Radio shopping...CB vs 2M vs 440MHz vs FRS vs...

[devinsixtyseven]

So many choices out there! What's the preferred option in the backcountry? What do rescue comms look for, what's most commonly used, what's a good buy? What has good range, do any of these signals bounce at night? Which are most degraded by airborne particulates (precipitation, dust, etc)? Which can you reasonably carry in a backpack?

I'm slowly reading over the threads here, not sure what's the best option at the moment. I've only used the little spend 'n' go FRS radios until this point, and I'm looking to buy a radio for backcountry excursions. I like the looks and versatility of the handheld 2M by Yaesu, which happens to be on sale right now...

Is there such thing as a CB/144/440 setup with a single head unit and selector switch for which xmitter you're using?

Ideally, I'd like something that I can take in the truck on a road trip, 4wd run, expedition, backcountry camping/hiking/snowboarding, kayaking, etc...like that Yaesu VX-170 to which someone posted a link. What's a good option or a place to start?

I do have a copy of the ARRL handbook...dunno that I want to invest the time/money in a license and equipment right now. I don't need a license to operate CB/2M or 440MHz do I? Only HAM equipment?

Thanks in advance ...back to reading over the threads...

-Sean

 

[articulate]

...I do have a copy of the ARRL handbook...dunno that I want to invest the time/money in a license and equipment right now. I don't need a license to operate CB/2M or 440MHz do I? Only HAM equipment?

Thanks in advance ...back to reading over the threads...

-Sean

Ah ha.....a really interesting read is in the latest issue of this goofy Jeep mag:
http://www.jpfreek.com/ A VERY nice article in it covers the differences between FRS, CB, and HAM. Pretty gud writer, too.

Anyway, 440MHz is a HAM band (AKA 70cm). So is 2 meters (AKA 146MHz). So for these, you do need a license, which costs you $10 (I think), plus the time to learn the quiz.
In short, to transmit on the 440MHz and 146Mhz bands you do need to be licensed. You can own the stuff without the license, but that's not as much fun.

I'm unaware of a radio unit that will do the citizens band, 2 meter band, and 70 centimeter band in one. Several radios will handle 2m and 70cm in one, though.


Edit: It seems you are looking for a radio that will do it all? Such as operate in your vehicle and out-n-about on foot? Hmmmm...."ideally" you ought to install a ham radio (2-meter, 70-centimeter, etc) in the truck with a well-grounded antenna, then compliment that with the handheld unit for being on foot. You'll get diminished return if you use a HT for it all, and you may not be happy with the results when operating inside the truck.

Does the FRS radio do what you want so far? The 2-meter frequencies are the most popular of the HAM radios, and you can get some excellent range with the use of repeaters; this is where the FRS falls short. But they work fine for close range comm.

 

[Pskhaat]

What's the preferred option in the backcountry?

Ham (Amateur) radio is in many opinions a preferred option both for usage and emergency.

What has good range

That's a huge depends. You can sometimes have a CB signal reach Japan yet not a half-mile away. FRS is limited by law to an integrated antenna and 1/2 an effective watt (which means the transmitter could easily put out less)

do any of these signals bounce at night?

Most radio propagation is affected by solar activity, but there is such a thing as bouncing radio waves off the moon, but I don't think this is what you're talking about.

Which are most degraded by airborne particulates (precipitation, dust, etc)? Which can you reasonably carry in a backpack?

The higher frequencies such as those in the gigahertz range can be most affected, but nothing that I'm aware of would be better vs. worse for this in the consumer radio market.

and versatility of the handheld 2M by Yaesu, which happens to be on sale right now...

I would add that you may see better performance out of an HT (hand-held) in the UHF range. Yaesu makes excellent units. I say UHF because with the smaller wavelength, the radios antenna and counterpoise handle UHF better than the lower freq's, but VHF HTs are very good too.

Is there such thing as a CB/144/440 setup with a single head unit and selector switch for which xmitter you're using?

It is illegal to operate in 11m (CB) from a non-type-approved radio. That's why you don't see CB/FRS/GMRS combos. If you have your license, you can use any radio in the Ham frequencies.

dunno that I want to invest the time/money in a license and equipment right now. I don't need a license to operate CB/2M or 440MHz do I? Only HAM equipment?

It's not the equipment to which you need a license, it's the frequencies. You do need a license to operate on Amateur (Ham) 2m and 70cm bands. There is a VHF CB service called MURS which is license and fee free. There is also GMRS which is UHF and available to you for a $75 fee--no license--which allows you a number of channels, professional equipment, repeaters, and up to 50 watts of power. Actually some FRS radios are also a cheap GMRS radio, but nonetheless still require a license.

In my opinion it is worth your time to get Amateur licensed, because what you want to do with radio is above-and-beyond the $15 bubble-pack FRS radio uses.

With any luck there will be an additional article soon you may wish to read.

 

[crawler#976]

If cost is an issue, I'll try to put it into perspective.

CB cost: $50.00 will get a basic 5 watt mobil unit, add another $25.00 for a mag mount antenna, so your $75.00 will get you about 5 miles reliably. That's $15.00 bucks a mile.

2M cost: $140.00 will get a nice Yaesu FT-2800M - 65 watts, and much more durable than the $50.00 CB. Throw in a $25.00 mag mount antenna, and you're at $165.00. For that you can get 20 miles on simplex transmission. That's about $8.25 a mile.

It gets better! With a repeater, you can talk for very long distances. I chat with guy's in Mesa via repeater - a distance of 60 miles to the Flagstaff repeater that's linked to one north of Phx. This opens up comms in excess of 100 miles - $1.65 a mile.

But wait! With a digi-repeater, you can talk to others linked world wide. I listened to a long conversation from Chino Valley, AZ. to Manchester, England on Sunday. What's that work out too? $0.02 cents a mile???

 

[k6uk]

I'm very partial to Ham radio, it's a perfect fit for what we do.

But if you have no interest in getting a license, MURS (multi-use radio service) is pretty great - more power than FRS, but fewer people use it. It's very much like 2M band & it is nice to be able to hand a radio over to a non-licensed person and be able to legally talk to them.

Murs consists of only 5 frequencies (channels)

151.8200
151.8800
151.9400
154.5700
154.6000
and you can legally only run 2 watts (but FRS is only 1/2 watt)

But honestly the test isn't that difficult, you get a groovy callsign, can run TONS of power if necessary (mobile units are often 50 Watts) and can use repeaters if you get your ticket. Repeaters are a wonderful thing!

But MURS or FRS might be a good babystep.

-Mike

 

[devinsixtyseven]

after doing a ton of surfing and reading, i'm gonna start with a tech license and a 2m HT for the reasons i listed above, and eventually get something hard mounted in the truck when i know more. the HT just sounds like the perfect solution for non-truck adventuring, which i plan to do a lot of! snowmobiles, mountain bikes, all sorts of stuff, and there's the advantage of starting with something relatively simple and then moving later to the remote/base setup with a DX in the truck.

i'm in denver btw...

what i'm really interested in is hooking gps and a laptop together with the HT and using packet to send data long-distance through a repeater...like text, images or vid from the middle of nowhere back to civilization. think of a backcountry powder trip including a laptop and near-realtime pics and vid, or a 4wd trip with the same, or cool photos to a friend who couldnt make it, or just sending geos/pics to "home base" so people know where you're at if youre in trouble.

is there a particular feature i should look for in a radio in order to accomplish this? data link of some sort? rs232? three toed, moss-covered gredunza?


thanks in advance...

-sean

 

[Pskhaat]

Look for a built-in `TNC' or terminal node controller. I don't know if there are any HTs with TNCs though, but I'm not up-to-date on that.

Tech license is definetely the way to go Look forward to hearing more about this from you. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask.

 

[devinsixtyseven]

well, it seems i can pass the tech license exam (the qrz online practice tests) with about a 75% without any studying and with a few brain farts :sombrero: ...my day job is with radar...so with some study time i'm gonna go for the general license.

ive been looking at that VX-7R...other than the price, it seems like a good ht, i'm not afraid of bizarre menus and it sounds like the bugs have been worked out. overall it seems like a good first radio for someone with a techy background, with a lot of room to grow, and with no need to go buying two or three radios over time i'd actually save money.

1200 baud? wow...i figured maybe 9600 or even 14.4...but 1200 is plenty good for text. i messed with a radio modem a while back, i think it was around 14.4 at best depending on range, but don't remember what the output was and that data rate might be high anyway. we were sending vector graphics from golden (lookout mountain? whichever...all the radials on top...) up to boulder and back, from a laptop in a "hidden" car, bounced off a nearby mobile repeater with LOS to the "base" in boulder. it was pretty neat...

what's a good active club in the denver area? i found the denver radio club, and there's one in westminster, plus i think it was eoss which uses ham for their work in golden.

is a tech license enough to operate all bands on the VX-7R? it's 70cm/2m/6m, and tech includes frequencies down to (not including) 30MHz, is that correct?

 

[Pskhaat]

it's 70cm/2m/6m, and tech includes frequencies down to (not including) 30MHz, is that correct?

• Very High Frequency (VHF) (30 to 300 MHz)
  • 6 meters (50 - 54 MHz)
  • 2 meters (144 - 148 MHz)
  • 1.25 meters (219 - 220, 222 - 225 MHz)
• Ultra High Frequency (UHF) (300 MHz to 3 GHz)
  • 70 centimeters (420 - 450 MHz)
  • 33 centimeters (902 - 928 MHz)
  • 23 centimeters (1.24 - 1.3 GHz)
  • 13 centimeters (2.30 - 2.31 GHz and 2.39 - 2.45 GHz)
• Super High Frequency (SHF) (3 to 30 GHz)
  • 9 centimeters (3.3 - 3.5 GHz)
  • 5 centimeters (5.65 - 5.925 GHz)
  • 3 centimeters (10.0 - 10.5 GHz)
  • 1.2 centimeters (24.00 - 24.25 GHz)
• Extremely High Frequency (EHF) (30 to 300 GHz)
  • 6 millimeters (47.0 - 47.2 GHz)
  • 4 millimeters (75.5 - 81.0 GHz)
  • 2.5 millimeters (119.98 - 120.02 GHz)
  • 2 millimeters (142 - 149 GHz)
  • 1 millimeter (241 - 250 GHz)

 

[devinsixtyseven]

Passed the Tech exam .

They asked if I wanted to give General a shot, I needed five more correct to get it...guess I shoulda studied .

Next test is next week, thinking maybe I'll get the General and try the code as well, since code is still on the test above Tech for another month or so and I want to learn it anyway.

-S

 

[RoundOut]

Way to go!

Outstanding, D67!

I spoke to the VEC for the test my son and I will take in Houston Saturday. He said that after we take the Tech test, it's no extra charge to take the General test. He explained that one pays $14.95 for the Tech and can keep taking tests until one fails. He said that he has had kids fresh from EE school go all the way to Extra on the first exam. I may be cramming for General tomorrow to try and save a buck. LOL. He said that without passing the code, I could only get the CSCE for the written, and they would not grant the General license until the code exam is officially waived in a month or two. He added that I could take the code exam any time later, though.

Passed the Tech exam .

They asked if I wanted to give General a shot, I needed five more correct to get it...guess I shoulda studied .

Next test is next week, thinking maybe I'll get the General and try the code as well, since code is still on the test above Tech for another month or so and I want to learn it anyway.

-S

 

[devinsixtyseven]

I found a ton of good Morse tutorials, and a Morse chart to start with...do a quick Google search for "learn Morse" or similar. The Wiki article is really interesting, too. Here are a few:

http://www.babbage.demon.co.uk/morse.html
http://morsecode.scphillips.com/jtranslator.html
http://www.learnmorsecode.com/
http://www.g4fon.net/CW Trainer.htm

Some of these and others seem to be able to create MP3s for practice, so you can practice at work.

Now I want a straight key. It reminds me of all the old movies and comic books I used to watch and read, where there was a guy talking superfast Morse in front of the radio box on board a ship or aircraft bound for who knows where, but there was an adventure waiting at the other end. One of the guys at the test was talking to NZ on NYE on his HF rig...and there are people on the ExPo all over the world already .

Sometimes I wonder if I shouldn't have gone EE instead of AE...maybe as a Master's degree, who knows.

I'm getting a VX-7R...even found a few websites with a bunch of tips, tricks, hints and mods. It's about the same cost, possibly even slightly more expensive, than a good basic mobile setup, but I want this for non-vehicle backcountry stuff as well as in the truck.

Talk to you all soon :jump:!

Good luck Gary, we should try and set up that link we were talking about the other day when you get the radio.

-Sean

 

[crawler#976]

CONGRATS!

You should have a call sign by next Friday!

73's to ya

Mark

 

[RoundOut]

I passed, too!

Sean,
I missed the first two on my Tech exam, LOL. Then I took the General and only missed 4. I'm General!
I'm studying for CW now, even though it's not required.
I'll holler at you with my call sign when its issued.

 

[gary in ohio]

Is there such thing as a CB/144/440 setup with a single head unit and selector switch for which xmitter you're using?

You will NEVER see a legal cb/144/440 radio. They are two different licesne class of radios.

I I don't need a license to operate CB/2M or 440MHz do I? Only HAM equipment?

For CB you dont need a license but you do for ham radio and 2m (144) or 70cm (440 are ham bands..