2 way radios

[ninjapuppet]

Has anyone had much experience with these and Can anyone recommend any particular types or brands of hand held 2-way radios?

For hiking, should we go VHF? UHF? GMRS?

I saw at Dicksmith a Uniden pair that advertised a 45km range and really wondered of they really are that good. I would imagine you get what you pay for, but there are some that cost $30 and some that cost $300. just not sure whats a decent starting point for bushwalking usage.


What scenarios would you anticipate them being useful? Any comments appreciated.

[ILUVSWTAS]

Would have been handy here.

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=7466

[cams]

The cheapest radio's you'll buy are CB UHF's. These are the ones you can buy everywhere and they work on the community band which is free to use by everyone. Within this category you can get different transmit power ratings. The smallest ones will be 0.25Watt and the most power you'll get from a handheld CB is around 3 Watt. Higher the power = further transmit distance and more expensive. They are still only going to be line of site though.

If you start spending more money you can get a commercial UHF which has programmable frequencies. You can still program the CB frequency's into it but the advantage is that you get up to 5 Watt transmission power. Remember though, that the person you're talking to has to have the same transmit power to be able to talk back to you at the edge of your distance capabilities. So any one with a standard hand held CB may not reach you. Someone with a mobile in car CB will have 5 Watt though. Commercial radio's will also have more features none of which are really going to be needed. And to use any other frequency's other than CB you should have a license.

There is also VHF CB. I don't have as much experience with these radio's and they aren't as common for general land based comms. In general though, the lower the carrier frequency the further it will transmit but the less penetration it will have. So possibly the uniden pair you saw was a VHF CB to get that sort of distance. If you're in the middle of rainforest the penetration very much comms into play with wet foliage everywhere. If your'e above the tree line on top of a mountain though, you will likely get much better transmission distance.

We used to take a little CB. Depending how far out bush you are you can often hear transmissions from quite a distance away. But it is unlikely you would be able to transmit to anyone. If everyone in the group has one they can be useful. Especially if people want to travel at different paces. When I go walking with a particular couple of friends they always take them because they like to travel at their own speeds. I usually just travel at the speed of the slowest and stick together. Even then, I think you'd want something with more than 1W to be useful in the bush depending on the terrain and foliage.

GME make nice CB's. My uniden annoy's me.

For the ultimate in remote radio comms you can set up like a radio tech friend of mine has. He takes an HF with a home made antenna, tuner and battery with him on all the walks I do with him. The set up weighs about 7kg and he has to fling the antenna wire over a tree branch with a fishing sinker but he can say goodnight to his boys and wife each night via a phone interconnect. The best he got was talking to someone near Perth from the middle of the rainforest in lamington national park near Brisbane.

[tasadam]

Great post cams, very informative.

I have a couple of basic typical handheld radios, with a reported range of about 3km line of sight.
They are useful on a walk when you have a group that splits into two and want to remain relatively close to each other, say, meeting up at the same destination each day or something.
Important to have regular scheds so you don't have to keep them turned on all the time (battery power), only useful if you don't mind carrying the extra weight, and the WAF of these things is pretty low so consider who will be using them.
Other than that' I found them a bit of a waste, and because the people I was walking with were pretty self-sufficient, they weren't really needed and were just a novelty.

[Tony]

Check this toy out rino-650-gps-uhf-radio

[cams]

Check this toy out rino-650-gps-uhf-radio

Interesting product. Would be interesting to see if everytime you transmit with the radio the GPS track goes walkabout. Wouldn't have thought sticking a 5 Watt transmitter a couple of CM away from an extremely sensitive receiver would be such a great idea.

[eddie the eagle]

Was looking at buying a couple of 5W handheld radios last year.

Beware of a change in frequency standard when you buy.

The current 20 channel (?) band is to be split into 40 channels in the next couple of years (anyway, doubled) as control over transmission modulation has improved, so they can get double the channels into the same bandwidth.

Radios may not work well or be able to get a replacement for a broken handset.

Last year, they were looking at an introduction in late 2011/12.

Someone here may know more.

Cheers,

eddie

[BarryJ]

Was looking at buying a couple of 5W handheld radios last year.

Beware of a change in frequency standard when you buy.

The current 20 channel (?) band is to be split into 40 channels in the next couple of years (anyway, doubled) as control over transmission modulation has improved, so they can get double the channels into the same bandwidth.

Radios may not work well or be able to get a replacement for a broken handset.

Last year, they were looking at an introduction in late 2011/12.

Someone here may know more.

Cheers,

eddie

40 channels currently but being expanded to 80 channels. Old 40 channel radios will still work on the lower half of the 80 channels.

[photohiker]

Radios may not work well or be able to get a replacement for a broken handset.

In this class of gear (CB) this is situation normal. Some sets are available for a long time (years), but generally the price of spares is high and the availability is deficient shortly after they have been superseded. Some sets have controls on the handset which makes them even more model specific and expensive. Convenient for operation, but potential disaster for future replacement parts. We have a uhf set in the outback cruiser like that. If it plays up, we're probably better off from a reliability point of view, to replace it rather than try and repair one part of it while the rest of it is also suffering from years of dust and vibration.

[cams]

40 channels currently but being expanded to 80 channels. Old 40 channel radios will still work on the lower half of the 80 channels.

The people trying to use the other half of these channels might not be too happy with you modulating into their channel though. They're changing from wideband to narrow so the overall frequency range will be the same but you can fit double the channels in. Was at Dick Smith yesterday and all the CB's they had were either set up already for this change or were "77 channel ready". I think maybe they're keeping the data channels wideband.

[SameulGeorge]

Has anyone had much experience with these and Can anyone recommend any particular types or brands of hand held 2-way radios?

For hiking, should we go VHF? UHF? GMRS?

I saw at Dicksmith a Uniden pair that advertised a 45km range and really wondered of they really are that good. I would imagine you get what you pay for, but there are some that cost $30 and some that cost $300. just not sure whats a decent starting point for bushwalking usage.


What scenarios would you anticipate them being useful? Any comments appreciated.

I would Recommend you Motorola MOTOTRBO DP3600 / 3601 Two way radios because it is Easily adaptable with your existing system and operational in both digital and analogue modes, it is available with 1,000 channels in either UHF and VHF versions and it comes with a flexible price rate.