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Monday, 10 June 2019

POCSAG in Amateur radio

The dreaded POCSAG (dreaded if you run cheap Chinese radios on 2-meters) has found it's way into Amateur radio, the Germans have been running it for years, in recent months I've seen an option for it in Pi-Star however up until a few days ago my Jumbospot would not be able to transmit it, however the board received a firmware upgrade and should now transmit it.

To receive it from the Jumbospot I'd need a pager though my RTL-SDR combined with PDW can do the same thing, however though I want to play with it I'm not sure what I could do with it or how it fits in Amateur radio however the Germans have it sorted, getting a used UK pager would not work  because the Jumbospot and the standardised frequency used are both in 70cm and UK pagers are set on 153MHz.

I am a fan of the older technology, pagers are no exception to this, even though I now know that poorly built 2-meter rigs (Chinese ones primarily) suffer badly from commercial installations of POCSAG and FLEX transmitters as these are so high powered and the radios alluded to have wide front ends, people may ask why I want to buy or even use a pager, however if it's in Amateur radio it would be free and I am pretty sure some kind of QSO can be done using them over the DAPNET.

Perhaps in the coming months I will play with this, after all it is there so why not.

73 de 2E0EIJ

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