Two-way radios!

Decided to get out of town this morning to avoid Hurricane Ida. Wife and kids in one car, me in another. Picked up a pair of Midland X-Talker T51VP3 Walkie Talkie’s late last night so we could communicate on the road in case we lost cell signal. Advertised range is 28 miles. I realize this is best case scenario under optimal conditions, but the best we could get on long stretches of flat straight road without many or any cars between us was about 700 yards. Those conditions seem close to optimal, so I was disappointed that these radios performed so poorly.

Anyone have recommendations for a better two-way radio? Will use these for road trips and communicating with one another when we go skiing. Budget is around $100 per pair.

 

Wow what a disappointment, only 700 yards? holy geez, how about a couple of CB radios? those go about 5 miles from what I remember, you’re supposed to get a license for one but I never did. Hopefully you can return the radios

 

The biggest problem is that you are inside a big metal box. Look for options with an external magmout antenna. There are a few different directions you can go, some require licenses or you can be a pirate.

 

You need to find a way to get an antenna outside of the Metal Cages and I bet your radios will work OK then.
Sometimes the antenna just unscrews or has a connector and you can buy an adapter and external antenna and if not I would try a longer wire and an alligator clip on the built-in antenna and run the other end outside and see if that helps at all.

Otherwise buy any radio that does let you get an antenna outside and I am sure you can improve your range that way.

 

If the latest technology doesn’t work, there’s always 2 Dixie cups and a long long string ….ha ha

 

None of the camping two way radios have any range unless you are in an open field.

I don't think you will find any for under $100 with halfway decent range.

CB radios?

 

Get some grms radios. You have to pay a fee to get licensed but you don’t have to pass a test like ham radio. You can easily get 25+ miles with those radios. Or do like others said and get antennas outside your vehicle. Those ratings on the cheapie radios are line of sight over water. Anyway, just my $.02

 

Ham radio, get a baofeng off Amazon for cheap and you can do and talk to everything possible. There is the technicality of needing a ham license (for some frequencies) but when SHTF it's your best bet for communication. The baofeng hand helds are cheap and have tons of capability, and if you choose a frequency for your family to always "meet on" then even in the event a radio is lost they could easily find someone with a radio and just punch the right frequency in. Even a 60W Kenwood is just a bit over $100 and throw an antenna on the roof.

 

Where do you propose one could get a set of Ham radios on the way out of town when fleeing a Hurricane?

 

Not sure if this is a serious question or you're being a dick, I have no idea, dude asked presumably for the future. If you're buying any radio that's not a POS, you're not finding it at Walmart so you're SOL whether you want a ham or something more than a walkie talkie regardless

 

So your post made me curious and I started checking the Walmart website. After looking I have a hunch that they might carry the midland mtx275 which is a legit radio. Actually have to head into Wallyworld this upcoming week to pick up a photo (otherwise I’d probably not set foot in the place for years). I’ll report back my findings if I remember

 

Any radios you buy in a bubble pack at a retail store are going to be the same crappy performance. Best bet is a true mobile unit. The midlands are ok but a lot of their models are not repeater capable. Yes there are gmrs repeaters out there.

You need an external antenna, mag mount or window clip are fine if it’s for a one time trip. If you want a more permanent solution and don’t want to drill a hole in your roof you can put an antenna on a ditch light mount or on the bed rails. Won’t be the best performance and some Elmer some where will shake his fist at you but who cares anything is better than a hand held inside the truck.

 

You got FRS radios, they're limited to either 1/2 watt or 2 watts depending upon what channel you're on. You can't have a separate antenna on an FRS radio and 27 mile range is just a pure lie, I've been able to talk probably upwards a mile on ours when we moved from Great Falls MT to Hawk Point MO between 3 vehicles and we still use them around the area from basement to basement. Now's the time to plan for the next time and I agree with the rest either go with amateur radio or GMRS, personally I don't like CB because it's totally uncontrolled.

 

Thanks all for the replies. Will look into GMRS with an external antenna. Looks like they plan to drop the license fee to $35 for a 10-yr term, which doesn’t sound too bad.

 

Yes, GMRS is your best bet for these scenarios. A MURS radio would be a no-license option, but I'd still recommend GMRS. Amateur radio? If you want to and are a hobbyist. Use mobile transceivers with external antennas and you'll be surprised how far you'll get out.

 

I'd have to disagree a bit ... MURS might be a better option as it's less frequently used and is VHF rather than UHF. Problem with GMRS is that it's shared UHF frequencies with FRS. It's licensed since you can run more power, external antennas and use repeaters. Since the channels are the same (but bandwidth is different) you're gonna have a lot of traffic on FRS/GMRS frequencies to compete with. You're also limited to 500mW on certain frequencies.

Even mobile (not handheld) GMRS radios running 15W or so with an external antenna are only going to get you so far depending on terrain. Buddy of mine and I up in Maine both ran

$165 Midland MXT275 MicroMobile® GMRS Radio – 15 watts Two-Way Radio with Integrated Control Microphone – Overland Caravanning Tractors – Detachable External Magnetic Mount Antenna - 8 Repeater Channels

Midland MXT275 radios with their Ghost +3db antenna. Performance was ok most of the time and we did get a mile or so now and then but the problem we found was channel interference mostly coming from kids in the area on FRS handhelds. Overall we were pleased with the radio's as a mile+ in thick wooded areas wasn't terrible.

If you're serious about using radio as a SHTF communication method, amateur (HAM) is the only way to go. Which is also a reason most public service or emergency management agencies also use HAM as an alternative to their public safety band radios. We actually have an agreement with the local Ham radio club where we can take exclusive control over their 2m repeater in an emergency. They get the bonus of us hosting their gear and having it always on generator backup.

 

Probably a little of both.

The way I read the original post they were escaping the Hurricane and need something right now so my comments are geared towards that.

I would grab a few cheap CB radios from Walmart that come in a box with mag mount antennas while on the way out of town if I had to.
Sure the Chicken Band sucks bad mostly but for car to car comms in an emergency pick an empty channel or two and you shold be able to talk easily a lot of the time and for under $100 I would guess as well.

Anything that can be done to get an antenna outside of the cage is the crucial element for this to work in my experience.

Funny enough too the last Beofeng Radio that I bought was from Micro Center of all places!
They were sitting on the shelf much to my disbelief and priced normally too but of course they did not have any antennas for them or the mutant reverse SMA adapter needed to extend to an external antenna to make them work well in this situation.

Also worth noting I think is that this is the anniversary again of the event that caused a lot of us to head into the storm 16 years ago to try to fill in when the relied upon infrastructure for communications died in many places around Katrinas path!

Good luck to anyone living through this again.

 

@snivilous wss right. This is all they had at the local Wally World super center.


Buy it before you need it

 

Seems like an ideal solution for the money to me.

 

Is there a ham radio outlet near you? www.hamradio.com

Anaheim, CA
Atlanta, GA
Denver, CO
Milwaukee, WI
New Castle, DE
Phoenix, AZ
Plano, TX
Portland, OR
Sacramento, CA
Salem, NH
San Diego, CA
Woodbridge, VA

 

I do a lot of business with R & L https://store2.rlham.com/shop/catalog/index.php in Ohio.

 

Was able to return the Midland FRS radios. Going to start researching a better option.

On a related note, may also switch to Verizon. AT&T in south Louisiana totally unreliable after Ida (was unreliable after Katrina too).

 

I prefer to scream “TURN YOUR WHEELS THE OTHER FUCKING WAY!” The old fashioned way.

 

I'm going to piggyback on this thread.

We are looking for a radio that will work on the trails for a small group...maybe two to three vehicles. The primary communication will be "just taking a picture...will catch up soon" or "check out that moose on your left!" or "something is wrong, stand by" etc. We aren't in the situation where we will lose our party - we all notice if someone falls behind pretty quickly, so it's just more of a quick way to communicate whether we should stop and wait, go back, or keep going if someone already turned a corner and are out of sight.

We are the types to be overly-prepared, and it sounds like the GMRS is going to be the most reliable. But the friends we are traveling with likely won't have one of their own installed. Is there a solution to this like communicators (don't know the terminology) we can give them to use during the trip? Or would the two-way radio be the better option so we can just hand the other receivers to our friends?

Hope this makes sense!

Thanks!!

 

You would be better off with FRS for these uses as GMRS requires a license to use (except immediate family members to talk to you). It’s not free but doesn’t require a test like an amateur (ham) license.

 

Yeah that's where my mind is heading. I'm fine getting the license if we go the GMRS route.

Although from what I'm seeing some of the GMRS have some FRS channels, too, in case our friends only have FRS.

$165 Midland – MXT275 MicroMobile® GMRS Radio – 15 watts Two-Way Radio with Integrated Control Microphone – Overland Caravanning Tractors – Detachable External Magnetic Mount Antenna - 8 Repeater Channels

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07FN2FBM...colid=2XZOY3ZB5SVAV&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it&th=1

Then there are these handhelds that are GMRS...?

$80 Midland GXT1000VP4 - 50 Channel GMRS Two-Way Radio - Long Range Walkie Talkie with 142 Privacy Codes, SOS Siren, and NOAA Weather Alerts and Weather Scan (Black/Silver, Pair Pack)

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001WMFYH4?th=1

I likely won't buy from Amazon but it's a decent place to start for research.

This is an expensive hobby. Even these smaller purchases add up lol

 

There are some channels that overlap between the 2 but GMRS is at higher power than FRS. Using a GMRS radio on those channels does still require a license and broadcasting your call sign while a FRS radio does not.

 

Be prepared, ain't nobody got time for 1 mile range! Lol

 

Not sure if it requires an FCC license or not but my current RR issued hand held radio is a Kenwood NX-210-K2. Reliably reaches out to broadcast at least 7500-8000 ft within reasonable line of sight. It’s a VHF unit though. Locomotive radios operating on same frequencies, but those have way way more transmitting power. The hand held units can almost always reliably pick up radio transmissions from locomotives, repeaters, or other vehicle mounted radios. Anything beyond that nominal 7500-8000ft and the hand helds get pretty weak. Used to be a lot better but when the industry was forced to go to narrow band channels the range really took a hit.

That said for the OP’s goals I can vouch for the effective range of most Kenwood hand held units.

 

Except that there is not really any radio class "Most Kenwood Handheld units" in the end.
The Band and type of radio determines the limit of power and bandwidth that they can be used for so any decent FCC Type Accepted radio should really be just like any other and that is why the FCC certifies them in the first place.

So a Motorola,Yaesu,Icom or Kenwood on the same band and with similar antennas will usually do just the same range and s/n really.

Back to the OP though if you have your Ham Ticket then just use Ham Band HTs and if the people in your caravan ae not Hams them just let them listen and think about that!

Or use CB which easily works from car to car travelling together which was your original question or FMRS or whatever as long as you have a decent antenna it should be pretty simple really.