz (UHF)
The power output to: 4W

and legally use the radios without license in the UK?

or not even lower the power? Please advise.

Thanks.

In the UK, you are not allowed to operate any radio on the PMR frequencies over 500 milliwatts. As the minimum power on these radios is 1 watt, you are not supposed to use the PMR frequencies. However, the programming software does allow you to do so.

Nick

I frequently listen to internet radio. This can be linked up by audio sender from the dining room computer to the aux socket on the lounge HiFi, and could also possibly be heard elsewhere in the house by purchasing dedicated internet radio receivers utilising our wireless broadband connection.
It would therfore appear to be far more cost effective and less restricting if this signal could instead be transmitted via FM in some way to my existing portable radios. Is it possible to utilise and adapt the new MP3/FM car transmitters for this purpose, or is there some other simple means of achieving this?

yes fm wireless transmitter… up to 50-60 yards it works adjustable fm transmitter from 88.0 to 107.0

a capacitor is frequently placed across a 110V line to reduce the noise in radios.what is the smallest voltage such a capacitor should have?

110 VAC is the rms voltage that is an effective equivalent to 110VDC.

The 110 VAC voltage actually gets to a higher peak voltage of

1.414 x 110 = 155.54 volts peak

These higher peak voltages although brief in duration can damage a capacitors dielectric insulation if the peak voltage exceeds the working voltage of the cap

You could also add a safety factor of at least 10%(or more) so a cap rated no less than 175 would be required. Higher voltage rated caps (200v for example) would work and provide an added measure of safety