Radio communications at PIT race - what was your experience?

We ran an antenna on a stick at the paddock and had no real problems around most of the track. If you're ACTUALLY on GMRS and not some hacked mess of a Baofeng it's no problem.

No you were ALL over the spectrum. There was talk of Jamming your primary with 50W of Mexican Polka.

geze, we did a quick spectrum of FRS GMRS I didn't know you were leaking out THAT far!

Baofengs are nothing but trouble.

why don't you just buy a real racing radio set up? That way you can have spotters around the track and give you real time info. It helps more than you would think.

Once I get my car done (Someday), Im planning to use CB.

Prior, we had a pair of used Motorola SP50's we got off Ebay.  They worked great for us (we lucked up and the set frequency was not being used by another team) but one died, and we discovered getting another one reprogrammed was more expensive than a new Baofeng UV-5R.  We bought the Baofeng and programmed it to match the existing Motorola, and used that setup until the other Motorola died. 

Now we have three Baofeng's and really have no real problems with ours.  Sometimes at track like Road Atlanta we can't RX/TX around the entire track, but that's OK.  We typically only use the radios to get ready for our pit stops or a possible mechanical issue.   Some teams yammer on and on like NASCAR with their spotters or like a WRC navigator, which would drive me nuts.  My team knows that during my stint, I don't want to hear any chatter in my ear unless it's absolutely necessary.  The less we talk, the better our team/car are doing in the race.

My experience is there's 2 kinds of Baofeng's: the original few years (up to like 2019) of absolute garbage that flooded in and had 0 quality control, and the last couple years where the FCC seems to have stepped in and told them to clean up their act or GTFO. BTECH apparently is a US based importer of Baofeng stuff an now has GMRS type certified radios that, in my experience, are very good.

The issues I've had with them typically are user error because of all the menu options and casual approach to manually setting them up instead of programming them with software like Chirp. The big upside to Terra and used business band radios like Kenwood or Vertex is that they're pretty much required to be programmed in software (which can sometimes be really hard to come by and use for used units), thus minimizing the amount of user error involved.

I'm currently using BTECH mobile and handheld units, as well as a couple older Baofengs that have proven to be reliable as backups. I'm also playing with Radioddity handhelds that seem pretty good and have the bonus of being USB-C chargeable.

So, I think the "Baofengs are garbage" mentality is a little outdated based on what they're currently offering through BTECH.

So, were the GMRS channels saturated at PIT or was there room to communicate?
Did ppl go to the HAM bands?

To answer the original question, There were one or two iffy/dead spots at PITT when you're at the further reaches of the track if you're using basic off the shelf radios. We've always just made a point of only trying to talk when we're on a section of track near the pits.

GMRS is a problem because most people don't understand privacy codes. A lot of people seem to think of them as "sub channels" but they aren't. Privacy codes just add a signal to the start of the broadcast, and your radio won't play any incoming broadcast that didn't have that signal. You're all still trying to broadcast on the same channel though. So what you get is 10 teams trying to use the same channel, but half of them can't hear the other chatter and have no idea they're stepping all over each other. If you set your radio to be on a channel with no privacy code you can hear all the overlap. This leads to problems with people thinking they're out of range or have crap radios because their broadcast won't go through, because 4 teams are trying to talk at once, and one of those teams is someone with 4 spotters that never, ever, shuts up.

When we (our team) go back to doing more than 1 race a year I'm going to get a real license so I can legally use other channels.

Fun fact, Lemons was selling Rugged Radios in their store up until last year. They're rebadged baofengs in blue housings

We have mostly transitioned from Motorolas to Baofengs too. We still have both but rarely use our Motorolas anymore.