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1-3 of 3 messages
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70cm with IC-F21 problems
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by N9RBH on October 15, 2009
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Hi Folks,
I have a couple IC-F21 and F-21GM radios and the programming software. My understanding is that they are type accepted for GMRS, LMRS, and the 70cm amateur band. I am a licensed amateur and have purchased a GMRS license.
I spend a lot of time skiing and hiking, and have found that GMRS radios can be useful for keeping track of our group. I'm the only licensed amateur in our regular group, and in the interest of having backup emergency communications, I'd like to have a radio that can communicate to my group but also hit the 70cm repeaters in the area.
I have a VX-6R, but understand I should not modify it to cover GMRS.
Thus the IC-F21 radios. They work fantastically on GMRS, but when I program them to use the 70cm frequencies, which they are spec'd to cover, and I have heard of people using successfully, I have some problems. I can only get half of the repeaters in my area to key up, and those that I can, I can only get them to give the end-of-transmission beep. They don't seem to be recognizing my signal, either on Narrow (2.5KHz) or Wide (5.0KHz) settings, but are perhaps keying up on the tail of my signal. I monitor with the VX-6R and it doesn't hear anything until I release the PTT on the F-21 and the repeater beeps.
I have tried getting on my roof, with a direct line of sight to the repeaters, and this doesn't seem to help at all. The F21 is supposed to be putting out about 4W. The antenna connector is rather funky and I don't have an adapter to try something other than the stock 6" duckie.
Any ideas, folks?
I realize I sometimes tend to kind of go safety-overkill when I'm in the backcountry with an avalanche beacon, a satellite beacon, ham radio, and GMRS radio, (and a ton of other stuff) but I like to be prepared, but would also like to cut my pack weight a little.
Thanks
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RE: 70cm with IC-F21 problems
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Reply
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by N8EKT on October 28, 2009
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I would put it on a watt meter and see if it is putting out RF on those freqs.
It may be that the radio's vco will not lock that far off it's intended frequency and it also may suffer
great degradation in both receive sensitivity and transmit power.
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RE: 70cm with IC-F21 problems
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Reply
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by N9RBH on October 28, 2009
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That's a good idea.
There seem to be multiple versions of these radios, the F21, the F21GM (specific for GMRS), and the F21BR (specifically marketed as a "business radio"), and they all have different RX/TX specs. The ones I have seem to be F21s and appear to be capable of the 70cm freq's, but since their antennas are likely tuned much higher than 440, and as you pointed out the VCO probably isn't made to go that low, that is likely the problem.
Oh well. Guess I'll sell 'em. I have two Vertex VX-10s that seem to do fine on 70cm and GMRS, so as soon as I can find a computer slow enough (seriously) to reprogram them with local repeaters, I'll just start using those.
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