$250 Ready-to-race radio kit - Now with GoPro connections! (Page 1 of 4)

This is exactly the setup we run in our car and it works great, that's why I shared it.

Y'all have any concerns running this system without a FCC GMRS license? i cant seem to find anything online that says you can get in trouble for running the system without the license unless someone reports you to the FCC.

Except we actually do have a license so... no, no concerns on our part. The license is $70 for 10 years, no test... if you're balking at that I'm shocked you don't bitch about the $50 "race license" that Lemons charges...

Although word on the street is GMRS licensing will go away soon because the FCC hates looking impotent since so many non-licensed people use it already.

Write your Congressperson. They don't care one way or the other and you may be the only person saying anything when it comes time for re-authorization.

All day to day operations of the US congress in a nutshell.

"Huh? thing that won't get me either re-elected or voted out? Whatever, when's Tee Time?"

How does the FCC license work?  Does everyone on the team need to get a license or just one person?

Yea every operator needs it.

Hey, sorry guys, I stopped getting notices for this thread for some reason... anyway, answers:

Enough for most tracks, few miles from car to pits, maybe a mile pits to car. YMMV. Sonoma and Thunderhill cause some issues depending on car/spotter placement and hills, but generally nothing too problematic. Those "35 mile range" claims of various blister-pack radios are 100% theoretical and not at all real-world.

GMRS license is for "immediate family", so if you're racing with your dad or brother or whatever then you can share a license. Otherwise yeah, anyone getting on the horn under GMRS frequencies SHOULD get their own license.

I did just realize that BTECH makes a MURS version of this.. downside is fewer frequencies to try if there's a lot of traffic, up side is 0 license requirements... so maybe consider swapping that for the GMRS version... SHOULD work totally interchangeably with the one I listed.. you'd have to get other MURS radios (or just multiples of this) for the pits to be compatible... http://a.co/d/7mNnQrX

Maybe I'll make a MURS version of this kit and update the post...

There's soooo many youtube videos out there that cover a bunch of different stuff.. I'd spend some time just browsing on there...

For the SUPER basics:

0) You need to be in channel mode to actually use these radios to transmit. They are receive only in frequency mode (RTFM). To change between the two hold menu while powering the radio on.

1) Squelch is for telling the radio when to stop playing what its receiving based on the power of the transmission. There's always a certain amount of background "noise" on any frequency, but usually very low power. Squelch tells the radio at what power it should "open up" and start playing what its hearing. For this setting you basically want it as low as possible. Turn it down until you hear static, then turn it back up a bit. If you have this turned up too high you won't hear anything unless the transmitting radio is super close.

2) Avoiding other users. There's actually 2 parts to this:

• Obviously the first step is to try and find a channel that no one is on. This can change even as the race weekend goes by, but this is the best way to start. After you find an empty or low-traffic channel, setup a CTCSS tone or "privacy tone" on all the radios. This doesn't make your transmissions "private" as the naming from some manufacturers might suggest, but is like a second kind of squelch. When set up, CTCSS tones tell the radio to only "open up" when a certain sub-audible tone is transmitted from another radio. This lets multiple teams use the same channel without hearing each other all day - if using different tones. There's one caveat though... different manufacturers call these tones different codes (just like different manufacturers sometimes call the same frequency different "channels"). Use this handy chart to help figure out which channels / codes you should be using: https://www.k0tfu.org/reference/frs-gmr … mystified/

• Second, everyone should be using the "busy channel lockout" feature in conjunction with CTCSS tones. This feature prevents the radio from transmitting when it senses there's traffic on the frequency/channel even if it isn't "opened up". For example: if Team A and Team B are both on Channel 12, but Team A is using CTCSS tone 77.0 and Team B is using CTCSS tone 67.0 they won't hear each other. However, if Team A is transmitting, and Team B starts to transmit, one of a number of not awesome things will happen: 1) both teams will hear garbled nonsense, 2) Team B will come in more powerfully than Team B due to transmitter strength or proximity and "walk over" Team A mid-transmission (rude) or 3) Team B won't be heard at all because their signal was weaker than Team A, but they won't know it because there's no indication they weren't heard. None of these are good scenarios. The solution is "busy channel lockout." The result of the above scenario if Team B had busy channel lockout on would be Team B would hear a beep that would indicate the channel was busy and their transmission was not sent. They'd know to try again in 10-20 seconds when the other team is hopefully done with their transmission.

Otherwise there isn't a whole lot you need to do changing settings. Play around with the radios and RTFM and you should be good. If you come up with specific questions I'll try to pay better attention to this post in the future...

I'm partial to concentrating on driving and not the irrelevant chatter in my ear. When we first started using these we did that, but it got old quick.

thanks for this list. we used this kit last year but the PTT button got wrapped up in the steering wheel coming down the ridge complex (last few turns) so we went without.  this year I re-wired it to use the old cruise control buttons on the steering wheel by finding the clockspring wires.  this works fine even with the higher resistance cruise buttons.  The wiring of the helmet kits is decent gauge and stranded so it's easy to do.

I also re-wired the helmet portion to use a standard 3.5mm TRRS cable so I could use an extension and it would pull free more easily when getting out.  I matched the CTIA/apple pinout for the TRRS 3.5mm connector so this also allows use of earbuds with mic, this actually works great, but can blast your ears if you don't turn the radio down enough

here is the female 3.5mm TRRS connector I used on the radio side:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01KFP0HBG/

and this TRRS extension:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00RXNV0NS/

and these monoprice cables for male ends to splice (these are pretty thin gauge and had cheesy coated stranded wires, I would try another next time, but they did work):

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01MZBUDRM/

pinouts are easy to find, I used this link and cut apart the cables, then probed the cut wires with a meter to ID them:

https://ham.stackexchange.com/questions … -connector

I made the cuts near the PTT button, and then on the helmet side of the weird connector, so the part that plugs into the radio itself is not modified.  it could also be done on the other side of the cables to reduce the number of connectors

google "ctia trrs" for the 3.5mm side.  two of the wires inside the radio harness, black and green, were both ground, so I tied them together.  and L+R on the TRRS side both get tied to the single speaker output of the radio.  I didn't need any capacitor to get the earbuds mic to work, not sure if the cables had one already or what.  Technically TRS could work (you only need 3 pins on the 3.5mm cable) but you'd have a non-standard 3.5mm connection then that wouldn't work with iphone earbuds

my usual thing is to use a few layers of harbor freight marine heat shrink over the splices, the soldered joints are weak but 3+ layers prevents them from bending and I've had great luck with this method

Since we're sharing our radio setup secrets, here's my build list: http://a.co/e0cdXQw
Plus switchcraft connectors (same thing rugged uses):
https://www.digikey.com/products/en?keywords=sc3486-nd
https://www.digikey.com/products/en?keywords=sc1040-nd

My setup goes like this;
- Put a 6.35mm male on each helmet headset with a short pigtail of the fat LyxPro cable, secured to each helmet with a sticky cable tie mount.
- Chop the kenwood style radio connector off a helmet headset and replace the PTT button and headset connectors with 3.5mm audio connectors.
- Use off the shelf flexible 3.5mm audio extension cables to bring the PTT button up onto the steering wheel.
- Put a 6.35mm female on the fat LyxPro cable and run it up to the left hand side of the drivers seat.
- Put an NMO mount in the roof and screw on a quality Laird antenna.
- Cover every individual wire connection in glue filled heat shrink, then each bundle in more glue filled heat shrink, gap-filled with hot glue if necessary.
- Build a spare of the in-car harness and a few spares of the helmet headsets for new/clumsy drivers.

Soldering to the thin enamel coated audio wire can be a pain, but once you get used to burning off the enamel with hot solder it actually quite each to solder the wires.

I had two of the cheap amazon female 6.35mm connectors fail before switching to the switchcraft ones, and one electret microphone fail, but otherwise this has been a really solid setup. We get full radio coverage at Sonoma, The Ridge and the Thunderhill 5 mile from our lawn chairs in the pits.

All the 6.35mm connectors follow the the NASCAR style pin-out. We put a driver from another team in our car a few races ago and having his (expensive "rugged") headset just work with our radios was a great thing.

If anyone is interested in the Baofeng config files I would be happy to share my GMRS config files, although since you will want to pick a different CTCSS/DCS code I would caution just loading up anything off the internet without customizing it.