Anyone have experience with radio frequencies?
 

I am currently programing my own radio to work. I got most of it to work but my transmit output volume is low.

Can this be attributed to the transmit power being set to high, at 4w, and also being within a few miles of a repeater tower?

I am asking because I cannot seem to figure out the side effects of the power output from 4w to 1w.

Currently I have it set up high power (4w) and when I transmit, the other person cannot hear me loud enough.

I have tried everything and even drilling the microphone hole bigger to try and get my radio to transmit louder.

I currently broke the microphone on my radio and cannot test this theory out until the second radio I ordered comes in.

I currently have a baofeng uv-5r.

Any one that knows this stuff, I would appreciate the help. Thanks

Check your antenna. If that's not the problem then start digging through the setup menus looking for something that would lower volume/power when in hi-power mode.

Edit:
Wild guess: the radio may expect an external mic when in hi-power mode.

I've tried everything recommended that I can find on google. It's definitely not the antenna.

I have an external mic too. After changing it to low power, the external mic works and the other end can hear me now. Just not sure if that is the problem or something else was causing it to give out a lower transmit volume.

Without knowing more about your radio, all I can recommend is read the manual.

Is this an AM or FM radio?

It's been decades since my radio-tech training but the audio volume is a function of the modulation of the carrier frequency. (at least with respect to the audio you are transmitting)

4w is just the carrier's power. I'm guessing that something is happening to the modulation of the signal when you run at 4w. I have never tuned a radio to do this, but I wonder what happens to the audio's amplitude when it's delivered on a clipped AM carrier. -If a radiated carrier Fq even "clips" the same way an audio signal does when produced by an over-driven audio amplifier...

An oscilloscope and a test tone would go a long way to nailing this down. (I'm really curious about the carrier fq at the different power ratings.

It is narrow FM to be exact.