UV,
Now Im annoyed. I just typed a whole answer into this thing and some sw glitch lost it.
Going to the word processor, damm can't trust anything with more than thirty transistors in it. RMUT (real men use tubes)
UV,
What I had tried to say before the sw glitch blew away my answer was.
I grew up on Long Island. Garden City, Amityville, Huntington Station, Greenlawn, and Syosset. After that the wife and I moved to Northern Virginia. The Mid East thing is contract work and I go home in December 04.
FYI
Audiovox is a cheap company. You can depend on them to take the path of maximum profit when it comes to any product. Yeah it works fair, and looks good, but after a while the shine erodes off and it's just another radio. Nothing to get excited about.
Here are the key points.
Being cheap, Audiovox most likely (remember I'm at an Army base in Iraq and don't have access to the product, just lots of experience) used many of the same parts for the FRS receiver and FM sub system.
FRS is a narrow band technology. FM is a wide band technology. Different internal circuits called filters select the bandwidth for the units FM section.
The other key limit is antenna performance.
First off, in the FRS service the antennas should not come off. The service rules were designed to prevent improvement to the gear. The FCC didn't want a lot of people hacking up equipment in the UHF band as had happened to 27mhz CB radio service.
So the antenna on your radio is matched for the 465 radio. It's about a ¼ wave at that frequency. Roughly five inches.
A proper ¼ wave for your FM set is 31 inches, just like a car radio antenna. Now if you took the car radio antenna and cut it down to five inches, the performance would suffer.
I suggest getting a separate walkman style radio and use the Audiovox just as an FRS unit.
If you ping me back here I can suggest some radio clubs on Long Island that will show you some interesting toys that will make the FRS radio look like a low tech door stop.
Hope all is well
Jack Crow in Iraq.
