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Video: MotoTRBO and NASCAR

I’m becoming increasingly interested in learning about the MotoTRBO platform, particularly its use in the amateur radio band (although the nearest amateur MotoTRBO system for me is located about two hours away in Mount Pleasant, Iowa). While searching for YouTube videos demonstrating its capabilities versus other digital platforms, I came across a video about Racing Radios, a company that specializes in supplying radios to track personnel, media, vendors, security, track fire/rescue, and several race teams.

Certainly, I’m no NASCAR fan — but it was pretty neat to hear about MotoTRBO’s success in such an RF-intense environment at a large-scale event like the Talladega 500. Seeing that bank of MotoTRBO radios in the trailer is enough to make my eyes water!

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Filed under Amateur radio on June 13, 2010.

Will GMRS go freeband? FCC seeks comments on Part 95 review

The FCC is now seeking comment on a Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM) that was issued earlier this week that seeks, among other things, to either relax the GMRS licensing requirements or do away with them altogether.

The proposal, which can be downloaded in its 92-page PDF entirety here, seeks to “simplify, streamline, and update the Part 95 rules to reflect technological advances and changes in the way the American public uses the various Personal Radio Services.”

The NPRM goes on to say, “Implementation of the rule changes proposed below should result in clearer, more consistent rules, benefiting Personal Radio Service users, equipment manufacturers, and the Commission.”

At a glance, the NPRM explores these main topics for the GMRS, FRS, and CB radio services:

  • Eliminate GMRS licensing (aka “license by rule”), similar to the FRS and CB spectrum, or extend licensing term from five to ten years.
  • Relax eligibility requirements. Under the current GMRS licensing regulations, only those aged 18 years or older are eligible to apply for a GMRS license. According to the FCC, if licensing is eliminated, it will be very similar to the FRS service, which has no such age restriction, so they don’t find a reason to continue the age eligibility requirement.
  • Move to narrowband 12.5 kHz spacing. Currently GMRS uses 25 kHz spacing. Moving to narrowband FM would provide better spectrum management.
  • Decrease GMRS handheld radio output power from 5 to 2 watts.
  • Eliminate the use of repeaters in the GMRS service.
  • Consideration of a petition from Garmin to allow the transmission of GPS location information and user-generated text messages on certain GMRS channels. These emissions are already authorized on FRS channels, but Garmin would like the FCC to consider allowing it in the GMRS spectrum. An example of such a radio that is on the FRS service is the Garmin Rino 110.
  • Prohibition of approval of dual VHF Marine/FRS radios.
  • Clarification of regulations to explicitly allow hands-free microphones to operate in the CB band.
  • Decrease the allowable output power or prohibit the use of directional antennas for CB radios.

Click here to read and submit comments regarding to Proceeding 10-119, “In the Matter of review of the Commission’s Part 95 Personal Radio Services Rules”

General Mobile Radio Service (GMRS)

Prohibition of repeaters

Perhaps one of the more harrowing components of the NPRM to GMRS enthusiasts is the possibility of prohibiting repeaters on GMRS.

…we note that the personal communications environment has evolved substantially since the Commission adopted the rules allowing repeater operation for GMRS. For
example, most wide-area personal communication needs are now met by commercial communication providers. We seek comment on whether repeater and base station operations are still needed in the GMRS given the availability of commercial alternatives that allow for more efficient use of the spectrum.

Double the licensing term or eliminate licenses altogether?

Licensed GMRS operators have become increasingly frustrated with the flood of users on dual FRS/GMRS “bubble-pack” consumer-grade portable radios, who are unfamiliar with the licensing requirement to use the GMRS channel. Even more frustrating for the licensees has been the apparent lack of enforcement by the FCC. The commission acknowledges the problem, and is a leading factor in their proposal to eliminate licensing:

We also note that there are reports that most purchasers of portable FRS/GMRS combination radios (as well as purchasers of portable GMRS-only radios) use the licensed GMRS channels, while only a small percentage obtain the required license. Although the Commission has made several regulatory changes over the years to enhance the GMRS, the basic regulatory structure remains.

Another reason for the FCC exploring de-licensing is to decrease the administrative burden on the commission.

Furthermore, we believe that licensing GMRS by rule would reduce administrative and other burdens on GMRS users, as well as on the Commission. For example, users would no longer be subject to application and regulatory fees, and would not be at risk of losing their authorization to operate for failing to file a timely renewal application.

If the FCC decides to keep licensing, the commission would possibly extend the licensing term from the current five years, to ten years.

Alternatively, if we were to maintain the individual licensing requirement for all or some types of GMRS operations, we propose to extend the GMRS license term from five to ten years, to conform with most other wireless services, where the license terms have been extended from five to ten years. Extending GMRS license terms to ten years would decrease the administrative burden on both the general public and the Commission without, we believe, any adverse impact. It also would promote standardization of general licensing rules and streamlining of administrative requirements.

Business use of GMRS vs. FRS

Under the current system, businesses may operate in the GMRS spectrum, only if all employees possess individual licenses, which is $85 for five years. The commission is taking comments on whether this is still acceptable, noting that businesses use FRS radios (although with lower transmit power) with success without causing congestion in the FRS band.

Consideration of transmit power, RF exposure, and uncoordinated stations

The FCC is concerned, with the increase of popularity of GMRS/FRS radios, about RF exposure to users. The GMRS service was originally categorically excluded from routine RF exposure evaluations because use of GMRS was typically done with a mobile installation, e.g. the antenna was away from the body. Many commercial-grade GMRS handhelds are capable of transmitting from 1 watt to 5 watts, and the NPRM seeks to reduce the allowed transmit power to 2 watts.

Along those lines, the NPRM notes that the allowed 50 watts on GMRS is “relatively high power for stations that are not coordinated.” It questions whether more stringent height and antenna requirements are needed to reduce interference in GMRS.

Family Radio Service (FRS)

New dual VHF Marine/FRS radios may bring unfamiliar users to maritime frequencies

The FCC is also seeking to clarify the policy on dual radios. In recent history, radios with dual VHF Marine/FRS frequencies have been found on the market. The commission is concerned that the inclusion of the VHF Marine channels on consumer-grade FRS bubble-pack radios with users unfamiliar with maritime radio use may hinder the United States Coast Guard’s response to distress calls.

Citizens Band (CB)


The NPRM seeks to modify the continuous transmission duration for the CB band. Currently, each CB station must limit its conversations to no more than five continuous minutes, and that after each conversation, CB stations must not transmit again for at least one minute. This regulation was introduced at the inception of CB to reduce congestion, and the FCC asks if this regulation is still necessary with the sharp decline of CB use.

Section 95.413(a)(6), which prohibits “the transmission of music, whistling, sound effects or any material to amuse or entertain,” and 95.413(a)(7), which prohibits “the transmission of any sound effect solely to attract attention,” has been proposed to be amended or completely eliminated.

Surface wave vs. sky wave propagation (click to enlarge)

Surface wave vs. sky wave propagation (click to enlarge)

Because the CB service was intentionally created for short-distance communications, the commission is considering prohibition of directional antennas attached to transmitters or decreasing the allowed transmit power. The root of the FCC’s concern is the high-frequency nature of sky wave propagation, which can absorb transmissions into the ionosphere (under the right solar conditions) and carry the transmissions over long distances, opposed to direct, where transmissions travel along the earth’s surface. The FCC notes that while amplifiers or modified CB radios are already illegal, an un-modified, un-amplified CB radio right off the shelf can achieve sky wave propagation. Thus, the commission is debating whether or not this is a problem — and if so, would prohibition of directional antennas or a decrease in allowable power solve the problem?

“Is there harm in allowing CB operators to communicate in sky wave mode, or would such an allowance tempt the use of illegal amplifiers which cause interference? We seek comment on how best to deal with section 95.413(a)(9) and other challenges in permitting a “commons” band regulatory structure in the HF band,” the NPRM states.

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Filed under Amateur radio on June 10, 2010.

Hands-on with the Palm Pre Plus on Verizon

My “New Every Two” offer from Verizon (get a new phone at a discount with a contract renewal every two years) was long overdue. I had been using a worn-out BlackBerry Curve that had seen a lot of use. The trackball was falling out after being replaced twice. A lot of the silver paint was chipped off on all sides of the phone. If it was even a slightly humid day at work and I had the phone in my pocket and was doing vigorous physical activities, the keyboard would constantly malfunction until I took it out of my pocket for a few hours to cool off and dry out.

It was April 1 when I decided I need to do something about it. I browsed the Verizon website for phones and narrowed it down to the Motorola Droid and the Palm Pre Plus. A co-worker loved his Droid, and Mike absolutely loved his Palm Pre (although on Sprint). I was looking for something with an actual QWERTY keyboard and built-in wifi.

At the time, budget was also a big issue. With my New Every Two offer, the Droid would cost me $150 to purchase with a contract renewal, and the Pre would be absolutely free. I had previously owned the Palm Treo for Verizon, and it was ok. I had also owned Motorola cell phones in the past that were extremely durable.

After reaching out to Twitter for recommendations, Justin told me that earlier in the same day, Verizon had just announced that Mobile HotSpot/tethering would be free for webOS devices on the network.

With budgeting in mind, a light bulb immediately lit up. If I took Verizon up on this offer, I could dump my ExpressCard plan (about $50/month) and use the mobile wifi instead. I rarely used the ExpressCard anymore since the amount of photo assignments decreased, and I usually only used the ExpressCard for breaking news assignments or during storms or when the cable internet went out or other such situations. With my BlackBerry and the ExpressCard, my monthly bill was just shy of $150/month with a state employee discount.

So after deciding that the Pre would allow me to keep my costs down but still allow me to use e-mail, messaging, web browsing, and other apps, there wasn’t much of a reason for me to pay $150 to buy the Droid and continue to pay the ExpressCard. After work, I headed down the street to the nearest Verizon store and set it into motion.

Immediately I told the sales clerk at the store that I wanted the Pre, and I wanted to cancel my ExpressCard data plan and go with the free Mobile HotSpot instead. There must have been others in there doing the same as me because the clerk rolled his eyes at me, sighed, and said “everyone wants everything to be free. That’s how companies go bankrupt.” I wanted to stop him mid-sentence and tell him that it was Verizon that offered it to me, but I thought better of it.

The ESN transfer process to the new phone seemed easier than ever. The Pre introduces a lot of new “things” to the user, so after you initialize the phone you are forced to go through a tutorial. You don’t want to speed through it, and it won’t let you get past it until you actually show the phone that you understand what it’s trying to teach you.

One of the new “things” the Pre introduces are cards. The Pre was built to be a multi-tasking powerhouse. Think of cards on the Pre as windows on a desktop. You can leave cards open for any of your apps — e-mail, messaging, contacts, calendar, Facebook — whatever. Then you can scroll through the cards in a fashion similar to Mac OS X’s Cover Flow.

Another unique feature of the Pre are gestures. Gestures are usually made with one finger on the touchscreen itself or in the gesture area below the screen. Quite simply, gestures will change the way you use mobile phones. After I became acclimated to it, it was so second-nature to me that I honestly couldn’t work my iPod Touch — I was trying to do gestures on it like it was the Pre.

You can swipe the gesture area to the left to go back one screen, you can swipe to the right to go forward one page in the web browser, and you can “flick” a card up to get rid of the card, like flicking a bug off the table. There are many more gestures you can learn on this website from Palm.

The Pre also brings seamless integration for its contacts, mail, messaging and calendar apps to sync information via several online sources — Palm Profile, Google, and Facebook. I can pull my Google Calendar into the Pre’s Calendar app, pull my phone and e-mail contacts from Gmail (and I don’t even use Gmail for my e-mail), and also pull phone and e-mail contacts from Facebook. It’s very versatile, and it syncs automatically so it’s a totally seamless integration.

AOL Instant Messenger integrates seamlessly as well. It’s coupled with SMS messaging in the Pre’s default Messaging app. It’s a nice feature, but I get too many of those AOL System Msg messages as I roam between wifi routers and 3G.

Notifications like new e-mail, SMS messages, and also user-defined notices from third-party apps appear at the bottom of the screen. They aren’t intrusive unless you have lots of notifications from several different applications. If you receive a new message while the phone is unlocked, it will display a small one-line notification at the bottom. If the phone is locked, it will display one or more larger two-line notifications on the home screen.

The App Catalog isn’t really too shabby either. While developers seem to be focusing their attention on the iPhone or Droid OS’es, there’s still quite a few apps out there. In fact, lots of the popular iPhone and Droid apps have been ported over to webOS. Coming from the BlackBerry, I enjoyed the ability to Google for BlackBerry apps and not have to go through a “walled garden” of an app store. But I must say, the Palm App Catalog is absolutely hassle-free and inexpensive. They don’t seem to be picky about which apps they approve either, which is good for variety. You can browse through categories or rankings or search for a specific app. Click download, and the Pre will automatically install the app for you. It’s really simple.

The camera is pretty decent for a cell phone. The camera is about 3 megapixels. I don’t think I’ll be winning many Pulitzers with it, but it is what it is. The camera also records fairly decent video too.

As mentioned previously, a major reason I switched to the Pre was for the Mobile HotSpot. The first real test was when I was assigned by the Associated Press to cover President Obama’s visit to a wind turbine blade factory in a rural river town in southeastern Iowa. There was no wifi available, so I relied entirely on the Mobile HotSpot.

The overall results were positive, it got the job done. The speeds dropped off considerably at times, but considering I was in a rural area inside a very large manufacturing plant, it worked relatively well. I transferred just under 1 gigabyte of data that day using the Pre. Because of the intensive use, I plugged the Pre in to charge via USB port. The phone was extremely hot due to charging and the mobile wifi transmitting, especially around the keyboard — if you use it for such intensive purposes, I suggest to slide out the keyboard to ventilate the phone just a bit. There are also some battery issues, when mobile wifi is enabled, the battery still drains faster than USB is able to charge the battery.

If you don’t see the Mobile HotSpot icon in your menu, be sure to get the latest webOS update version by clicking the “Updates” app in the menu. My icon wasn’t there to begin with, my phone wasn’t shipped with the latest version so I had to update it. The update process for the OS (and any other apps you have downloaded) are totally seamless. It can be done over 3G or wifi, but I’d suggest it be done over wifi.

However I don’t have all positive comments for the Pre.

My biggest complaint is definitely the battery life. I am lucky if I get a full workday on one battery without charging with only light to moderate use. I’ve searched for solutions to this problem, and everyone seems to be in disagreement on what would work and what won’t.

I decreased the screen brightness to the minimum (and it’s still very bright), and noticed a slight improvement but not much. Other users have suggested that enabling wifi makes the battery last longer, and others suggested that disabling wifi will help battery life. Through my uses, I’m not convinced that either suggestion works. So I keep wifi on at all times.

The battery life of the Pre is just plain awful, and it really kills it for me. I finally broke down and bought three more chargers off eBay in addition to the charger that comes included with the phone. I keep one at my desk at home, one by the bed at home, one in the car, and one in my computer bag. Unfortunately, most of my days are spent away from a computer and thus unable to charge.

The keyboard also subtracts points. I don’t have fat fingers by any means, and I never had any problems typing on my BlackBerry Curve, but the Pre keyboard just gives me absolute fits. It’s to the point where I’m afraid to write e-mails or even update my status on Facebook. I believe I push all buttons with even pressure, but some keys just don’t want to be clicked. When I type “work” it often comes out as “wok” and some buttons think they’ve been pushed twice, so “as” often comes out as “ass.” The “alt” and shift buttons have to be pressed really hard as well.

All of these problems come together and makes it look like I have spelling and grammar problems. I wish I was able to write longer e-mails or blog posts on the Pre like I did with my BlackBerry, but I just can’t with this keyboard. I’ve had this phone for two months now, but I still keep telling myself that I’m just not used to the keyboard.

I can’t really fault Palm for this, but I hate large touch screens. For one, depending on my activity level and the weather, the screen will get all smudged up or oiled up from my fingers or my face. Two, you better not make the mistake of putting this phone in the same pocket as your keys or lots of coins. I accidentally put a set of keys in my cell phone pocket once for about an hour and a half and it sure didn’t take long for the screen to receive a deep scratch in the gesture area.

The camera is also fixed-focus, meaning the focus distance is not adjustable. It’s a shame too, because the Droid has a lot of cool apps for decoding barcodes. There’s barcode decoder apps for the Pre too, but they don’t work. You have to put the phone’s camera fairly close to the barcode for the barcode to fill the screen, but it can’t focus that close so it’s just a blurry mess. With the loss of detail in the barcode, the apps are not able to decode it. I still haven’t been able to successfully decode a barcode with the Pre.

The accelerometer might need a little work, too. Frequently, the accelerometer will get confused about whether the phone is in landscape or portrait orientation. I have to turn the screen into either orientation and back again to get it to where I need it to be. Sometimes it’s just plain slow to orientate itself to the proper orientation.

The proximity sensor that controls when to shut the screen off and lock it when you have the phone up to your face when on a phone call also needs some work. In one instance, I had an important client call me to arrange for a big assignment. Halfway through the call, my cheek calls voicemail and then I have a three-way conference call with me, my client, and my voicemail bugging me for my password. Along the way, either my client (out of confusion) or my cheek starts dialing numbers, just prolonging the agony. My client ended up hanging up on me and called back later wondering why her phone was asking for her voicemail PIN like that. It’s an experience that I never want to encounter again.

The wifi antenna seems weak too. I’m not sure what kind of an antenna it’s using, but my co-workers’ BlackBerrys can log into wifi access points that my Pre can’t even see. It’s not a huge detriment, but it’s worth noting if you’re looking for sturdy wifi connectivity.

Perhaps these issues will be resolved with a software update. I hope so.

Bottom line: if your budget is in a pinch and you’re up for contract renewal, you’ll do yourself some good with going with the Pre. The Mobile HotSpot is a great, inexpensive feature that might save your butt down the road sometime. If you’re looking for something that will hold up long-term with more functionality and an ever-growing app catalog, go with the Droid.

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Filed under Leftovers on June 7, 2010.