Two way radios

[snuggleman]

Hi Everybody :)

I'm glad I found this forum and look forward to tapping into the knowledge base that everyone in here provides.

I have been asked to recommend a set of two way radios for a hillwalking club, having no experience of these :confused: does anyone have any recommendations? the club will be walking in Scotland both at low and high levels, the handsets need to be easy to operate and have good coverage and battery life.

Any advice would be appreciated?

[Ollie]

From my (also limited) experience, a nice cheap but reliable set are the motorola walkabouts - they are very rugged, and have a reasonable coverage... not sure what it is though, and i'm sure there's better (though more expensive)

What's the price range?

[allanscot]

We got 2 Xenvo radios for £22 from maplins a while back. They are usable up to about 2km apart (line of sight) more than that and you just can’t hear the other person. They have survived some rough usage, are easy to use once the channel is set and the batteries last at least a weekend away without charging.

In Scottish mountains they are only really good for keeping relatively close together groups in contact, or ordering up a drew when you get near to base camp ;)

You might find some useful info here -
http://groups.google.co.uk/group/uk.rec.walking/search?q=radios&start=0&hl=en

[Marmot]

My experience with walkie talkies is they are never as good as you want them to be.
And its alays a play off between battery life - usuallylimited, for range, usually with complications, as in line of sight requirement and expense, usually alot.

Some friends of mine used the motorolla walk abouts in canada and found that aong the valley floors, with still air and all that whatnot they exceeded the range stated, but had issues when walkng through scrub land or around corners.

What sort of distances where u wanting these talkies to cover? would they be relayng to a base camp, or between walking groups in the same area?

infact when i was last in candada we had a set - the same motorola ones and we were walking around Indian ridge, a huge horse shoe of a mountain, we had 3 groups, one going one way around the horse shoe and 2 the other. When we at the furthest point from the other group, having met in the middle and past each other we saw and heard the rock slide, roughly were we thought the other group would be. Huge 1000ft scree slope.
Better get the old walkie talkie out, no response from the other group.
We were all sh*tting ourselves as you can imagine, scanning the other side of this horse shoe. Still couldnt see anything so the strongest of our two combined groups set off to get to the bottom the the horse shoe to see what we could see.
As it turns they hadnt set off the slide, and couldnt be cntacted cause they were just on te other side of the arete on which they were walking.
If we didnt hav the talkies i dont think we would have worried so much, but its just that we did have them, and of course you expect them to work that we thought the worse of the situation.

Thats just an experience ive had with them, nothing serious came of it, and im sure theyve been alot more advantageous to other groups

[Emanresu]

Beware of local standards! Walkie talkies that are approved for use in one country may be illegal in another. This is less likely to be a problem within Europe, but taking locally purchased 'popular' communication devices to other continents can be risky. Check first.

[jbgraham]

Stuart is quite right about certain parts of the band width being restricted in different countries. In the USA large portions of the band width are reserved for military and public safety use.

Generally, these types of low power walkabout type walkie talkies are dependent on line of sight for reliable reception. If you are on top of a hill, talking to someone else on top of a hill with a direct line of sight, you may get reception of up to eight miles, but generally, you can't count on reception of much more than half a mile in broken terrain, and sometimes you will find yourself in a black hole with no commo. These types of radios are best used within a large party, so that those at the back can communicate with those at the front. Don't really expect to be able to contact other parties reliably at a distance of more than half a mile.

If you are trying to maintain contact with parties at a greater distance with a hand held two-way radio, you would probably have better luck using licensed Amateur Radio (HAM) in the VHF band width. There is a network of worldwide Ham Radio enthusiasts who maintain a system of radio repeaters, but not much of this is done in the VHF bandwith. Many Ham enthusiasts will carry a multi-band hand held with a scanner with a power of about four watts in the field. With this type of radio one can aquire and monitor police, fire and other public safety services frequencies. In america, such radios are sold with modifications to stop transmissions on reserved frequencies, but many people will make unauthorized modifications to the radio by clipping a couple of wires in the radio. Modification intructions for almost any model can be found on the internet by searching on Google, using the radio model and the word "modifications". Broadcasting on these restricted frequencies is illegal, but in circumstances of life or death, I would be inclined to take that chance.

If you can't be bothered with all that and must have communications over distance in areas where mobile phones do not cover, satellite phones are available for purchase or rent.