Phones should have FM radio again
Phones should have FM radio again
www.spacebar.news Phones should have FM radio again
Radio access could be a critical safety feature in the years ahead.
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412 comments
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Imagine if every American had a shortwave radio transmitter in their pocket. Endless September for hams
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As a ham, ugh.
I dream of it being more common to have radios in everyone's pocket, but it needs to be accompanied by some level of education on how to use it.
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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.
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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.
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I'd imagine no phone would have transmission ability, or at most transmit like a Walkie talkie
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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.
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412 comments