Hilltop Radio Testing
Winter Hill, Horwich, UK
Height 400m+ ASL
Binatone 1100, GT-1 and UV-82+ standing by
I thought it was about time I headed back to Winter Hill after a four month hiatus.
One or two new radios have found their way into my collection since then and I was dying to see how they performed.
This time around I had a bunch of PMR rigs to test as well as some higher powered Baofeng offerings.
The little Binatone Latitudes were surprisingly good.
Weather conditions were not the best but plenty of signals came through regardless.
First of all I wanted to see how my relatively new Misuta UV-82+ would recieve long range stations. (more on that later) but straight off the bat some very strong 20+ mile signals blasted through.
Manchester Airport 19 miles
The audio on the Misuta was great with only a touch of overload here and there.
Next up was my newest acquisition, the Pofung GT-1 with the crappy stock antenna installed. Opening a repeater 20 miles away is no problem especially with the added advantage of being at height. The antenna struggles more at normal levels. The audio was crisp, clear and loud.
GB3PZ 70cm repeater - Dukinfield, 20 miles
Interference
There was the odd time when the dreaded overload came through and "drrrrrrrrd" it's way into my brain (I really hate that noise!) one example was when I was tuned in to the Manchester united security net. Every so often the choppy noise came in followed by one of the runways at Manchester airport. Totally drowning out the football stadium.
PMR446 Mhz
The 8 PMR channels were absolutely blowing smoke from up there! It was incredibly busy. Very difficult to get out to make a contact. I did get a shout back from a local guys a few miles away. Not quite the distance I was hoping for. It's always busy on PMR around that area so I was half expecting that. I did manage to test most of my PMR rigs for sensitivity. I found that if I ran auto scan on each handset and count the station hits then that might be a good test for measuring the radios.
The best performing and seemingly more sensitive PMR radios
1. Goodmans GMPR116
2. Binatone latitude 150
3. Motorola TLKR T5
4. Binatone Action 1100
The result is a bit of a shock as I thought the Binatone 1100's were good but they turned out to be deaf when it came to listening out for stations.
No surprise that the goodmans was in first place.
Antenna swap-out
Before I gave up and came home I decided to fish out my long length antennas and see if I could pull in something further afield.
Strapping the hefty Retevis Elite to the UV-82+ was an instant improvement over the (pretty good) stock rubber duck. Running a channel scan resulted in more station hits than before. I heard the Liverpool and Llandudno repeaters but was unable to open Llandudno from this end - not enough power perhaps. In terms of distance then Llandudno is today's winner
Llandudno Repeater 58 miles
Misuta UV-82+ with the Retevis Elite antenna fitted
Switching the dreadful GT-1 stock antenna for the Sainsonic INF-661 was a vast improvement much like before. the extra length killed a lot of the static that was present with the stock. The Liverpool Repeater some 23 miles away was opened up and the recieved audio was nice and clear.
Liverpool Repeater 23 miles
Pofung GT-1 with the Sainsonic INF- 661 fitted
It hasn't been a bad trip up the hill. The radios performed well.