Thread: vhf radio

What brand and model of radio? Could be a couple of things - where is the speaker located on the unit i.e. do you have one that can be set to project from the handpiece (i.e. RSM handpiece remote speaker/mic) as an option but if you just have a remote (non speaker) mic handpiece and the radio is set to remote speaker then that might be your issue. If you are transmitting and everyone can hear you then most likely the common issues with antenna failures and water ingress or corrosion aren't the main issue as attenuation of transmitting power normally means that people can't hear you transmitting.

Normally in my experience of these little beasties you can hear everything but can't transmit when there's an antenna failure or water in a connection etc leading to a loss of Tx power or attenuation of the signal output (Rx requires less power so often still functions happily even though the Tx side has raised the index finger), which makes me suspect that you've either got a setting that's been changed or a failure of the base or handpiece. Been through this a few times with commercial radio surveys, first thing I'd do would be to get a visual on the antenna for damage and connections at either end of the antenna coax cable and confirm they are good and undamaged and also as best as possible check out the cable itself for kinks and damaged sections. If it all looks good, go through the base settings and make sure it's on International channels and then try the nowcasting weather service to see if you can hear. I've had one case where we turned up on a job and couldn't transmit off the base set on the boat to do the site radio checks, but we could hear the site control room at the other end of the lake. We had managed to find a piece of tree on the drive in which broke the cable off from the base of the antenna but the cable had sprung back into it's hole so passed the cursory visual check. Flogged a coax off the other boat (two radios on that one) and got it back running on Tx again.

If the antenna cable check doesn't turn up the culprit, easiest is as the two guys above have suggested - get into someone with the test kit to plug into the antenna cable and verify what the Tx power is like and that will tell you if there is an issue with the transmit circuit. As I suggested though, I suspect that you will find the issue is in the base set as from my experience if everyone can hear you but you can't hear them then it's unlikely to be a failure of the antenna circuit.