Lemons Assigned Radio Frequencies (Page 1 of 2)

My guess is that it's one more thing for the Lemons crew to deal with that they don't have time for.  And I'm pretty sure that Jay doesn't care whether or not you're cross talking with other teams.

I do think it would be a great idea to coordinate this kind of thing.  We gave up on CB because it didn't have enough range to communicate all the way around the track, and it was impossible to find a channel of our own.  But I think if it's going to happen, then somebody other than the Lemons crew is going to have to figure it out.

bs

Some races are so crowded that nothing will stop the cross talk and chatter.  Having peaked behind the curtain, Lemons staff is pretty thin for how big these races are - the odds of them adding yet more crap to organize and police is zero.  Self-policing is the only real option.  We do the Saturday morning radio check frenzy thing all morning too.  Doesn't do a thing when 5 teams turn their radios on right before the flag drops.  Too late then.

I do wish that everyone would stop using privacy settings.  All it does is ensure that you can't hear the other people on the channel.  Can't effectively share a channel if most of the people on it can't hear each other.  One of the Barber races we ended up on the same channel as two other teams who could actually hear us.  Figured out who they were during the first few hours and started sharing information for the rest of the race.

I do kinda feel bad for low power consumer radios who end up on our GMRS channels.  We are licensed for high watt broadcast and use it.

There are 23 GMRS frequencies, but 14 of those are shared with FRS.

I agree with the other posters that the Lemons staff has enough to do already. Maybe a signup sheet or whiteboard. But it can probably only be for the MURS and FRS frequencies, since I doubt that many of the teams using GMRS have licenses (although the FCC really doesn't care one little bit). But it's important to have Lemons not have the appearance of supporting illegality (is insanity illegal?).

As to using the CTCSS, we turn it on. We don't want to know what the other teams are saying. We get confused enough with our own conversations.

One plea from me - it would help everyone to keep conversations short. It looks to me from watching the green "channel busy" light come on our radios that some teams are being very verbose. Apparently discussing the latest Justin-Selena relationship news at length.

One problem many teams have is that they don't know their frequencies.
Outfits like Sampson send you the radios pre-programmed but don't tell you what the frequencies or privacy codes are.
I had to buy the special adapter and software to find out what they were.   Some were GMRS, but others were completely unknown.   I still don't know how they picked those frequencies.

it could be as simple as car numbers. drop down list of available. pick and choose.
some find numbers are hard, some will be using wrong frequency. but hey, most will be ok.

I don't think there are enough channels to go around, so we just assume we are going to hear other race related stuff. We always think we found a channel that's some what clear, then the green drops and you hear 10 people screaming GREEN GREEN GREEN! What NEEDS to stop are people in the pits using the frequencies during the race asking where the ice chest is or kids being allowed to play on them. Use your cell phone!!!!!!!!!!!

What kind of sadio are you using?  There are lots of frequencies available on UHF radios.  Find out which frequencies you are using, and get them changed to a different set of frequencies.

If you've got a scanner you can take a survey of frequencies in use and tell your radio tech to avoid them.

There were multiple teams on our radio channel at HPR in June, so we started using the car # in each transmission.    That helped a lot.

The answer is still ditch the radios and do flag semaphore.

At first I was envisioning this, but realized yes, even on a good day only a fraction of teams monitor these forums.  Even then, it IS better than nothing.  I guess the best option is to run without ctcss enabled, monitor chatter for the first stint, use callsigns, and if chatter is especially bad, change at the first pitstop.

I had a pie in the sky dream that Lemons could simply dole out frequencies evenly to minimize accidentally stuffing on a channel shared by 12 other teams, but I realize that is probably impossible to coordinate with the licensing issues etc, unless there's just a disclaimer (HAM license frequency only)

I hope NHMS will be better, maybe a few weeks before the race I'll post a radio frequency shout out post in the upcoming race forum for teams to list their intended frequencies.  We'll see

The First person to invent an FRS Burst transmission radio will be a thousandaire.

My $0.02 worth on this subject.

1. Lemons HQ definitely will not want to add yet another responsibility to their staff.  It won't happen.  End of story.

2. If someone were to assign your team a channel, how many teams actually have radios that can simply just change their frequency to whatever is assigned?  My team's radios have an A & B, and would need to be sent off to be reprogrammed.

3. Like others have said, the biggest problem is teams who just can't STFU.  Once at Barber, we literally had a guy beside us in the timing tower who actually coached his driver in EVERY SINGLE TURN, LAP AFTER LAP!  Our radio is used mostly for pit stops, and car problems.  My team knows I don't want to hear someone jabbering in my ear for 2 hours, so unless it's something important, just STFU and let me drive.  How those WRC guys listen to that constant chatter is beyond me.

4. I think a version of CTSparky's Google Docs idea is the most practical, and has the best chance (albeit really small chance) of any kind of success.  It could be started here on the forum and expanded by teams who have access at the actual race.  This assumes that a team actually knows their frequencies however.

5. My team has been fortunate that our channel has mostly been clear, but we have had cross-talk a few races.  I do like the call sign idea so you know who you are talking to.   I need to talk to my team about this and implement it in case of cross-talk in the future.