CB radio vs. cell phone vs. HAM Radio
HI all, I wanted to tap the resources of the forum here for suggestions on traveling in remote areas. Years ago, I traveled through Montana, Idaho and Wyoming and went several days without cell pho...
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Ham Radio is a hobby and you can have a pretty good local range depending what Ham repeaters are in the area. Doing third party traffic will depend on who you are talking to. No guarantees...
CB is a useless POS way to communicate with anyone. The verbage is very nasty bad for family communications... I use CB only to hear what is withing my immediate area listening to the truckers giving road hazard reports etc. Never talk on it... I have never communicated with another RV'er using the CB since installed in 2008... I'm sure some of them have CB's installed but I have never run across one. We also have FRS radios to use around the camp sites or being in town doing shopping etc. they are pretty handy to use to stay in touch... So are Cell Phones too haha...
Cell Phones is our primary method for us keeping in touch with family or 911 emergencies. We are on the VERIZON Network which for us seems to work very well in the off-road away from the Interstate Highways we like to camp at. I may have had one or two places where VERZION did not work for us... One place was GOBER, TX... I also carry a Verizon MIFI account which gives me an Internet hot spot that I use with five of our my devices like cellphone and tablets etc... The MIFI unit sits in a WILSON SLEEK Cradle which has an outside antenna connected. Does very well working with the weak cell phone signals you may encounter... We do not even try to work with the non-secure WIFI signal connections available at camp grounds or other public places... To big of a security risk for me... The Verizon MIFI account is secured and gives us the internet connections we need. Works anywhere we get Verizon Cell Phone service but does not require our cell phone to be usable... The MIFI account is assigned its own cell phone number on our VERIZON Wireless account...
In my working years the Satellite Comms setups never worked very well for us. We always ended up using regular cell phone service for the most part.
My COMMs two cents worth...
Roy Ken
CB is a useless POS way to communicate with anyone. The verbage is very nasty bad for family communications... I use CB only to hear what is withing my immediate area listening to the truckers giving road hazard reports etc. Never talk on it... I have never communicated with another RV'er using the CB since installed in 2008... I'm sure some of them have CB's installed but I have never run across one. We also have FRS radios to use around the camp sites or being in town doing shopping etc. they are pretty handy to use to stay in touch... So are Cell Phones too haha...
Cell Phones is our primary method for us keeping in touch with family or 911 emergencies. We are on the VERIZON Network which for us seems to work very well in the off-road away from the Interstate Highways we like to camp at. I may have had one or two places where VERZION did not work for us... One place was GOBER, TX... I also carry a Verizon MIFI account which gives me an Internet hot spot that I use with five of our my devices like cellphone and tablets etc... The MIFI unit sits in a WILSON SLEEK Cradle which has an outside antenna connected. Does very well working with the weak cell phone signals you may encounter... We do not even try to work with the non-secure WIFI signal connections available at camp grounds or other public places... To big of a security risk for me... The Verizon MIFI account is secured and gives us the internet connections we need. Works anywhere we get Verizon Cell Phone service but does not require our cell phone to be usable... The MIFI account is assigned its own cell phone number on our VERIZON Wireless account...
In my working years the Satellite Comms setups never worked very well for us. We always ended up using regular cell phone service for the most part.
My COMMs two cents worth...
Roy Ken
