Day 57

Another cold day. I'm getting really tired of this. I'm also developing cabin fever. Not as bad as the dog though.

More sitting in the trailer reading and surfing. It's supposed to warm up tomorrow. I hope it does. The dog needs an exercise day, a pedicure, and a bath. These are all outdoor activities best done when the temp is at least in the 60's.

One of my friends in OR wanted me to look into the best FRS/GMRS radios to buy. The wife and I started an internet search to answer the question. We found out a couple of interesting things. First is that the first 14 of the 22 channels in a FRS/GMRS radio are FRS and don't require a license. The remaining channels (15 - 22) are GMRS and do require a license. The FRS channels are transmitted at a considerably lower power than the GMRS channels. Second we found out that the subcodes are implemented by adding a low amplitude signal that is an identifier to a specific subchannel. A receiver only listens to transmissions on that channel if they have the appropriate identifier. A subcode of 0 (no subcode) means that the receiver listens to all transmissions on the channel. Because the subcode is low amplitude, using one effectively reduces the receiver sensitivity.

This information is very useful to us. At tournaments we usually use channel 1, subcode 1. We'll substantially increase the range of the radios we already have simply by using one of the channels above 14 and no subcode.

For the record, the best radio we found was by Midland (GVT1000VP). It's $50/pair at Amazon.