Re: Your opinion on 2-way radios?
By: Poindexter Fortran to dove-net.HAM_Radio on Tue Apr 17 2012 08:03 pm
Does anyone here have any insights/preferences into personal 2-way radios?
I do!
I'm getting into disaster preparedness and wanted to pack a couple of
radios into my kit.
What sorts of disasters do you want to be prepared for and what sort of communication needs do you expect?
I want to have a couple of units so I can stay in touch
when someone leaves the house.
How far would they go?
I'm in suburban, hilly territory - luckily,
I'm at the top of the hill facing the range where the other unit would be.
Just how obscured would the other unit be able to get?
I see FRS radios everywhere I look now. I understand they have some sort of discriminator circuit so you can pair two devices. Is there a way to use them to listen/talk to other people as well?
Yes. If you turn off the "discriminator" you can hear everyone using the channel. Having it on can result in not being able to receive the other radio because someone else is using the same channel, but you can't hear them because
you're using a different "code".
The FRS radios are limited to a half watt at around 465MHz. Your usable range will be around a mile if neither part is in a building and about a quarter mile
if either party is. If one party is inside a car, don't get your hopse up.
In case of a real disaster, the FRS radios will not help communicate with anyone who can't hear you yelling.
There's something called MURS that sounds like it's more powerful than FRS, and another variety that requires a HAM license?
MURS gives you the ability to use external antennas which can be used to concentrate the power in a specific area. Also, you get an extra 6dB of power.
Because the frequency is lower, it's more effectively blocked by buildings.
If you're both outside, you can reasonably expect around two to three miles. Inside a building, it'll be about the same as FRS, and inside a car is simply unlikely from a handheld.
Another thing to look at is GMRS... you need a license for them ($85 for five years) but you can run up to 50 watts. In a handheld, five watts is more likely, but that's another four and a bit dB, it's a higher frequency, so it'll
work better in buildings and cars. Five or six miles wouldn't be surprising, and if you get a base station, complete line of sight is doable. May be mildly
useful in some disasters.
There's good old CB Radio - 40 channel 5 watt handhelds are cheap. That's got the benefit of being able to talk to other people as well. I'm not that worried about eavesdropping, and being able to talk to other people is a benefit. I'm more concerned about range between the different standards.
CB is HF, so it's almost completely useless if either party is indoors. A "good" antenna starts at around fifteen feet long, so you'll never have one - so the five watts will disappear before they're even radiated. The range would
be about the same as MURS if you have a three foot antenna on them fully extended. It could be useful during disasters.
In ALL of these, you are subject to evesdropping.
As for the HAM radios, the potential range is unbounded due to local repeaters.
Some repeaters are part of networks which extended world-wide. Of the possibilities listed so far, HAM radios are most likely to be useful in the case of a real disaster, but are the hardest to get a license for and are the most expensive.
Depending on how much you want to talk with "someone" who leaves the house, you
may not be able to use a local repeater, so you'll get around the same limits as GMRS (though you have more flexability).
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