FRS walkie talkies

The new "precharged", "stay charged" or "eneloop" ones are supposed to be good. I bought some Raoyvac precharged at Walmart, and have been pleased with them.

Christopher A. Young Learn more about Jesus

I recharge the 2500 mAH NiMH AAs for my camera every 1st of the month, and they need a couple of hours to complete.

Not unless you were line of sight with no steel in between, nothing to cause multipath (As in TV ghosting) and at least a full wavelength from the nearest large piece of steel. the signal quality & levels are affected by all those factors. On top of that the antennas aren't very good on a handheld, since there isn't a good counterpoise.

Well, walkie laying on top of the RTU can't be much worse than being in a heavy metal box.

And, the quarter wave for FRS is about six inches, the TX antennas are limited to four inches, which is totally not resonant.

With all these problems, I'm amazed how well FRS works.

Christopher A. Young Learn more about Jesus

Not unless you were line of sight with no steel in between, nothing to cause multipath (As in TV ghosting) and at least a full wavelength from the nearest large piece of steel. the signal quality & levels are affected by all those factors. On top of that the antennas aren't very good on a handheld, since there isn't a good counterpoise.

It would work a lot better with a simple ground plane antenna or dipole antenna, but FRS radios aren't allowed in fixed service applications. Those are supposed to be licensed.

Years ago, I read the FCC web site on FRS. Back then, they were non commercial, only. A lot of stores use FRS at the store. I went back and read the web page, the non commercial bit had disappeared.

I'd like to see base stations sold. For example, farm house, to contact the guys in the farm field. Midland has a "base station" with hand held microphone. I'd make one of those on four D cells, so it would last a while. They used three AA cells. What advantage is that? Antenna not removable, either.

Christopher A. Young Learn more about Jesus

It would work a lot better with a simple ground plane antenna or dipole antenna, but FRS radios aren't allowed in fixed service applications. Those are supposed to be licensed.

There are other systems intended for that application. These days, cell phones are cheaper to use than a long range radio system.

"Stormin Mormon" wrote

Both are 2000 mA-H.

They do start at a somewhat lower voltage..but they outlast alkalines by about 3 to one in the field. Ive got Enerloops that have already been charged 500 times..and still go full charge and last for 6 months without losing more than 10%

Gunner

Gunner

So, what size batteries are they?

Christopher A. Young Learn more about Jesus

"Stormin Mormon" wrote

Both are 2000 mA-H.

One is red, the other is blue. How long are your shoelaces?

So, what size are the batteries that go wtih the chart?

Christopher A. Young Learn more about Jesus

IF you have cell coverage. There are quite a few places that don't. The current narrow banding BS is causing a lot of problems in the fire service. Now they are saying that we should all go digital, even though it has been proven to be even worse than the NB junk.

Yes, digital radio systems are as bad as digital TV. Great, where it works, and absolutely useless in fringe areas that old analog equipment is still usable. The earliest FM two way radio systems used 30 KHz channel width, and it's gone down hill since then. Narrower channels, lower power & lower towers. I installed a low band 250W base for a guy about 30 years ago. He could talk to Middletown, Ohio from his semi on hilltops in the middle of Kentucky as he drove loads of cardboard boxes down I-75. A county near here spent well north of a million dollars to replace their analog system with digital. They had four remote towers & voting hardware to give 100% coverage for the county. Motorola convinced them that wasn't needed, and they ended up with less that 35% reliable coverage. That they could fix for a few more million.

Damit gunner, stop morphing to try to get around filters.

Re filtered again.

Sounds like most of P.A. They had big M come in and install all new gear across the state all of it P25 crap. The coverage area went from something like 85% in the worst spots to less than 60% now in the best locations. There were a couple videos out that showed them testing the system and two people were less than a mile apart and could see each other but the radios wouldn't work. Then there are the guys in NYFD who can stand on opposite sides of a brick wall and cannot talk. Just what you want for crews who will be risking it all entering a building on fire and they can't talk to the crew outside!!!

It will bite them some day when it's the family of the ones who signed the contract needs help, and they can't get it because of the crappy radios.

Radio shack used to sell an FRS repeater.

Sounds like a good plan.

In our VFD, the phone was answered by a fireman who launched the page and drove the firetruck to the scene. People receiving the page went either to the fire or to the station to roll more equipment.

There's probably no limit to the procedures that have been found to work well in various communities.

By the way, about 80% of the firefighters in the US are volunteers.