Whats the point of buying a 110w radio?

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escomm
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Re: Whats the point of buying a 110w radio?

Post by escomm »

Birken Vogt wrote:
SlimBob wrote:So the final answer is ERP and antenna pattern. That's why you buy a 110W radio. Coverage, plain and simple.
While that is a valid point for some situations, I think the other answer (marketing) is probably correct for many more of the cases where they have been sold. I can only think personally of a few instances that I have thought that a 110 watt radio was a worthwhile investment of money, in fact, we use and sell more 35 watt radios than anything. But it depends on the application, of course. Most of the time they are bought because the purchaser "wants them" and for no technical reason.
If you are selling 35 watt radios then they can only be 800MHz or non-Motorola models and 100watt at 800MHz is not an option due to FCC occupational exposure limitations...
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Re: Whats the point of buying a 110w radio?

Post by Birken Vogt »

This conversation seemed to be about VHF and UHF radios and I was offering my observation on such. My observations span all different brands of radios.
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Re: Whats the point of buying a 110w radio?

Post by escomm »

Birken Vogt wrote:This conversation seemed to be about VHF and UHF radios and I was offering my observation on such. My observations span all different brands of radios.
The first word out of OP's mouth was Motorola and you can probably surmise what the second word of the forum title in which his post was contained is. Hence the clarification of you either speaking of non-Motorola radios, or an 800MHz radio. There is radioinfoboard.com to discuss non-Motorola product. That's all it is
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Re: Whats the point of buying a 110w radio?

Post by loband »

High power is needed for some situations. We run mountain top 350w vhf P25 repeaters, TXRX .6db loss duplexers, preselectors and ARR preamps, 6db omni 4 dipole antennas fed with 7/8 heliax, no run is over 150'. Mobiles are 110w APX7500, XTL5000 or Astro Spectras and 1/4wave roof top antennas. Yes the pre amp option on all mobiles. We expect when a mic is keyed in our system, we will be heard with no digitalizing or mobile noise problems from ignition systems, fuel injectors, bank alarms, or cash registers. Most importantly for high power is in the post 911 world, someone trying interfear with our communications by jamming or malious calls. It has been tried by some idiots with low power ham import portables. FM will capture the stronger signal everytime.
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Re: Whats the point of buying a 110w radio?

Post by SlimBob »

... and that system is engineered?
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Re: Whats the point of buying a 110w radio?

Post by loband »

SlimBob you answered your own question.... "SlimBob wrote:So the final answer is ERP and antenna pattern. That's why you buy a 110W radio. Coverage, plain and simple." You won't ever see me driving a Prius....only big block V8 power.
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Re: Whats the point of buying a 110w radio?

Post by SlimBob »

Preamps lead to front-end overload, front-end overload leads to AGC limiting, mixing products, etc.

For a repeater site on a hill without much of anything in the neighborhood, that's not a bad idea. But if there's anything within five miles, the preamp will need cavity filters itself, not to mention protecting it from the transmitter you're running rather close to it. The radio has much better rejection characteristics without the preamp than with preamp. Or, to say that another way, power is a better idea than power + preamp. One cannot "hear" below the site noise floor, and bringing the noise floor up reduces the signal to noise ratio, leading to scratchy signals, etc.

Since everything has a preamp, one doesn't need to be on the frequency exactly to effect a denial of service, one only needs to be on a nearby frequency. And the closer one is to a given receiver, the less on frequency they need to be to cause front-end overload and put the radio's gain stages into limiting, which leads to zero signal apparent on frequency (since all the gain has been turned down).

And from the mountaintop, a DB-228 would be a better idea for large area coverage (>= 30 miles from repeater to mobile). 350W into a 4-bay antenna is excessive (ERP is then 1400W), and results in co-channel interference as well as a footprint the FCC doesn't want to support or license (> 40 mile radius). 350W ERP total sounds reasonably normal for a 30 mile radius repeater inclusive of losses.

I still wouldn't put a preamp on a repeater; Motorola and GE only used 6dB gain preamps. A typical receiver noise figure is about 7dB; the preamp, having a NF of 0.5 - 1.5dB can make up the 6dB NF difference, but any gain above 6dB will reduce the receiver's dynamic range as shown above. The effects are similar to the "Extender" functionality of some radios -- a 60MHz RX that detects atmospheric noise and reduces the front-end gain of the radio to eliminate noise.

And then there's OET65.

Not to mention power-to-weight ratio. (And driving faster than the max efficiency point of most cars (60MPH) effectively raises your cost per mile or cost of gas per gallon for the tank.) But the Prius is best suited for city driving; the power train has limitations -- speeds above 60-70MPH result in electrical motor issues due to shorted turns in the motor, etc.
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Re: Whats the point of buying a 110w radio?

Post by jmdearras »

g8tzl2004 wrote:Motorola make a number of high power 110w radios as well as 50w medium power radios.

The 110w radios are generally trunk mounted with remote heads given the size of heatsinks required for 110w operation.

However, in the real world, whats the point of using 110w when you will get practically identical results running 50w?

In db terms, 110w represents only a 3.4dB increase in power...which is not much.

In fact, with some Motorola radios there is a more than 3dB variation in RX sensitivity...so you would be better of making sure you had a "hot" receiver.

Indeed , with the XTL5000, you have the option to "enable" a 4dB (I think) pre-amp. So rather than run a 110w radio you actually would be better of using a 50w radio with the 4dB pre-amp enabled!!! ie you could hear a 50w signal at greater distance with the 4dB pre-amp enabled vs a 110w signal without using the pre-amp.

I wonder how many are using XTL's without realising that Motorola has deliberately made them "deaf" until you update the flashcode. All my Jedi MCS2000's already have the "pre-amp" enabled as per standard....and the front ends are really hot. Has anybody compared an MCS2000 to an XTL with or without the pre-amp enabled?

Any views?
Does the MCS2000 have a flashcode to enable a pre-amp, or is the pre-amp a factory build option?

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Re: Whats the point of buying a 110w radio?

Post by N4KVE »

There is no W12 option to Flash into the 2000. GARY
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Re: Whats the point of buying a 110w radio?

Post by Wiregeek »

As an aside, Almost every 'covert' install I've done with those horrible sti-co antennas has been a 110w. My assumption there is that they need all that power to get something other than heat out of the antenna...

Someone mentioned challenging coverage areas, and I'd say Alaska is king there. The ALMR is a colossal and wonderful "Statewide" system, but you can't cover everything, not at that scale.
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Re: Whats the point of buying a 110w radio?

Post by loband »

What's the point of buying a 110w radio? It's knowing you are buying the best and if they still can't hear you, well you done all you could. No second guessing.
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Re: Whats the point of buying a 110w radio?

Post by d119 »

Christ almighty people, this thread is YEARS old... Get over it.
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Re: Whats the point of buying a 110w radio?

Post by Bill_G »

Ah, but the battle reigns on.
To 3db, or not to 3db - *that* is the question.
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Re: Whats the point of buying a 110w radio?

Post by d119 »

Go take your meds, Bill. And send me some more when you get a moment, I'm out.
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Re: Whats the point of buying a 110w radio?

Post by Bill_G »

Alas poor Yorick, I know not what you speak.
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Re: Whats the point of buying a 110w radio?

Post by thebigphish »

...ahh now that made me chuckle. thanks, needed that. :lol:
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Re: Whats the point of buying a 110w radio?

Post by Karl NVW »

That's why Motorola hires highly trained engineers on their staff to design systems where actual performance of the hardware selected meets the coverage needed to compolete the mission in the customer's working environment. Did it myself the previous 43 years with LMPS / Comm Sector / MSI.
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Re: Whats the point of buying a 110w radio?

Post by SlimBob »

Because with 110W, who cares if the repeater is down? Just drive for somewhere "high enough" and you'll be heard for miles around.
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Re: Whats the point of buying a 110w radio?

Post by jry »

some of the technical justification is frequency range dependent.

A 100W low band makes a lot more sense to me than a 100W UHF mobile.

Not sure I have ever seen a 100W 800Mhz mobile radio. Usually 35W was the high power version for 800.
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Re: Whats the point of buying a 110w radio?

Post by motorola_otaku »

escomm wrote:That said, Alabama (nor any other state police agency in the US) does not have the challenging coverage requirements for a statewide system like California does, except perhaps Alaska?
Texas has that plus every other type of terrain you could think of, but they took the workaround route and pushed everyone (or as many COGs as they could) into a system-of-systems approach rather than build out a single statewide system. Even 95% mobile coverage statewide would have pushed the cost north of a billion.

Predictably DPS runs 110W V/7-8 APX bricks in the cars, with full O9 siren and lights integration. Before that it was XTL5000s with W9s and DEKs, before that Astro Spectras with the same, and before that still were Syntor X9000s. All 110W. Since most of the state up until the mid-2000s was VHF-hi and they use county SOs for dispatch across a lot of the state (with widely-varying quality of infrastructure) it made sense for the time. Now in the metro areas it's not unusual to see a DPS car with no VHF antenna at all, or (my favorite) a bent/broken/incorrectly installed/220 MHz (how) VHF antenna.
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Re: Whats the point of buying a 110w radio?

Post by kf4sqb »

Try a huge, mostly rural county, with lots of trees and slightly rolling terrain. One (somewhat) central area with repeaters for SO, county fire, EMS, etc. Luckily, we have voters on most of the radio systems in the county now, but the high-power radios were needed in the past. Also, we work mutual aid with a few surrounding counties, with much worse infrastructure than ours, and I'm a Ham operator, and work 2m repeaters from some distance at times. Thats why I use a 110 watt radio, with a high-gain antenna (Motorola "Spectrum" series).
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Re: Whats the point of buying a 110w radio?

Post by W5KVV »

What a great old thread. Keep it alive! I use 100 watt radios in the mobile, mainly due to the terrain of SE OK. They help out quite a bit really. The difference is there according to everyone on the other end when compared to a 40 or 50 watt radio.

My compliment in the mobile includes Maratracs on 2, 6 & 70 cm for amateur use and a MCS2000 for public safety. The Maratracs are full blown bulletproof, perfect for amateur use if you need a no frills radio. Not to mention they're dirt cheap and accessories are plentiful. The MCS2000 is a good radio, but it struggles to produce rated power and has nowhere near the duty cycle of the Maratrac radios.

I've always wanted a high power Astro Spectra. Maybe one day.
Matt
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