MystikIncarnate

I've noticed that some sellers seem to list the same item a number of times.... I'm sure not all of them are for unique items.

You have an excellent point, and historically, yes, you did need something plugged into a headphone jack to facilitate the rx of the transmission, however, this isn't strictly required. Broadcast FM is in the 2-3m range, meaning a full-wavelength antenna would be aproximately 3m in length, we don't even see this on vehicles; most are limited to less than 1m. Even with aerial whip antennas for home-based hifi/stereo systems, often the antenna is not any longer than 1m/3ft, which is about 1/3rd as long as it should be for optimal signal.

The issue here isn't one of having the space for the antenna, since smaller antennas are used in all sorts of applications, such as with FM and vehicles/stereos etc. The issue is having enough antenna to produce a signal strong enough to differentiate from background noise. The signal to noise ratio is key here. Historically, the only good way to get more signal is to use a better tuned, larger antenna, or an array of the same, this isn't so much the case anymore. There's plenty of antenna designs that are still fairly omnidirectional, that can enhance signals. Combine that with more advanced filtering and pre-amplification, a large antenna is not generally a requirement anymore; even the 1m/3ft whips used on cars are often overkill for what we can do with signal processing and modern design. Look at any modern vehicle, and with few exceptions, there's no longer a visible antenna. That's not because there isn't an antenna for FM, it's because the technology has progressed enough to be able to use much smaller antennas to accomplish the same task. The antennas are still there, they're just so small and well placed that you don't need a flagpole on your hood or trunk lid to have it work as-well-as any other FMrx antenna.

Given that the proposal requires a minor redesign of the cellphones to incorporate the broadcast receiving radio, adding a small antenna, or simply using the chassis of the phone as an antenna, would not only be possible but it should be fairly trivial to accommodate for. by no means am I saying it would be the worlds greatest FM antenna system, most certainly it would not be, but it should be sufficient to differentiate the signal from the noise; with relatively trivial signal processing, it should be more than adequate for the purpose.

The technology surrounding FM broadcast radio didn't just cease and we get what we get; vehicles, among other specific technologies still utilize FM radios and development has continued on them even though very few people have been watching. The technology is far improved from what you can build with a battery, coil of wire, a speaker, and a handful of resistors/capacitors/etc. and similarly it's far improved from what vehicles had even 15 years ago. Add that to the fact that radio technology is all pretty much the same across the board (from what we use for broadcast FM, to WiFi, 4G/5G/LTE cellular, and GPS included), and a lot of the developments made in any area of radio can be almost directly translated to another radio on a different band, and there's a lot of technology that, unsurprisingly, will blow most of what most of us have in our houses on our hi-fi stereos, out of the water.

The wonderful thing is that a lot of it is tied to miniaturization and modernization of the technology, meaning a lot of this is tied into integrated circuits that are being mass produced already. IC designs that can be embedded into other ICs to decrease the overall number of chips in a device, fairly easily.

The point I'm dancing around is software-defined radios. SDR is becoming a huge player in all aspects of radio technology, and can replace far more advanced/complex systems with something less complex than a raspberry pi, and often less costly. The big cost of SDRs is mainly regarding transmission, since they don't put out a very strong signal, and need some significant and high-quality amplification to be useful; but we've seen SDR chipsets starting to dominate the lower-cost market within the HAM/Amateur radio space. Extremely capable, very small and power efficient radios, for significantly less cost than more traditional methods of doing the same. The issue is that first word: Software. With great software comes great responsibility.... or something. Fact is there's a lot of SDR radios out there with garbage software interfaces.... at least there are right now. Things are improving all the time. The wonderful thing about SDR, is that they're generally compatible with whatever you want to use them for... meaning AM/FM, or even something more elaborate like OFDM, or other modulation techniques. This means these radios can essentially be re-programmed on the fly to adapt to a new standard with little more than a software update.

I apologize for the long discussion on this, but the technology is so interesting to me the more you look at it. Yes, antennas are important, but not nearly as important as they were even 10-15 years ago.

I'm voting for "hate it".

Not that my vote matters....

I just want to add that I too hate that it's a word now.

For some reason I'm reminded of fight club.

That was the take away. She was rather upset about it, which is apparently good for ratings but tragic overall.

I suppose it depends on what she really wants in life, which I won't presume to know. I wish her the best, that's not a fun condition to deal with.

73 to all on frequency.

Thanks for the support gayhitler.

I've heard of that genetic condition. It's fascinating, and as far as I know, extremely rare.

I know that at least one has spoken publicly about her experience, and they touched on dating and the implication was that most of the people that are interested, are paedophiles, and that didn't sit well for her, and I expect that wouldn't sit well for most people, especially those with that condition.

Fascinating information all around. I don't have a doubt that is accurate.

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.

There are some ham radio call phones that can transmit. They're pretty specialized and not cheap, but they exist.... around $1200 for what is essentially 3+ year old phone hardware (with software to match .... Android 9-ish) with a built in transceiver... I like the idea, but I'm not paying that much for a very old phone because it happens to have a ham radio built in.

The current ideas with adding radios to phones is almost entirely to pick up broadcast radio, like am/FM. Nothing fancy.

A lot of people still have am/FM gear, and they're so invested into their primary communications which is so reliable they don't think about secondary communications. I have, which is why I'm a ham operator.

Most people at least have FM in their car, the broadcast range is in the lower VHF airspace, not much higher than HF. Most of the HF and LF bands are so tightly allocated that there's no room to just Willy nilly add another frequency for emergency use for civvies... which would require everyone to buy new radios, which they won't. Meanwhile, there's still shortwave, which people also don't buy that's already there and lower on the frequency range than broadcast FM... people need to be saved from themselves. Allocating something new and building a bunch of new infrastructure for it is idiotic. The structure is already there with broadcast FM, we just need to save people from themselves and ensure that they have access to it.

I'd be in favour of there being a dedicated broadcast FM frequency for emergencies only. It would become trivial to have a radio station change frequencies to the emergency broadcast frequency when something happens. We could even make the frequency digital instead of FM, and have it encode information by text, and turn it into a recieve-only text-based emergency channel... but making it a whole new band and new radio type on a different frequency that's not already set up for such a thing is insane to me. So much infrastructure cost for something we literally already have.

Any government that green lights such a program has lost the plot. Use what works.