[Xastir] New user..and thanks..

[Curt Mills]

On Sat, 18 Nov 2006, Jeff Mohler wrote:

> Ya..that thought hit me at dinner..just have to get a second base radio.  ;)

Another thought that has been crossing my mind while reading this
thread is that if you try to run both the tracking and voice comms
on separate VHF frequencies to the cars, you'll end up with desense
problems on the voice channel.  The VHF frequencies would need to be
separated by quite a few megahertz in order for this effect to be
reduced or eliminated.

I say this because this could become a serious safety issue if the
car cannot hear you due to its tracker transmitting often and/or
cars near it doing the same.  Same for base, if you have cars
zipping by near base then the base radio voice frequency may not be
able to hear much while any of the trackers nearby are transmitting.

The easiest way to get around that is to transmit on a different
band entirely, like perhaps using GMRS radios (require $80/five year
license), MURS, etc.

I experience this desense of my voice rig on 2-meter VHF ham radio
(at 146.92 MHz) when my other 2-meter VHF radio on 144.39 MHz
decides to send out my position.  I use Base-91 compressed
transmissions so they are short, but I still can miss one or two
syllables on voice during that time.  Combine that with 15 or 20
trackers on a small course and the voice frequency might be unusable
for you if it's on the same band.

-- 
Curt, WE7U.				archer at eskimo dot com
http://www.eskimo.com/~archer
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