Hands free walkie talkie

[Michael sammy]

As @Emmanuel and my self discussed in yesterday drive about the walkie talkie channel we have used "i think it was 446031" please correct me if its wrong.

This station has a conflict with pajero electrical parts some how which caused a bad disturbance in the reception were i couldn't hear anything. I am just highlighting this point as walkie talkie is essential in our drives communication. 

 

I hope this information would be helpful for future drivers 

[Gaurav]

Thanks @Michael sammy for the heads up and @Frederic is always working on finding and improving the radio comm by juggling with the bestest frequencies we can use. 

[Michael sammy]

Thank you @Gaurav and @Frederic for your support and hard work for making this drives safe and fun for everyone. 🙏

[Frederic]

13 hours ago, Michael sammy said:

As @Emmanuel and my self discussed in yesterday drive about the walkie talkie channel we have used "i think it was 446031" please correct me if its wrong.

This station has a conflict with pajero electrical parts some how which caused a bad disturbance in the reception were i couldn't hear anything. I am just highlighting this point as walkie talkie is essential in our drives communication. 

 

I hope this information would be helpful for future drivers 

Thanks for mentioning @Michael sammy

So far we have experienced some interference issues with 446.05625Mhz (CH3) and decided to not use this frequency for now. 

Channel 2 however (446.03125) has been trouble-free so far, and have not faced interference issues in Pajero, but we will test further. Could you provide a screenshot of your radio set on this frequency ? Maybe some other option like CT codes or slight programming error is causing this. 

[Michael sammy]

I shall do that once i reach home, always happy to help 🙏

[Emmanuel]

Then maybe we made a mistake when we setted up the channel. I suspect steps 8 and 9 in the advanced settings (as shown bellow), something regarding high and narrow. 

 

[Michael sammy]

I guess it could be true. i will try to rest it again and try to use it in my car, it just start's making very loud noise sounds once it is inside the car 🙄

[Frederic]

7 minutes ago, Emmanuel said:

Then maybe we made a mistake when we setted up the channel. I suspect steps 8 and 9 in the advanced settings (as shown bellow), something regarding high and narrow. 

 

Step 9 was indeed slightly revised lately:

*WIDE setting basically means that your radio will broadcast and receive on a very wide band. For Example if Carnity frequency is 462.887 and your radio is set to WIDE, it will broadcast and receive anything between 462.6375 and 4631375 (25 Khz less or more) This is called channel spacing.

*NARROW setting only has a channel spacing of 12,5 Khz so it reduces risk of overlapping frequencies and interference. That's why it is better to use Narrow setting.

[Javier M]

It think we are overthinking this why can't we just use 446.100 446.200 446.300 etc.

[Frederic]

22 minutes ago, Javier M said:

It think we are overthinking this why can't we just use 446.100 446.200 446.300 etc.

We have recently decided to use the PMR446 Frequency Range.

PMR446 is commonly used and is consisting of 8 analogue channels located between 446.000 up until 446.1 Mhz. 

That gives us about 9 channels that we can use, BUT with most Chinese radios here being from Dragon Mart, i have seen that they have a bandwidth of 25Khz, meaning that you're constantly overlapping between CH1 and CH2. For this reason we have chosen to use:

Channel 1: 446.00625

Channel 3: 446.03125

Channel 5: 446.05625

Channel 7: 446.08125

Putting the radio on NARROW setting to reduce bandwidth helps, but after testing 15+ radios of different models i have seen that even on narrow setting they seem to have this overlapping frequency (after all we are not using professional radios with super accurate frequency modulation).

We are still testing these available frequencies and look for the safest solution, considering the fact that we are broadcasting now with +35 people on a sunny Friday morning, sometimes in the vicinity of Military Bases. (something you should know).