Does Anyone Still Use 49MHz? The Forgotten Band
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I had so much fun with 49MHz in the 80's, especially trying to make antennas to increase the range whilst knowing nothing about wavelengths, matching & SWR. Most of those antennas never worked
Ahh yes. Mums pots, pans and strainers all on the roof.
Someone with far more knowledge than me at that young age made an amplifier in an old tobacco tin and and sleeve (coax) dipole to hang in the window. The range increase was impressive😀
The output matching circuits are set up for aerials that are electrically too short. You could just connect a 1/4 wave to them, but the range increase would be disappointing because of the mismatch. Ideally they need a PA added with a 50 ohm output. 10dB gain (boosting the power to 100mW) would make a big difference, but it’s illegal of course. There’s usually very little room to add pcbs in these radios, though. You can modify the output stages for a 50 ohm load, and even tweak a bit more than the legal power from them (not much), but it’s a lot of effort when you can pick up ex army radios that cover 49MHz, put out a couple of watts or so and are vastly better quality for about £15-£20!
It’s illegal to use them on 49MHz, of course…
I did exactly the same its on 49mhz LOL LOL it's where I got started in radio back in 1980 age 10 then on to cb ham fm pirate radio and full circle back to all of it in the last 17 years greatest fun even now is modulating on am on an old 23 channel am cb set
@@jameswest848 I used to use my ten meter yagi with a bearcat 800xlt scanner to listen to cordless phone calls with great success back in the day when the band was in full use. BTW , that scanner (early models) were also able to pick up Cellular signals in the days before they were encrypted.
Back in the day I picked up what I guess was a baby monitor but never heard a baby. I could hear every word said in a house but could never find the house. I walked up and down the street trying to find what house it was coming from. I could pick it up for close to a mile in every direction of my house and there was tons of stuff to block the single. Well after a week of this I just gave up but not before transmitting back. There were having dinner and talking about the food. I transmitted back "That sounds good. Can I have some?". It went silence on the other end. The some one said "Who are you and where are you" (Curse words left out). Then I transmitted back. "You know that every word in that house can be heard all over town by anyone with a scanner? You have a baby monitor or wireless intercom or something is broadcasting your every word. Though you might like to know that" Oddly enough I got a "Well thank you for letting us know." A few second later what ever it was got turned off.
You could drive by whilst honking. Then you'd know which house it was when they said
"Who's that silly goose?"
@@dazednconfused31337 I did not have a car at that time.
People also don't realise a mobile phone can be heard, they think it's a private link.
That is cool x
In the late 90's here in Worcester city you could here couples at night having sex or arguements not realizing they were being picked up by the local scanner brigade.
A very misunderstood frequency.
In 1978/9 I had a 45mile contact on one of these types of set. The output was tweaked to 1whole and complete watt and we use an external antenna at about 40-45 feet in the air on one unit and about 80feet on the other. The higher one was held aloft with a kite.
🇬🇧👍😎👍🇬🇧.
Long distances can be achieved on the amateur 50 MHz frequency in summer.
Loved my mates’ Realistic 49megs. Used to do ‘missions’ with them in the early 80s. We would have been about 6 and used to split up and sneak into large buildings with people in, nearby and try not to get caught by using these. We went into the college, convent, factory, old folks homes (pinched biscuits!) and even a large DHSS office and a TA centre. We always got caught in the end and the sound of one of my mates dramatic screaming from the radio added to the drama :) The thing is, they seemed to always work and get a signal. Really good.
I can’t say they launched my interest in radio, more my lifelong penchant for pinching biscuits when in other peoples houses!
This is such a great, wholesome story of childhood mischief.
Yes used that band thrugh a lost child hunt. The police radio repeater was off line. So I volunteered several from my stores.(kit) The police later baught them all. Also my platoon. were short. On batteries and so we "improvised ,adapted and over came" Thanks problem solved. Sgt williams retired. Thanks
As a lad, I made a super directional antenna and retrofitted it to one of these radios. I had to aim it just right, but my cousin heard me 11 kilometers away. I made two antennas out of coat hangers. If I aimed the antenna around, I would hear baby monitors, cordless phones, and remote control vehicles. I could sometimes talk back to the baby monitors and someone would talk back from their homes. The baby monitors had quite a range for having really cheesy antennas. But the 11 kilometer contact with my cousin with the homemade antennas was the highlight of the little antennas we made. They sort of looked like small roof top television antennas. I put about six reflector elements on it and three directional elements on it.
Baby monitors were interesting at times. You might even hear Mom and Dad getting Busy.😅
Years ago a respectable family in "The big house" just across the field from us had a daughter that had a baby when she was 15,
The father had a wooden structure built (no planning permission needed) about 400m away from the main house to accommodate wayward daughter & her offspring.
The whole family were/are absolute upper class alcoholic toffs, and every night the daughter would leave the baby in the wooden lodge & go to the big house to get absolutely legless with her parents - safe in the knowledge that the baby alarm would alert them to any stirrings of the baby.
The baby monitor operated somewhere on the 27mhz band.....oops !
At the time I was into CB in a big way - Ham International Jumbo, Antron A-99 with 5/8 firestick on top & groundwave kit - 20m in the air, Fat boy linear amp - I was putting out 1kw on UK FM & double that on sideband.
Anyway, the baby monitor provided a two way link, that I could both listen into & transmit on.
I managed to convince them that the baby could speak at 2 months old and was telepathic - telling mummy to "don't take their poison, come care for me"
As I could hear the conversations in the "Big house" it was hilarious - "She's talking, she's only 2 months old - she's advanced for her age isn't she ?"
Then I found one of those voice changing megaphones at a car boot sale - it had a demon voice setting on it !
Now - in my defence, they were bloody horrible to us "peasants" that lived on the edges of their estate, always trying to nick pieces of land that were legally ours - riding their horses over our gardens - generally treating us like scum.
So, after researching the family history on the internet, - basically, - dead relatives, I utilised the "Demon Megaphone" through the mic & became dead relatives speaking to them, warning of death & danger that would befall them if they remained in the property.
The property was on the market & sold within a month.
The new owners are lovely.
I am now a fully qualified & responsible amateur radio operator.
@@gingermongoose100 I do like a story with a happy ending!
@@gingermongoose100 haha,brilliant. Let's hope they kept the demon child!
@@gingermongoose100 Careful they don't use this next week in Emmerdale 😁👍
You should be given a prize! I am still laughing :)
I haven’t heard the word “Tandy” in media for a couple decades. As a young kid, I grew up buying Tandy electronic products from radio Shack. Thanks for triggering the sudden rush of great memories from my childhood. 👍
We used to have a set of those realistic radios when I was at school. We used to use them for the "tech and backstage" of school productions. They always worked really well.
My school tried to do this once in the late 2010s, but they made the DMX lighting system freak out whenever they transmitted. Turns out the builders installed hardline comms for a reason.
Once heard a neighbour on 49 MHz cordless phone, she was telling her dad that her tv was on the way out as every night around the same time her pictures kept getting lines across it. Funny thing was that it was around the time that I used the CB. Her dad was going to get her a new one, must have solved the problem lol
Audio quality on both units is very good! I wish you had tested them at a greater distance also - say 1km
Stumbled upon this video today and I'm scanning 49MHz as I read the comments, but I think I'm 30 years too late to the party !
The German "counterpiece" to these is the 37 and 40MHz band. The early wireless headphones used VHF Frequencies - mostly 37,1MHz ... they operate there with Wiedeband FM and normal 19KHz Stereo MPX carrier. I´ve been doing a lot of experiments with these sets, I even sorta-do collect vintage headphones from this era. Altough they are working with wideband FM (which causes the range to be lower than nbfm, which these sets use) the range could be quite good. I got about 500m range out of one of these sets... the reason is, that they peaked the antennas (about 7" long Antenna out of the headphone, but perfectly matched to the receiver). The 500m were based on "line of sight." The allowed power was 10mW, but I recall that the sets often had notes with them that stated, that the "actual radiated power" is less or equal 1mW. I´ve tested different sets, and I´ve also experienced a few that didn´t work to well, or didn´t work at all. A 37,1MHz headphone had a very de-tuned receiver. It did cover the promised 30 meters, but not further, and you could clearly hear that it wasn´t tuned right. Opening up the headphone at a distance of 90m, and re aligning it did the job... I had reception with it then over 3 times the distance advertised at the package. Whilst 37,1 was used for wireless headphones / wireless microphones there was the new band with the frequency 40,68MHz. The first ever wireless headphone I bought worked on that frequency. Also it was advertised with a "coverage" of "up to 30m"... but in the end I managed to get it perfectly clear in stereo over my test-distance of 500meters by adding some additional wire to the antenna of the (very sensitive) receiver. Later I made experiments with a communication receiver, and an excellent antenna, and could pick up the transmitters over a distance of about 1,5km ... but then in narrowband FM (turn down the volume at the transmitter´s audio source a lot).
Anyhow, in the 40,68MHz band also baby monitors can be found. They come with short antennas, but they´re matched perfectly to the transmitter / receiver, so the promised range of "up to 400 Meters" on the package is realistic. I´ve also heared a few on that frequency over the years, but just like wireless headphones (865MHz) it decreases. Todays baby monitors use DECT, and I think even these got replaced with *Somewhat digital* 2,4GHz with "Video live feed".
I do recall some Toys (RC Car) used 40MHz, and that was probably 40,68. I only know one walkie talkie at that frequency... it´s a complete 40,68MHz NBFM transceiver, with a proper NBFM receiver IC and a LM386 audio amplifier... works great, except the fact (it´s for kids) that they didn´t use the squelch option, that the receiver IC has built in, and it is super silent... like you have to hold it close to your ear to actually follow the conversation. Lots of wasted potential imo, for *that* they could´ve just gone with the "default" AM superregenerative receiver.
Been follwing your channel for a while, good videos... I´ve also thought about making a video about the wireless stuff, more consumer electronics (wireless audio transmission or video transmission) than ´talkies.
Greetings: Stefan
They're well made inside, too, definitely semipro. A lot of surplus army radios also cover 49 MHz, and inter-work with these hands-free sets very well. If you and a few pals are planning mischief late at nigh on Dartmoor, for example, having someone parked up nearby with a green radio and scouts out quietly recceing the target with these sets works a treat.
Or so I believe.
Many Clansman VHF radios do cover 49MHz, the exception being the crappy overpriced PRC-349.
All Clansman VHF radios, however, step at 25kHz and have Tx deviation and Rx IF filtering to match.
The channels which align with common 49MHz equipment are
49.825000
49.850000
49.875000
49.900000
49.925000
49.950000
49.975000
I may be biased because I am Filipino but you can see the difference in the quality of products made in the Philippines
@@erniecaoc269 Motorola had a lot of stuff made out there didn't they?
@@TonyLing yes sir
I remember the 4-channel Realistic radios from when I was a kid. Nicely made. They'd often pick up baby monitors, sometimes from a considerable distance.
Here in the US 49.830 MHz was often the default freq for baby monitors. Which turned out to be the way many people bugged their own homes and never knew it. 49.830 was typically Channel 1 on the Radio Shack and other brands of these FM walkie-talkies. Also many of the early cordless phones used 49.830 as either the handset or base freq. So this was a very busy part of the VHF-low band here in the 80s and 90s.
I had the trc506.
I used to be an AA patrol and 2 way coms came in handy when towing members in their unrepairable cars behind my little van with a tow pole.
I picked up an SDR a couple years back and to my surprise I picked up someone locally who appeared to still be using one of the old 49 Mhz cordless phones! I was shocked that any would still be in use.
I in fact use cordless phones in that band...Not regularly, but I do have a few in the collection (I like old phones haha) and I use them from time to time.
I've got a box full of those Realistic units, wouldn't surprise me if the Midland and Realistic sets were built in the same factory to basically the same design. Could be quite a nice quiet frequency band to use now no one's interested it in it anymore except for alarms and keyfobs but even they've moved up in frequency in many cases.
I have a old pair walkie-talkie from radio shack that run on 49 megahertz 9volt battery and telescope antenna. Has 4 channels.
They had good range. Had a Deputy Sheriff friend that had all the cordless phone channels in his scanner, for when served "papers" o people. LOL knew when to come back!
Lol no law saying you have to answer the door not even fo da po po
I had a pair of those Realistic units as a kid as did a friend, we used to use them backstage when we were doing the technical stuff for school productions as the MICs were fairly sensitive so could whisper and be heard well by the others, also they had handy clips on the opposite side of the headset to hook the aerials into so they weren't bouncing about everywhere!
Nice quality audio from these. It's a shame you can't really find an all in one headset radio like this anymore.
Yes, a PMR446 like that would be fantastic
Interesting. There is some kind of monitor near me, just north of London, on 49.849 mHz. When I first got into the SDR hobby, I thought someone was being bugged. There are no babies, just a couple of old folks. I suspect it's a mobile phone base station as you show here. I also pick up some POCSAG type signals around 49 mHz. They may be hospital pagers.
I know here some water towers, pumps and other services still use old radio pocsag style transmissions. especially electric companies. But mainly all 400mhz now here.
Back in the early 1980's I tried a couple of 500mw 2 channel Midlands with 7 section telescopic antenna, up to about half a mile away line of sight barely receiveable, ok for quarter mile clear enough, on 49MHz , 49.860 being ch 1, they were on AM VHF band 1.
Powered by a 9 volt battery.
Nothing more than short range toys really, but they do work within their operating range 400-600 metres+ for sure, the audio being clear enough if no buildings or obstructions between the handsets.
I had a lot of fun listening to 49Mhz in the neighborhood on my scanner as a teen in the 80's
Now I operate on 50Mhz as a ham .
Dishcone antenna on the roof and a scanner. 46 MHz cordless phones. I could pick them up 1/2 mile away. Listening was more entertaining then any soap opera. When 900 MHz digital cordless phones came out. The processor was digital to clean up noise. But the signal was FM and scannable. But distance was maybe 150 yards. Analog cell phones in a rural area. The phones would jump from cell to cell. But someone could be listened to in 5 to 20 miles traveling distance. It was hit and miss. Lot of the stuff I heard would not be believed if in a novel.
In South Africa in the 80's we had unencrypted cellphones in the 454MHz band.
I quickly came to the conclusion that the sole and only use for a cellphone in those days was to arrange illicit liaisons with the mistress / girlfriend / secretary.
@@steveb1739 In USA they were paying half dollar a minute and talking the same topics you listed.
I heard some very interesting conversations on 49 mhz through my Bearcat BC 200 XLT scanner. Had people only knew that their constant nonsensical relationship matters were easily overheard when wireless phones were used, it might've been a different story.
I used a very long aftermarket antenna that attached to the radio, yet worked really well. The same company I purchased it from also carried a few rooftop antennas that focused on reception in the 49 Mhz band. Gee, I wonder why :)
I remember finding a toy RC car and walky talky that a friend had on more-or-less the same channel and screeching into the walky talky to make the car move.
I used to listen to cordless phones in the 80s. I need to check out this band once more.
49MHz used to be popular in the 80s around Portsmouth as an alternative to 27MHz on occasions when keyers and idiots were around. There were some higher-powered handhelds around, I think 4W. Many of us had them, I have a vague recollection someone spotted them at Blackbushe market and picked a few up. You could chat around most of the town just on the telescopic or put a dipole up outside and get very solid coverage if you modified a radio to take a coax connector. There were some CTE transverters as well, 27MHz IF, but they were as rare as hen's teeth.
A scan of the 49 Mhz band would have been a nice addition to the video, since none was included, I decided to try it myself. After scanning the entire band for almost 30 minutes I did receive a signal from a distant telephone. The conversation was coming though heavy static and fading , leading me to believe it was on the fringe area of reception. Frankly, I was surprised to hear any at all but it proves there are still some out there in use. Thanks for reminding us about this band.
Back in the day you could here some VERY interesting things on 49mhz
Fantastic how quickly technology moves on.
Great work once again Lewis!
Omg I got a pair of those for Xmas of 83 ☺️love them worked great local neighborhood
Use to take an early cordless phone around the neighborhood and listen on conversations. Turning of the base freed the phone to pick up other sets
I used to play around with the scanner as a kid in the early ‘90s. I got phone calls, but didn’t pay much attention to them. 99% of the time it was stuff like “Honey, bring some milk home”, etc. I did pick up a bookie taking bets once, though…
I had a pair of the single channel handheld realistic radios when I was about 14. I accidentally made contact with someone on them who is still a good friend of mine to this day. I still have a 5 channel realistic in the vintage radio drawer.
When 49Mhz "baby monitors" were new (early 1980s) I was totally unaware of them, I had a late 1960's multiband radio that picked up "everything" from LW to UHF, including the 30Mhz - 54Mhz. band. I heard inside of peoples homes around 49 Mhz, and thought that had stumbled on some secret FBI "bugs", I quickly tuned away for fear of being caught listening (How would "they" catch me? I don't know, I was a dumb teenager! LOL.) 🤷♂️ 🤦♀️
Thanks another great review. Now, transceivers were produced and you can get them on Ebay. They are called Low Band VHF. You can get them up to 110 watts programable and hand helds also exist for this band. In many countries, the 42-50 mhz area had duplex, cordless phones, amazingly low 6 mhz apart TX and RX which means you could on this band easily set up a repeater.
Now, going back into the 1980's Australia, they opened up more business frequencies and moved the "low band, VHF AM" up to vhf, uhf, and 800 mhz trunking radios. I put in a bid and won for a song, around 500 of these radios, many of them really beautiful radios and others were all valve be it a transistorized power supply.
The advantage was that these big radios were very easy to work on, you changed out the coils, put in new xystals, tuned them up on 27 Mhz or even Aircraft VHF AM single channel Radio.
These had very good mobile range. You ended up keeping a large number of little plastic boxes filled to the brim with Xtals for the most common frequencies and you became a regular visitor to the Xstal manufacturers who back then charged a lot for custom xtals but they came in a nice box and looked shiny... They tried hard to impress as to just how much love and care they put into those Xtals, and were nice people.
So, now the AM Low Band VHF is gone, but there is still plenty of FM low band gear around if you check the spectrum lists for your country, you can see them working. In Canada the 44 mhz is still used I notice in helicopter to ground operations.
Used to walk through apartment complexes with my cordless scanner (radio shack model) and listen to cordless phone calls. Also listened to my neighbor talk to her boyfriend. She wasn't as innocent as her mother thought ;)
There's still an active baby monitor around me, as I can hear it even now on 49.830 MHz. They may not be used as much as they were years ago but people do still use this old band for various things.
Loved 49mhz back in the day the things I have heard on baby monitors and cordless phones that were just a few doors or streets away would have made a mercenary blush ....those were days
In the late 2000s I got a VR-500 scanner. One day I was tuning around for something interesting to listen to that was analogue voice. I'd been listening to the hams on 6m one day but eventually there wasn't anything happening. I ended up on 49MHz when I picked something up I'd not heard. It quickly turned out that one of my elderly neighbours still had an old analogue cordless phone despite DECT handsets being mainstream for several years by that time.
We used these radios in my first job, at a roller skating rink. Allowed the DJ to communicate with the floor guards about people being reckless. Miss the 80s.
CHEERS from Colorado
A lot of the cordless phones as well as having the 49 MHz channels also used channels (in tandem) just below the 10-metre band, I discovered this when looking through a Short Wave frequency book, I could hear people over 4 miles away, not bad for a piece of wire handing out the back of the base unit!
Oh what a great frequency number. I'm guessing they are limited like PMR fixed antenna and power.
My only 49 MHz story, was the time I picked up someone's baby monitor on my amateur radio, and that was back in 2012-2013.
There was a 5 watt cordless phone on this band in the early 80s. There was an episode of Minder (George Cole and Dennis Waterman) featuring these phones and they behaved almost exactly like the TV program. They were only legal to use as a switchboard extension but people connected them to phone lines and used the handset in their cars
Gosh, I remember I had a pair of Realistic Walkies (not the mobile phone looking ones, the vintage ‘FM Transceiver’ ) on 49Mhz that we used to use as kids, up until 446 became a thing.
here in Australia realistic sold these radios in 55Mhz. me and my brother had some, TRC-502 headset and the TRC-501 single channel on 55.050Mhz. with lots of antenna mods, we got 1.5km+ out of ours, but with default antennas in suburbia averaged only 200 meters. believe it on not, in 1993 in the city of Brisbane i was putting out cq calls on my TRC-501 on 55.050Mhz and got a real unplanned call back, from someone 800 meters away. so, there were lots of fun in the day and i still have that frequency in all my 6 meter gear today, waiting for the day i hear someone on them again. :) ps, realistic also sold some 49Mhz kids wakitakie here too. dick smith also had it's own 55Mhz radio too.
Hi Joe, long time no hear on the radio.
@@demolitiondavedrillandblast hello Dave, well, we will have to change that and get on air on some freq sometime :)
Ahh the days when remote controlled stuff was on that. All those cheap cars etc. Happier days as a kid. Great trip down memory lane Lewis. Thanks for another great vid.
Realistic , reminds me of Tandy, it was a great little shop.
Back in 1991, we used 3 x Maxon 49 MHZ 200mW 5 Channel FM motorcycle / snowmobile sets to marshal a convoy of 50 plus motorcycles in a ride out, through Bristol. The best range obtained was just over 2 miles, across Bristol.
I still have these sets today.
I had that exact same set of Midland headsets. I used them in community theater to talk from the sound booth to backstage. They worked great and better than the wired system in the theater. I also used to use them when out in the woods with friends.
I had a Tandy, realistic 1991-92 or so version. Use on manual mostly but the voice activation was ok if not in a noisy concert (as mention later). Not very good range and antenna built into the earpiece cable. no daft (but bet that external antenna was better) bit of flappy steel wire above the head!. One earpiece with a pull off rubber lug hole bit, big or small size, to suit earhole. Mic built into that, bone conduction. Was like FBI, curly wire up clothes. out by neck and up and over ear and into lug hole. Neat, used for concerts I once got roped into in those days, Filming the things with 2 cameras, me and a friend. happy days, 1992 or so.
I’ve got quite an assortment of 49mhz gear in my collection. I have the headset style VOX units branded ‘Shuttlecock’, several Realistic handsets, both single channel and 5 channel pll units, wireless microphones and intercoms.. I also have a small, single channel transmitter pcb from a long range cordless phone base. It used a common CB radio output transistor running at iirc about 300mW, and with a bigger heat sink and replacing components in the output matching circuit it’ll do 2.5 watts comfortably. Not that I’d ever connect it to an aerial… :-)
49MHz would’ve made a great CB radio band. Much less QRM than 27MHz and aerials are half the size. The legal radios for the 49MHz band were limited to only 10 milliwatts, and that combined with horribly inefficient short aerials really crippled the range.
PMR446 makes 49MHz pretty pointless now.
More good info! I have a set, somewhere, I got from Tandy in Rochdale in the early to mid 90s.
Merry Christmas Lewis, I live at IO82tx which is 450ft asl and has great ears for Manchester and the NW, have 49mhz listening ability so would be happy to listen out and record any test transmissions you do on the 49mhz band, happy to listen out and see if your signals make it down to the Shropshire/Cheshire border area. Just let me know the date & time. Regards James 2E0HKM
My childhood ran on 49MHz. Great memories....
I had a pair of GE Starcode 10 (3-5954A) walkie-talkies back in the '80s when i was a kid. Had a lot of fun with them.
How interesting. I never really knew anything about 49 MHz until today. I just came home from an Estate Sale and pickup up a pair of GE Starcode 11, model 3-5934A for a $1. Have no idea if they work or not. Batteries have probably been in them since the 80's. On one of the radios the battery post is corroded and broke off in the fastener mount. Gonna try to fix it after I get off TH-cam. I'll have to go store and pickup some 9v batteries as I used the last of them in my smoke alarms.
Surprisingly good audio. Merry Christmas.
What killed these on my side of the pond (IMHO) was the FRS. Shorter antennas and better reception did these in.
I still have a pair of five channel Radio Shack 49 mhz radios. And I still use them occasionally
Ironically FRS was primarily a radio shack invention. Like the 11 meter CB issue, UHF was a lot more efficient for PMR, as opposed to 49.
It's still cool to use them from time to time. Talk about security by obscurity!!!
I heard an open 49mhz transmitter one day in 2002, it was a baby monitor next door. When I knew my neighbors better, it turns out that their "child" was seventeen. The baby monitor base sat plugged in behind a lifetimes worth of trinkets and trash in the (what was by then) the rec room, broadcasting away. The handheld long discarded.
They were amused. I'd have probably been horrified.
Back when we were kids we had some radios that must have come from Maplin. They wouldn't have been expensive. We used them playing around our village.
49MHz radios started my love of walkie talkies back in the 80s. My first set was made by Shira and I later had a few different types including some red coloured ones with A-Team branding. Great fun...! Thanks for the reminder...!
We had a baby monitor in 2008. It used to pick up foreign radio stations sometimes during the late night, it was quite strange to hear!
It was on 49mhz.
All I remember about 49 MHz are wireless products that barely worked, every single one!
They built an apartment building behind my mom & dad's house back in the 90's when there was still a lot of 49Mhz cordless phones. One day I heard a couple of what sounded like teenage girls talking about a party they had been to the night before and one of them said "I'm so sore, someone must have got me up the butt last night" and another time these same girls were talking about going snowboarding and they were making plans to invite a guy along because he had a nice board and they would borrow it and ditch him as soon as they could.
Possibly what killed 49 MHz for two way radio usage was it's piss ant allowed power of 10mW.
In most cases, you could shout further than the distance which your PP3 powered wondertoy would allow
...and often NO squelch. The frequency band of 49mhz may make a slight comeback with alot of the 3 packs of cigarettes sized qrp radios having open transmit, from .5 mhz to 55.0 mhz, all mode.
Happy Christmas mate great video blast from the past those ..crazy I bet they were pricey too ! remember my first purchase of legal Cb Malcom 4e was £75 quid which was a lot to me in 1981 lol
Very cool collection 👍🏾
Nice drawing on the Realistic packaging. Very inclusive.
Ah wow, I had three of the Realistic sets as a kid, my grandad brought them from a colliery he worked for, after it closed. We had a great lot of fun over the fields with them, camping.
I searched 49mhz on a display scanner at Radio Shack in the 90s. Ended up hearing the handset of the store employee when be answered the phone. I told him but he didn't believe me.
They certainly knew how to advertise. Am I the only one who clicked on the link for reasons unrelated to radio transmission?
Nearly 30-years ago, there was a gentleman in the U.S., that managed to get his hands on a commercial 2-way radio, which operated on low-band VHF (42-50 MHz). The radio was programmed with the 25-channel cordless pairs, and transmitted with 60 watts. Equipped with a DTMF microphone, he was thought to have caused a considerable ruckus for cordless phone users, & the phone company was at a total loss to the actual trouble, thinking it was just typical cordless phone issues. While rumors abound, it is unknown if the true offender was ever tracked-down.
More than likely it was someone who used a Motorola low band-high split radio which was easily modifiable to work up or down from its designated working range. It was quite easy to program frequencies "out of range" to the radios working range. It was quite common for Hams to move this radio up into the 6 meter band for their use.
49 MHz Carries like ANYTHING. Back in the late 80's I used to listen to cordless phones from blocks and blocks around. Easily 1 kilometer. In the density of Philadelphia, that made for good listening.
I had one of those “realistic” headset pair of radios back when i was a kid in the 90s, the range wasn’t great and it had a bit twangy antenna but the audio was spot on!
Back in the 70s, the first cordless phones were AM from 1.80 MHz to 2.00 MHz
A upgraded stick 12 foot antenna mounted on your roof and an upgraded 6 ft extendable antenna on the handset I was able to talk on my cordless phone a mile away from my house
I could literally walk around the entire city and use my cordless phone and as more people began buying them I found that people were actually connecting to my base because there was no type of security and they would just receive whatever signal was the strongest and when I realized this I would take my handset and I would drive around and I would start picking up dial tones and other people talking on the phone and I could actually talk on the phone to them and I could make calls using their base
Back in that time we had low band two-way radios that we had two frequencies that we could get dial tone by transmitting a tone and then dial The standard DTMF tones
But I used to carry the cordless handset in my car and I rigged up a charging cradle and I would be able to make phone calls pretty much anywhere I was and I put a 10-ft CB antenna on my car and hooked a external Jack to the handset with a small coax to extend the range
Those were the days
I remember the first Motorola trunked radios back in 85 or 86 back when the TV channels 70 to 99 were reallocated
They actually had 84 to 99 reallocated first and then 70 to 83 was reallocated in 83 if I remember correctly and the Motorola trunked radios were made the following year and they were analog and most systems had five or six frequencies with one as a dedicated control channel
The scanners back then were not very good at narrow band and they didn't receive $800 very well because they just had a doubler to receive 403 to 470 as 806 to 940 MHz
My town where I worked was actually the very first town in America to get the 800 MHz trunked Motorola system and after a year of having no luck receiving their system I was able to purchase a Maxtrac 800 MHz radio and program in the system
I put it behind the dash in my car and wired a rocker switch under the steering wheel that would turn power on and off to the external speaker.
People who had the same problem hearing the signal would hear the sound from my radio and ask what I was using to get the signal so clear and I would show them the radio and tell them I would do the same thing if they wanted to buy one for 5000 dollars, which was the cost of the radio back then
No one ever took me up on the offer
Thanks Lewis - have a merry Christmas and all the best for 2022
"Wait, are you calling on a cordless phone?"
"PRANK CALL! PRANK CALL!"
"I'm hanging up."
"PRANK C
49 MHz is used here but not legally since the radios are commercial VHF Lo band radios operating anywhere from 2 watts to 100 watts.
Interestingly there is a 49 Mhz radio group on Facebook that still gets traffic, It seems to be popular in the USA as there are always a lot of items on American Ebay. Another good video, thanks Lewis and gien I am writing this on December 25th Happy Christmas and all the best for 2022
I'm pretty sure back in the late 70s I had a pair of "childrens" walkie talkies that operated on 49mhz
I remember in my neighborhood people having Cordless phones on 49Mhz that I listened to with my scanner in the 90's. Most phones I could here both conversations on the same frequency but a few phones transmitted and received on different frequencies and was a chore but found I could program both into my scanner and keep up with both sides of the story. There was also a Krystal that used 30Mhz for their drive thru speaker head set system and I used to mess up orders with my RCI 2950 mobile Ham radio in the parking lot. Also had a friend that had a 5KW linear on his rig that would bleed over on supermarket stores P.A. systems and cause the automated doors to open with squealing modulation. It was fun to watch employees look for pranksters messing with the call phones.
Seasons greetings, many thanks for your interesting videos throughout the year. J
I still have my Realistic pair in their original box just like the second set in your video. I bought them to use at work if under a floor or in a loft. They are excellent, must look them out. Thanks for the video, really enjoyed it.
When I was a kid in 80s/90s I had the realistic one, that I bought with my pocket money from Tandy’s which was my favourite Shop where I bought Things like Radio Scanner with UK Scanning Directory and Air and Marine Band Radio and CB Radio Receiver 200 in 1 Electronics kits and my favourite books like Radio Shack Engineer’s Mini-Notebook Communications Projects By Forrest M. Mims III etc and bought lots of components to play around with.
And I used to pick up my Neighbours Cordless Telephone and listen in as well as using my Scanner to listen to Police and Mobile phones and Television and VOLMET South and Aircraft and Number Stations on my SW radio📻, and signals I didn’t know what they were at the time, like Russian Woodpecker over the Horizon Radar.
Number Stations came in handy later when I couldn’t decide which National Lottery Numbers to pick, if I was lucky enough to find number stations, at the time.
Even picked up Pirate Radio Station Trilogy FM once on my bedside Clock FM/AM Radio.
Tried to make a Mechanical TV Camera out of Lego and Use AM Broadcaster in Electronics kit to AM Receiver in my other Electronics Kit to a Mechanical Television that I made out of Lego, managed to get lightbulb to glow on receiver when AM Broadcaster turned on and lines scanned on cardboard disk but when combined together didn’t work.
When playing around with AM Broadcaster and Morse key Recently, after typing code, we immediately had a Power cut but I think was a coincidence although did make me wonder at time if Antenna on Substation at end of road could have picked it up and if I could have accidentally coded out a binary code but think this is unlikely and probably just a coincidence that at same time I sent code the lights went out.
Radio Shack is making a slow comeback in the USA Today. They are now gearing towards the "Makers market" or as we once knew it as hobbyists. What killed the Shack was their heavy investment in the Cellular market where they forgot the hobbyists and bared their shelves of electronic parts and kits. They were also a leader in the computer market although they were quite expensive for their time. It would be nice for a return of the old Allied Electronics and Radio Shack we had back in the sixties and seventies where you could find almost any part for your project.
I used to play with these as a kid in the 80s, tweeking power, big wire antenna's, furthest I got was about 400m. It used to pick up some radio pager noises from my near by hospital too.
here in the us 27mhz and 72 and 75 mhz along with 49 mhz were used . Alot of hobby rc and two way radio walkie talkies .a few of my old tamiya cars are still on these frequencies except my newer cars are all digital
I have converted my 49 Mhz baby monitor to accept an external rooftop dipole antenna and turn it into an RF link for online radio streaming at home and to be picked up by my handheld police scanner outdoors some 1 Km away hehe.
Great video as always Lewis. Brougut back some memories, I had a set of Tandy radios that worked on 49.86MHz.. I think they were branded as "Archer" they weren't cheap, (at least not for me at the time) around £50 I think. No VOX so had to use the PTT on the beltpack, which I always thought was ironic as the picture on the box showed them being used by kids on bikes. and of course, like many 49MHz at the time, no Squelch, meaning you heard loud hiss all the time.
I too, did try extending the antenna for more range, but like someone mentioned in a previous comment, I was maybe 8 or 9 and had no clue about tuning antennas, so it never worked. But I had so much fun trying, and it got me into radio, followed by CB, and later through to my advanced license.
Now all you hear on 49MHz here is the occasional baby monitor.
Kids now days are definitely spoilt with cheap affordable 446MHz radios, with ctcss etc. We use them for local Comms at work too. Just a shame pirates are using that band as the new CB band with high power 25w+ and directional antennas as it does sometimes render the band unusable for it's intended purpose.
I digress, happy Christmas buddy, hope you have a great time, and keep those videos coming!
Had a pair of the Midland Trackers with vox headset in the 80's. Used them when snow skiing. They were really good and lasted all day on the slopes on a rechargeable 9v battery! They also did a simpler walkie talkie handheld that worked on the same frequencies. Should have kept them but when we got older thought we looked a bit of a dick, so sold them at a car boot sale!
Look at that Big Hair! 'Midland Girl' sure is 1980s hot. Probably an extra in 'Dallas' in her other life as well.
Don’t you wonder what she looks like today??? Might be scary or…….
I think all of the brands were built by Maxon who also made cordless phones.
Only a good set of radio scanner/antenna would intercept those comms...
Hope they make them again and hey don't forget the 900mhz motorcycle helmet. Units in uses
Some of the house radios here are 49 meg a butler as it were. Also have a button that did the door.
the least said about listening to 49MHZ the better !!! certainly not for public discussion
Why? For what reason? Tech has moved baby monitors etc away from this band. Nothing illegal about it
@@Superfandangoo back when scanners were very popular and hardly anything was encoded listening to 49MHZ was an invasion of privacy plain and simple . I'd question the morals of anyone making a habit of doing so does this explain my post ?
@@ainteasybeingwheezy Ah I guessed this was your reason an rightly so, understood since reading the comments here. Have a nice xmas
@@Superfandangooyou have a great Christmas too
For entertainment we used to drive around with three wireless phones and see if we could pick up conversations in the clear as we drove along. Yes, we did. We sure did. Some of the conversations were very revealing....LOL...Ah, the naivety of people back then...
First pair of walkie talkie's I owned were tied together with wire, fashioned in khaki green and sported a red morse code button, they weren't very stealthy and generally the cable snapped due to unavoidable and unsupecting pedestrians. I would dream of the day when I would be able to talk wire free. I'm currently on the lookout for two paper cups and a ball of string for my next project. It's interesting to see these devices pop up in 70's and 80's cop shows whereby actors used the radios and handhelds, usually with the aerial down, being able to transmit miles. Of course I know now that back then it was make believe but at the time we were kids hungry for secret comms and midnight liasons over the airwaves. Great little trip down memory lane.
I would tune in the neighbour's cordless phones in the 1990 s pn my radio then me scanner as I be near a mod training area in Norfolk so lots of action on airways back then