GMRS Range Test - How Far Can You Talk On The BTech GMRS 50X1 Mobile Radio - Distance Test

we're in the garage today and we're going to do some range tests with the new gmrs radios we've got them installed on both jeeps antennas are all tuned and ready to go so i'm going to go for a drive and see what kind of range we can get from these radios both jeeps have browning br 450 antennas installed it's very important that you tune these antennas you actually have to cut them to tune them so i used my favorite little swr meter which is about 35 bucks i'll put a link to that in the information section below and what we're testing are the btec gmrs 50x1 radios i've got mine installed right here in the not a rubicon and in the is a rubicon we've got it installed right here the btec gmrs50x1 is a 50 watt gmrs radio that's the maximum amount of power you can legally use on gmrs and it's the highest power radio that i could find i could not find any other 50 watt radios a few companies make gmrs radios but the most of them will only go up to 30 watts so this one goes up to 50 watts it's switchable you can go high low and medium power 5 watts 18 watts and 50 watts so we're going to be testing them today basically what i'm going to do is get in the not a rubicon this is not a rubicon is going to stay here in the garage with her radio here i'm going to drive to a few different places a few different stops i've mapped out basically getting further and further away just to see what kind of signal and range we can get on these radios now the radios have little power meters that will show up right here you can see it as it picks up static the text changes from the name of the radio that we've given it there you see the power meter so we'll get an idea of how powerful the signals are coming through really all we care about is can you hear me or can you not hear me but the power meter will let us measure the signal just to make it a little bit more scientific now we're going to be performing these tests in almost ideal conditions i would say fair to good conditions i'm located in the inland empire of southern california roughly if you look at a map at where interstate 210 and interstate 15 converge so i'm at about 1700 feet elevation and that's where the is a rubicon will be she's going to be staying home so her jeep will be at about 1700 feet elevation and as you can see we do have she's going to be parked right here in the garage and there are some trees and houses but because we're up high most of the valley is below and i'm going to be trying to stay in that valley and i'm basically going to drive south as far as i can until we either can't talk anymore or until i run out of highway without running into the mountains so no matter how good the radio is it can't talk through mountains okay that's enough talking i'm gonna jump into the not a rubicon and i'm gonna start driving down the road [Laughter] all right we're at the first stop just over five miles away forgot to mention we're using gmrs channel 16. this is simplex no repeaters or anything and i'm starting on low power 5 watts so let's give it a try calling base do you copy i copy you roger that what's the power meeting power meter reading that i'm coming in at 53 roger that call you back in a while all right so five watts low power at five miles no problem so let's go down to the next stop which is another 10 miles or so down the road all right now we're at stop number two 10.3 miles away let's give a call out on the radio and see how we're coming in [Applause] calling base on ibm power 18 watts how am i coming in 6 45 she heard me good she said so we'll go a few miles away and try again all right we're at stop number three now it's at about 25 miles and i drove through a lot of hills and trees and stuff to get here so i'm a little iffy on whether or not we'll get through from here let's see how this works mobile calling base do you copy calling base do you copy i copy roger that i'm at high power what's the meter reading one two one two what's the meter read 58. roger that low power 5 watts what's the meter read 51.52 over 20 miles and i switched down to low power that's um you know 5 watts and she was still able to copy me so i'm really surprised okay it's now the next morning and yesterday after the last stop i realized that it's really hard to go more than 20 miles or so anywhere in the inland empire in any one direction without running into a range of mountains so the area that i wanted to go to was surrounded by mountains that had somehow eluded me on google earth so today i've gone a different direction i have traveled west and if you know anything about the inland empire and southern california you know that west of the inland empire is los angeles county so i'm in the beautiful downtown city of south el monte just a little bit north of interstate 60 just off of rosemead boulevard i think that's how money so by looking at google earth it looks like there's not a whole lot between home 30 miles behind me it's 30 or 31 miles east of me so we're going to fire up the radio and see if we can reach that far if i'm already surprised we've got the distances that we did yesterday so if we can hit 30 miles it's just going to be amazing but i'm i'm really i'm not real confident because 30 miles is a long way i don't even know even though the house is at a higher elevation i don't know how the curvature of the earth is going to work into this equation so let's just see if it works at 30 miles calling base do you copy mobile calling base do you copy okay so no luck at 30 miles now i could have just connected to a repeater there's a repeater 30 or 35 miles away from here that i know i can connect to that's kind of cheating because a repeater's got a 100 foot antenna and it's perfectly maintained and it's up at the top of a mountain i wanted to do this test to give an idea of you've got two jeeps out on the trail how far can you talk and basically it seems that if you can see that jeep obviously line of sight you're gonna be able to talk to it as long as you don't have a mountain or you're not in a valley or a canyon or something if you've got two of these radios you're gonna be able to talk to each other so i hope you enjoyed watching if you've got questions about uh these b-tech radios just post a comment below i'll try to answer it if you watch this video this far it couldn't have been that bad so please press don't mash or smash the like button press the like button too much mashing of like buttons going on youtube lately and if you haven't already please subscribe we'll be doing more communications videos as well as our regular off-roading videos in the near future so thank you for watching and we hope to see you on the trail

Channel: NotaRubicon Productions

Views: 133,559

Keywords: GMRS radios off road, best gmrs radio, high power gmrs, how far can you talk on GMRS, how far will gmrs go, how far does gmrs transmit, Btech gmrs, Btech GMRS 50x1, 50x1 review, how many miles does gmrs go

Id: -A_CNhfmcS4

Length: 7min 47sec (467 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 26 2020