School me on hand held 2 meter radios (HAM)
jefe here from the TC forum. My bro has a ham radio in his TC and wants me to get a ham radio for my TC as we are going way off-grid on an Eastern Sierra Nevada run. My jeeping buddies all have hams i...
Forum Discussion
RLMiller wrote:
First of all I’m going to assume you have an amateur radio license, or will get one soon. The Eastern Sierra area is not as remote as you may think as there are a number of amateur repeaters that cover much of the region. That being said, most off-roaders will use a simplex (non-repeater) channel for communications between vehicles. My son uses such an arrangement to communicate between he and his friends when on snowmobiles. Repeater channels can still be used to talk back to base camp or over longer distances.
I strongly recommend a mobile radio which will have far more effective range, with the use of a better antenna and higher power. Mobile radios at a reason price can be found through the Ebay and other on-line sources.
I will be in the Eastern Sierra area in two weeks to provide a repeater for communications for a bicycle ralley that begins in Badwater, Death Valley and ends at Whitney Portal. To communicate from the check points back to the net control in Lone Pine we use both the portable repeater and simplex when the riders get closer to Lone Pine.
Where will you be off-roading in the Eastern Sierra?
I would tend to agree.
While mobile radios are not as flexible (IE portable) they do make up for that in transmit power which coupled to a high gain longer antenna can net you considerable distance.
You can get single band mobiles starting at $109 and some nice antennas for about $70 or so with a mount.
My FT8800 is a dual band 2mt/440 mhz with a remoteable head, the advantage of that is you place the radio in a separate location and mount the small head to your dash. About $500 for it and it actually has a lot of features which allow it to monitor TWO frequencies at a time which can be 2/2, 2/440, 440/2, 440/440. It also has built in repeater function so you can use it as a mobile repeater.
However if money is a problem HTs often CAN be connected to an external antenna and you can get a separate mic which allows the HT to function a bit like a mobile, just not as much transmit power.
