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  #1  
Old 10-12-2004, 09:04 PM
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communication on tours

Macgyver & i were having an off-line discussion of the relative merits of in-car communication devices. several members (me included) have brought FRS radios along on a few tours, although my sense is that not every radio in every car transmitted or received successfully at all times.

one of the other seattle car clubs has standardized on UHF "business band" radios "for clear communications at distances of up to 2 miles in the city and up to 5 miles in the country." at $400 a pop, it's not a great option (or value).

when i was with the Miata club, they had standardized on CB. I still have my handheld, which is compact, portable, affordable and never failed to maintain contact car-to-car. my Cobra 45WX is selling on ebay between $20 & $50:
http://www.usascan.com/pdf/45WX.pdf

new models can be had between $40 & $100:
http://www.epinions.com/CB_Radios-Handheld

maybe we can talk about in-car communication options during Fall Colors Tour III this saturday.
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  #2  
Old 10-13-2004, 01:40 PM
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WestCoastSVX WestCoastSVX is offline
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Yeah the FRS radioes were a flop in my opinion at Spring Classic. When people could hear something, it was garbled. They work great outdoors, but just don't seem to be very car friendly (and all the channels/subchannels seems confusing to get a whole group together on too).

Seasvx, could you paste that one article on the CB here, I lost the link after I deleted the PM. I like how it talks about the "guided tour", announcing the next turns, etc. Something I really want to get into as the next step in our tours.
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  #3  
Old 10-13-2004, 01:53 PM
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http://www.clubmiata.com/miatazone/cb-article.htm

(Thx to Stuart Sable and Club Miata)
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  #4  
Old 10-13-2004, 04:29 PM
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at the Reno meet

we had fair success with the motorola talkabouts.

.02 worth
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  #5  
Old 10-14-2004, 07:22 AM
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Communication for Saturday

I dug up my old handheld CB radio and am going to bring it along with my FRS radioes. As the tour leader, I will spend a little time transmitting on both, so if anyone has either/or of those, bring them along and we'll see what works best.
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  #6  
Old 10-15-2004, 12:16 AM
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I have used CBs before and they don't do very well unless you have an exterior antenna. The FRS radios seem to do better. I am all for a discussion this weekend and trying some different options.
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  #7  
Old 10-15-2004, 10:16 AM
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Communications

I'm gonna plug amateur radio here: Go get some ham licenses!

They are easy to get and cost about $12. The equipment can be from super cheap to super expensive. I reccomend surplus business band radios at about 30-50 bucks each. They are easily modified to the 2meter ham band. If you are running in the 2meter band (144MHz to 148Mhz), the antenna will fit inside the spoiler. Totally invisible, but the radiation will be a bit limited. This is offset by running a bit more power, in the range of 35 watts versus the 4 watt max of CB and the 1/2 watt of FRS.

Another option is getting a business band license and using the same surplus radios tuned to your 150 MHz assigned channel.

I'm still working on the antenna design, it will be sweet having good high power communications without a 50 inch antenna sticking up. The surplus radio look like ass, so I plan on mounting mine in the trunk and just running the mic and audio out up into the cabin, adding a mic connector either in the ash tray or replacing the cig lighter for a nice clean install.

All other options I can think of are either very expensive (non-surplus ham/business radios) or illegal (FRS radios have neat insides). So I'll leave those out.

Edit: File this post under 'G' for Future Project.
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Last edited by PhatWeasel; 10-15-2004 at 10:19 AM.
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  #8  
Old 10-15-2004, 02:45 PM
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Re: Communications

Quote:
Originally posted by PhatWeasel
I'm gonna plug amateur radio here: Go get some ham licenses!

They are easy to get and cost about $12. The equipment can be from super cheap to super expensive. I reccomend surplus business band radios at about 30-50 bucks each. They are easily modified to the 2meter ham band. If you are running in the 2meter band (144MHz to 148Mhz), the antenna will fit inside the spoiler. Totally invisible, but the radiation will be a bit limited. This is offset by running a bit more power, in the range of 35 watts versus the 4 watt max of CB and the 1/2 watt of FRS.

Another option is getting a business band license and using the same surplus radios tuned to your 150 MHz assigned channel.

I'm still working on the antenna design, it will be sweet having good high power communications without a 50 inch antenna sticking up. The surplus radio look like ass, so I plan on mounting mine in the trunk and just running the mic and audio out up into the cabin, adding a mic connector either in the ash tray or replacing the cig lighter for a nice clean install.

All other options I can think of are either very expensive (non-surplus ham/business radios) or illegal (FRS radios have neat insides). So I'll leave those out.

Edit: File this post under 'G' for Future Project.

I was following you well until ...."File this post under 'G' for Future Project"..... Did I miss something ?
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  #9  
Old 10-15-2004, 03:49 PM
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Re: Re: Communications

Quote:
Originally posted by Uncamitzi



I was following you well until ...."File this post under 'G' for Future Project"..... Did I miss something ?
I don't think there is enough time before the Fall Colors Tour.

It's also sort of a quote from 'Real Genius' ca.1985 with Val Kilmer.
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  #10  
Old 10-18-2004, 08:38 AM
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The results are in...

Well Saturday's Fall Colors Tour was a great success and we had a chance to put a couple of communication methods to the real world test.

Going into Saturday, we had pretty much narrowed it down to either FRS radioes or handheld CB radioes. Everything else wouldn't really be feasible to expect everyone in our diverse group to get on board with.

CB radio
Seasvx and I both had higher end handheld units. The first leg we attempted car to car communication using just the handhelds. Handheld, but still about 5-6 times larger and heavier than a FRS plus with a 12 inch antenna. Not the easiest thing to pick up and use while driving. Absolutely zero communication.

The next leg, Seasvx plugged his into the cigarette lighter and mounted an exterior antenna on his roof. During that leg of the tour I could hear his signal loud and clear on my handheld, but he could still not hear me or even tell I was keying on.

FRS radio
Almost everyone in the group had a FRS radio, same as at the Spring Classic where they had seemed to fail miserably (which started this whole conversation). For some reason this time, right from the start, they worked much better. Not much difference in terrain, the weather of course was a lot more overcast and rainy. The range was still not spectacular, and some of the radioes seemed to work better than others, but at least we had some good conversation going and were actually able to use them to figure out when our group was all together, etc.

The verdict (in my unscientific opinion)
The ultimate tour communication tool for our means would be CB's with external antennas. We would have crystal clear communication for more mile range than we would ever get separated. But it will never work for our group. For one thing, in this day and age you can not find them for sale hardly anywhere except online, and to get everything needed is going to bring the cost noticably higher than even the best FRS radioes. Oh, and probably most importantly, we are going to get very few of our group to stick an eyesore of an antenna on their roof, even just for the tour.

And as I already mentioned, going strictly handheld with no external antenna does not work at all within the vehicle.

FRS radioes are the next best thing, at least for our group as far as budget, praticality, etc. They worked okay this time and some of us were having a lot of fun with the whole communication thing. Also a benefit is that almost everyone seems to already own a pair, and those that don't can borrow the spare one from someone that does for the tour.

One footnote on these: They seem to be rated VERY optimistically in terms of their range (think "3 man" tents, "3 man" inflatable rafts, etc). On top of that, when used inside a vehicle that range gets cut in half again it seems. In our real-world tests Saturday, it looked like the "2 mile" radio had an effective 2-way range of about 1/8 mile and two "6 mile" radios could talk to each other up to about 2 miles at the most.

So for now it would seem FRS is the way to go for our group, the higher the range the better. We'll probably play around with them on some "unofficial" drives this winter, and use them again in full force this spring at the next Classic.
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  #11  
Old 10-18-2004, 09:26 AM
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I have seen some of them rated up to 8 miles, and the cost was only $50. for a pair of them. I would agree with your assesment and suggest the FRS radios, and if someone is going to by a set, they should get the highest number mile rated ones they can get. (6 to 8 miles) The radios are FM and are line of site and when you get into heavy trees and lots of turns like we had the other day, it will cut down on the range.
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