Handheld comm question

[jim etcheverry]

Here you go, check this article out by Sportys. https://www.sportys.com/pilotshop/pi...iation-radios/

[Taltruda]

The external antenna works great, but just as important is a headset adapter. In my experience, yelling into the mike then holding the speaker up to your ear is about as effective as jettisoning the canopy and screaming out the open windscreen to the tower! Be sure to try out your handheld setup before you really need it. Also either have spare batteries or better yet, plug into ship power.

[Paul 5r4]

Jim, Thanks for the link to the handheld radio test by sports. Excellent article. I believe another external antenna and headset adapter are in the near future. Again, thanks to everyone for the excellent information and advice.

[Tag]

Seems they no longer make those antenna switch boxes....

[N804RV]

I'm using my handheld Yaesu FT-550AA as my ONLY radio in my little (tiny) Sonerai IIL. It has a bubble canopy, similar to the RV-4.

I clip it to the steel canopy cross member with the belt clip, with the radio/whip antenna vertical. It works fine. I do a radio check occasionally and its always "loud & clear".

Handhelds depend on contact, with either a human body, or other large area conductive structure, and a vertically positioned antenna for good operation.

The bigger problem with handhelds carried in a flight bag for "emergencies" is that they're always dead when you need them. I recommend a good DC "cigarette-lighter" plug and some practice using it under actual conditions.

[Scott Hersha]

I have a Sportys PJ2 handheld COM radio. The best thing about it is that it has standard jacks to plug your headset in directly. Also has a power cable to power it from a USB receptacle in your plane, conserving battery power. I would like to have some sort of splitter to split the signal from the primary radio antenna in case my primary COM quits, so I could use the antenna for my handheld. An antenna switch box was mentioned before, but the link to it doesn?t work. If some sort of switch box exists, I?d like to check it out. The rubber antenna works OK, but probably doesn?t have much range. I?ve never needed the handheld in flight, or even my COM 2 when I had one, so I?m comfortable with my single GTR 200B COM and my handheld. I no longer fly IFR, so it?s much different than you guys looking for space-X level redundancy.

[pjc]

Originally Posted by Sam Buchanan

Effective range will depend on a bunch of variables.

This is strongly supported in my experience at our glider club. Lots of different handhelds in use (with and w/o external antennas) in lots of gliders (aluminum and composite). Range varies from as little as a couple hundred yards on the ground to sometimes as much as 15 miles in the air (but only rarely more than that).

The old KX-155 in the towplane has (far) better performance than the best handheld, and is often called upon to relay radio calls.

Also, it is generically (but not universally) true that reception range is better than transmission range ... i.e. You can hear from farther away than you can be heard.

Good batteries and a proper external antenna can provide close to installed radio performance (many handhelds claim 5W TX power, and many panel radios are 6W). If you can effectively radiate anything close to 5W, you will be heard from a long way. The installation details matter however.

Peter

[bruceh]

During my phase 1 I had COM issues with the Dynon radio. While those issues were getting sorted out I bought a Yaesu handheld. It came with the power adapter and headset adapter. You have to go into the menus to configure the headset adapter, but then you can plug into it with your headset and talk/hear just fine. I used it both with the external com antenna and the rubber antenna. The external one was much better. I now have dual external antennas on the airplane (added another prior to painting) and the second antenna has a longer section of coax that can reach a handheld (normally it is just coiled up under the panel). The only issue is remembering not to use the PTT button on the stick!

[Paul 5r4]

Thanks for the info Bruce! I have the Yaesu FT550. It came with the headset adapter but I didn't know I'll need to configure it in the menu! I've ordered an antenna from Delta Pop aviation as recommended. RG 400 order will be placed Monday as well as a couple connectors. Looking forward to trying it out when complete.

[FinnFlyer]

Originally Posted by Scott Hersha

...If some sort of switch box exists, I’d like to check it out....

I think that box was based on a Kitplanes article by Jim Weir.

Simple to make yourself, although I wince at that jack connector to the handheld radio. Instead use a simple SPDT mini switch and BNC connectors and keep the wires as short as possible between BNC connectors and the switch tabs. Note that you only need to switch the center conductors, not the shields. Good contact between three BNC connectors and the small metal box. The center tab on the switch to the antenna BNC and the two outer tabs to the radio BNCs.

You could even use a DPDT mini switch and have a 50 ohm resistor as a dummy load for the radio not connected to the antenna. Some radios do not like a missing antenna (if accidentally transmitting on the radio not connected to the antenna).

In other words, a BNC from a radio is either switched to the antenna or to the 50 ohm dummy load. There the two center tabs on the switch would go to the radio BNCs. The outer tabs (criss-crossed) would go to antenna and to 50 ohm resistor to ground (metal box).

If interested I can can draw up a schematic.

(However I would not try to use it with transponders, big difference of what you can get away with at 118-136MHz and at 1 Ghz.)

Finn