Yaesu FT530

[gangals]

Have you checked out the rubber goose or swan section yet?

[immabadspellor_]

I'm looking for more of a portable antenna for this radio that is better than the rubber duck.

One of the best rubber ducks are the Diamond RHF40 or RH77CA.  Also the Pryme AL-800 is quite effective as well.  It's a telescoping whip.  The better the antenna, generally the bigger and less portable it is.  It's up to you where you want to draw the line.  You could even go with this handheld antenna:
http://www.arrowantennas.com/146-437.html

[Lestan Gregor]

I dont think he 's going to be talking to Oscar at 4 in the morning. hi hi!

[immabadspellor_]

I dont think he 's going to be talking to Oscar at 4 in the morning. hi hi!

4am is one of the best times to work an FM oscar since they can be VERY crowded at peak times, i.e. transcontinental saturday afternoon passes.  Plus there's not so many Spanish taxi drivers, Mexican military or Russian cordless phones on there at that time either ;-)

[csnyder1]

Since, we're talking up the ham stuff... How about 33cm radios?  Which radios other than Motorola's can work the 900mhz area?  If I had access to the CPS stuff then programming wouldn't be such an issue.  The MTX and GTX radios look promising..  I guess I'd just like to have access to the 3M/Panasonic/HME drive-thru arena... 

[immabadspellor_]

There are NO commercial 33cm ham radios.  Most ham activity there is from converted business band radios.  Other than that you could find some homebrew gear on the air, or transverters.  Remember that this ham band allocation doesn't exist in most of the world so the market for a 33cm ham radio is quite small.  For converted business band radios, Motorola's are by far the most common.  Others could be Kenwood, GE, perhaps Icom but when looking into it before it seemed that there were a couple of Motorola models that just needed programming to open up coverage versus having to make hardware mods which require tuning with test equipment that us average joe's (who aren't rich or have a test bench at work) have access to.  Here's a link to some equipment and what's required to open them up:

http://www.qsl.net/kb9mwr/projects/900mhz/plan.html

Note that the 900MHz drive thru stuff operates Wide FM and these radios are Narrow FM.  You'll likely have to modify the radio in some way to increase the bandwidth or at least the modulation on transmit.... On the positive side, it would seem that these drive thru systems don't incorporate any kind of PL or DCS, but I could be wrong!

[csnyder1]

Hmm, so if I were to acquire a MTX9250 and program it with the appropriate freqs since it is a NFM radio, it would have difficulties communicating with the 3M/HME stuff?

[immabadspellor_]

Hmm, so if I were to acquire a MTX9250 and program it with the appropriate freqs since it is a NFM radio, it would have difficulties communicating with the 3M/HME stuff?

Yes.  You would be able to block their transmissions, but anything you say to them or the speaker would sound very, very quiet.  I don't know if you've ever listened to analog cell phones back in the day on an old TV that went up to channel 83 with the fine tuning around channel 79 how you used to have to really crank up the volume to hear them, but that's what you'd sound like to them.  Also, if they are in fact using PL or DCS, then surely the audio level on the tone would be much too low to trip their squelch.  Conversely, listening to them would sound loud and distorted, however I'm sure you already have an effective means of listening to them properly so that aspect shouldn't be an issue. 

[csnyder1]

looks like I'm out of luck then..  I 'd much rather try to use a modified 900mhz two-way radio, short of finding an actual 3M or HME headset....which are pricey...

[csnyder1]

I did some experimenting with scanning on the 900mhz band at a couple fast food joints and 920mhz seemed to be a hot area.  More specifically 920.5125 and 920.7625.  Switching from FM, WFM, and NFW produced the results as stated above.  WFM, pretty clear throughout 920mhz but highest signal gain and clarity right at those two particular freqs.  NFM and FM barely gave a signal at those freqs. unless I opened the squelch all the way up and that was just noisy as hell.  Anyways, the 3M C1060 and C960 seem to be the most popular 900mhz headsets out there.  But, I don't see any 2-ways readily available of transmitting in WFM esp. in the 900mhz region..  I won't give up though! 

[Robert_]

Most McDonalds around Oklahoma City uses MURS : 154.600

[csnyder1]

Most McDonalds around Oklahoma City uses MURS : 154.600

You're lucky!  Many McDs, Arby's around here are 900mhz...  I miss the 'old' days....!

[Robert_]

When I have time I will check the other fast food's freqs.

[immabadspellor_]

HME 900MHz units operate on 902.3 Base / 926.3 Headset (a.k.a. a + 24MHz offset).  That's channel 1 and there's 16 channels in all.  The channels are in 100kHz steps.  The first 8 channels are for single lane drive thru's and the last 8 are for the second land in a 2-lane drive thru (Checker's/Rally's, some busier McDonalds come to mind). 

http://www.hme.com/techPdfs/400434b.PDF

3M 900MHz units also have 16 channels, 1st 8 designated for single lane, 2nd 8 for dual lane.  They're on a 17MHz offset but I'm not sure which is the input and which is the output.  Might have to check next time I'm out near a fast food joint that has them. 

First Lane Channels:

Channel 1 = 903.2625 / 920.2625
Channel 2 = 903.5000 / 920.5000
Channel 3 = 903.7375 / 920.7375
Channel 4 = 903.9750 / 920.9750
Channel 5 = 904.2125 / 921.2125
Channel 6 = 904.4625 / 921.4625
Channel 7 = 904.7000 / 921.7000
Channel 8 = 904.9375 / 921.9375

Second Lane Channels:

Channel 1 = 906.1375 / 923.1375
Channel 2 = 906.3750 / 923.3750
Channel 3 = 906.6125 / 923.6125
Channel 4 = 906.8625 / 923.8625
Channel 5 = 907.1000 / 924.1000
Channel 6 = 907.3375 / 924.3375
Channel 7 = 907.5750 / 924.5750
Channel 8 = 907.8125 / 924.8125

I believe that ham radio has primary allocation of 902-928 so type 15 devices must accept all interference from licensed primary users ...although the band plan calls for ssb weak signal on the output and ATV on the inputs.  In the states it's only a gentlemen's agreement and I doubt anyone would complain if you did some experimental wide FM stuff there haha...
You know, Radio Shack once sold these wireless headphones that the base transmitted WFM 900MHz and it was frequency agile with an analog knob.  I think they operated around 912MHz though but I don't know just how frequency agile they are.  The other option would be an analog STL, although they're quite expensive and not always frequency agile.  You'd just have to get lucky finding a radio station closing up...

[Robert_]

How much is this Yaesu FT530 actually worth. I haven't found no ebays on it or anything.