Portable Communication Devices — Any Suggestions?

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by opg4759 on September 30, 2010 at 7:33am

Portable CB walkie talkies are kind of useless in my opinion. The issue you run into is that the antenna's are junk. You can have the best hardware in the world yet if the antenna is bad your not going to be heard.

The reason for this is the wavelength of 27mhz compared to 462mhz. In a perfect world your idea antenna would be a full wavelength

CB (aka 11meters) is in the 27 MHz range and the full wavelength is around 36 feet. Now for most mobile installations You can't run a 36' antenna so we run at most a 1/4 wavelength which is around 108 inches. Again that is too long for a lot of vehicles so we break it down even further to a 1/8 wave length at 4' which truly isn't ideal. The smaller the antenna the lower the performance on HF frequencies this is why there is little to no hand held equipment in the HAM world it just doesn't work well.

When you get to higher frequencies VHF/UHF the wavelength of the frequencies is significantly smaller.

In GMRS/FRS the freq we use 462.7125 a full wavelength is 25.50 inches compered to 108 for CB. The issue you run into with FRS is the radio equipment is just junk, it's cheap poorly built and under powered only 1/2 watt output. That why I've recommend people get a GMRS license so you can legally run 5 watts in a HT or up to 50 watts in a mobile. The difference is night and day.

I have a good little HT you can use that will get you by until you figure out what you want to do.

Permalink Reply by potatomutato on September 30, 2010 at 8:35am

i think i actually have my GMRS license...just don't know if it is still active or not.

*sigh*

wish it were easier. any idea how these work out in the field?

Permalink Reply by opg4759 on September 30, 2010 at 9:30am

I have a friend that made one. Out of a ham radio

Permalink Reply by potatomutato on September 30, 2010 at 10:16am

he's gotta put it into production.

Permalink Reply by opg4759 on September 30, 2010 at 11:10am

Permalink Reply by potatomutato on September 30, 2010 at 12:31pm

ha! that's pretty sweet. have you tried it out? what's the reception like?

Permalink Reply by Boss73 on September 30, 2010 at 4:18pm

I would say I agree with OPG

Permalink Reply by DWH on September 30, 2010 at 7:40pm

I have a Midland 75-822 handheld CB. For the type of communications we do on the trail, it seems to works well.

It comes with two battery packs, one for alkalines and one for rechargables. There is also a cable provided to plug into a 12V source and an external antenna. OPG is right in that you are not going to get super long distance communication, but for truck to truck, I like it. In addition there is no install to do.

http://www.amazon.com/MIDLAND-75-822-Channel-Way-Radio/dp/B00000K2YR

I also have a Yeasu FT-7900 HAM radio that I am happy with. It is a mobile unit though, not a hand held. Allessio, PB and Boss have hand held hams hopefully they will chime in as well. PB and I were able to communicate very clearly on the few trails we have tried them on.

Permalink Reply by pkelly72 on September 30, 2010 at 8:21pm

Good communications have made the difference between sucess and failure since the stone age. There is a theory that the neanderthal went extinct because they could not communcate with one another.

For line of sight communications (no repeater) we use bendix king radios. They are not cheap and there are a variety of antennas that you can get which can help. The problem that is always faced is topograpy. Line of sight works great on flat terrain. In the mountains, if people are trying to communicate and there is a topographic feature between them it won't work. The only solution is to put another person with a radio between them and act as a repeater.

My suggestion is to have several people with the same device who know how to use them.

Sorry for the long winded reply.

Permalink Reply by potatomutato on September 30, 2010 at 8:52pm

thanks for the suggestions, guys! i appreciate it very much. it definitely is a tough call because it also depends on what the receiving party is transmitting on.

i'd like to check out the GMRS and HAM portable units and possibly try them out someday. topography is definitely going to play a factor as PK mentioned, but as long as i can hike my way into near line of sight, that would work well enough for me and what i'm planning unless i fall into a ravine or something.

i think in order to help resolve the topography issue, i'll have to familiarize myself with the terrain that i'm hiking on ahead of the trucks. that will help me judge distances and closure times for the video shots and such. lots to plan and discuss this off-season!