Range testing LPD433

I recently bought a pair of Midland G9 Pro radios that can also use the 69 channels of LPD on 433 MHz. The allowable power on this band is 10mW, so effectively just 1/50th of PMR446

I decided a good place to test this was at Grange-over-sands where there is great LOS from the promenade at the railway station to the disused lido building.

Using channel 42 (434.1 MHz) my partner and I got perfect, fully quieting performance from the radios at just over 1km at the same level. I'm fairly confident you could get up to 2km, possibly 3km on this band.

I'm impressed by what's possible with such low power.

Hi Mark,

Thanks for posting with your reports of utilising LPD radios, sounds like you had some good radio fun.  

You'd be surprised at the sort of ranges you'd get out of such devices (albeit short in radio terms) and seems like they're performing the function they were designed for. They can definitely take away the stress of overcrowding sometimes experienced on the PMR446 band.

They'll be some with a bone of contention that these devices sit within the Amateur 70cm band plan and many won't be up to date with the legislation. (They dropped the data only regulation back in 2006!) Then again some don't need their cages barely flinched before they start a rattling it.
You're hardly likely to cause interference with 10mW anyway.

I'm not sure but I think this is the first posting of such radio devices here at Charlie Tango and good to see especially with our all encompassing motto of "The home of ALL things radio".


Great posting Mark and glad you're enjoying yourself.


All the best,
Victor

Thanks Victor

I've just purchased some children's walkie-talkies made by Dickie. These are being featured on a couple of the amateur radio YouTube channels at the moment like Andy Kirby.

They seem very basic, with no channel selection or any other features, but what's interesting about them is that they use 2.4GHz and seem to kick out about 100mW.

Range test on those coming soon.

Yeah, I've seen the type of walkies you're on about there Mark but I'm pretty sure the UK limit is 10mW as well for licence free use. (I'll have to go check.)

2.4GHz is a pretty packed band when you look up the spectrum management details so I'd assume the reason for low power limits is to prevent cross user interference.


There's a good page on the Ofcom website with a map of radio spectrum use for anyone interested :-

http://static.ofcom.org.uk/static/spectrum/map.html


Luckily most of these organising bodies nowadays work quite closely together internationally which is especially useful with our modern global economy. Chances are nowadays that a radio bought from one country is legal in another but there may be caveats so always worth checking.

I'm all up for a bit of radio fun so long as everyone is careful not to cause problems for other legitimate radio users as that's when the troubles start. You only have to look at the infamy surrounding the old Baofeng UV5 and how it ultimately got banned for sale in certain countries whilst bemoaned in others. All that does is screw things up for legitimate users who may not have deep pockets. (Myself included as it was my first bit of Amateur Radio kit introducing me to typical Ham operations.) Although there will always be people who openly and actively abuse the airwaves which is why I don't do too much VHF/UHF work nowadays especially on the repeaters.....kerchunk, kerchunk, whistle, raspberry, animal noises, keying up, etc.

Any sort of 'rules' can be a P.I.T.A. but quite often there's good reason behind them.

Anyway, look forward to more postings from you there Mark as it all adds a bit of radio diversity to the group which is most welcomed.  


All the best,
Victor

Here's another radio spectrum list, a bit older but I find this easier to follow: https://ukspec.tripod.com/spectrum.html