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A very handy tool while tracking a long walker is a good set of radios. Especially ones that can reach out from places where you'll end up pursuing lions. It is a joyous thing when you've gone... who knows how far and you can radio back to one of the older fellows moving the rig around to come get you or come closer to you or don't move the truck!

Communication in general is nice to have while out. What are you using that works for you? I am especially interested in the low down on the garmin gps radios.

B-N-Trees wrote:A very handy tool while tracking a long walker is a good set of radios. Especially ones that can reach out from places where you'll end up pursuing lions. It is a joyous thing when you've gone... who knows how far and you can radio back to one of the older fellows moving the rig around to come get you or come closer to you or don't move the truck!

Communication in general is nice to have while out. What are you using that works for you? I am especially interested in the low down on the garmin gps radios.

WE ALL USE YEASU 2800 2- METER TRUCK RADIOS AND ICOM I-CV8 HAND HELD 2- METER RADIOS SO FAR THESE WORK VERY WELL FOR US HERE IN THE WV MOUNTAINS AND AS FOR THE GPS THEY ARE GREAT WHEN THEY WORK AND AS USELESS AS TITS ON A BOAR WHEN THEY DON'T ...I WILL NOT BUY ONE UNTIL GARMIN IMPROVES THEIR PRODUCT .....HOPE TIS INFO HELPS YOU OUT

Thanks, that's helpful. Where can I find these radios? And roughly what do you have into this communication set up?

The GPS radio's RINO's are nice, but the Radio's have some room for improvement.

They are basically the GMRS radios, talk-a bout types. they work alright, but I've found here in the NW Wet weather the Mic's get water in them and they are really hard to hear and understand people.

Nice thing is when one of you partners key up you at least know where they are..

Also another nice thing for me.. Is when it falls out of your Pocket, you can grab your buddies radio and use the poll location and find your radio... I've lost several radios, but that is one that I've been able to find a couple times..

I wish the Garmin Astro's had that feature.. I'm really scared that it's going to drop out of my pocket and I'll lose it..
So for a radio It's not the best.. But I like using them for Deer/Elk hunting with my buddies, because I can tell where they are and If I hear a shot I pretty much know if it was them or not..
Buddy

That is pretty much what I have been hearing from my elk hunting buddies. These radios seem like they are on the brink of being something really helpful.

Also that would be a handy feature to use another unit to locate a lost unit. I had a friends radio fall out of my coat one day while hunting bobcats. We spent hours going back over our tracks looking for it. Finally we found it. A bit of snow got kick over it when it fell. We must have walk by it a dozen times. Wasted a good hunt searching for a radio.

I am sure entertaining the idea.

I agree with Buddy, We use the Rhino's for deer hunting, we are usually fairly close to each other. Really nice knowing where everyone is, especially the young and old hunters.
But for hound hunting, I use the Icom handhelds. Seem to really reach out there fairly well. The batteries last at least all day. They cost roughly 160. I do have a Cobra handheld that works better but it cost almost 300, but if you have the money you will be happier...The distance and battery life is almost doubled the Icom.

Tony

B-N-Trees wrote:Thanks, that's helpful. Where can I find these radios? And roughly what do you have into this communication set up?

I GET THE 2 METER RADIOS FROM GIGAPARTS.COM YAESU IS ROUGHLY 160 OPENED UP AND THE ICOM IS ABOUT $100

When u say opened up what do you mean???thanks

markc106 wrote:When u say opened up what do you mean???thanks

A STOCK 2 METER ONLY HAS COMMERCIAL CHANNELS... THEY OPEN ALL THE CHANNELS SO THAT YOU DO NOT HAVE TO USE A REPEATER CHANNEL...IT IS SOMETHING LIKE THAT NOT A 100% SURE

There is a chip in ham radios that prevent you from recieving or transmiting outside of the 146-148mhz zone. (HAM band/2 meter). All HAM radios/2 meter radios require a licence and an official call sign assigned to you by the government. If you remove this chip you radio will be able to transmit between what I think is 133-160mhz. This will enable you to listen and transmit on most of the used vhf bandwith including police/fire/marine frequencies. There is definitely a legality to this so the discression is up to you. The benifit to this is that a person could use the marine bands. Why not just a marine radio? Its illegal to use a marine radio on land. Having a ham radio in your rig isnt illegal. Ham radios usually put out much more power than a marine radio. So your transmit power will be better.

how far will the mobile ham units reach out?

Yeah that might be the way to go. I went through a HAM course once but never test. Is what you are talking about require class and certification?

VHF is the way to go. It has the most penetration power out there. Really the best would tp get your ham license. Then you could use the repeaters available out there. Then really reach out there as you bounce repeater to repeater.

The Garmin Rhino uses the FRS/GMRS bands. Which are UHF. They are about useless unless short range. Great idea just poor choice of band for most hunters. I used some high power UHF stuff on these bands. Not the talk about crap you buy that says 27 mile range. Was real lucky to get 1/2 mile from handheld to handheld. Had to get the antenna up as high as possible to make contact in most cases. Used them while deer hunting to keep contact with kids and women. I could talk to my wife in stand 12ft up while I was on ground at 1/2 mile. yet could not talk to another ground hunter 1/4 mile away. Very frustrating to say the least. All with true 5watt commercial motorola UHF radios. Had a 25watt mobile in the truck.

For the VHF stuff. There really are few legal ways to use them. So the info I am about to post is only informational. I am not advocating the use of or breaking the law. If you use it is at your own risk. That said.

Some folks use the marine bands. Which being VHF have a lot more punch to them. At least the radios do. Legal radios on marine band can use 25watts. So most of the radios you can buy for mobile purpose have 25watts. You can also use the MURS band, but that is what the garmin uses, and is close or on some of the beep beep stuff. This is restricted to 2 watts. You can get a private channel with a few bucks or may know someone that has one you can use. Most of these have much higher power limits. The icom, and yaesu's mentioned have 65watts depending on the model. They are designed for use on the 2m ham band. If you do not have a license do not use this band. The ham guys will get mad, and normally results in a fine. These radios can be opened up though like mentioned to be used on the marine band, and other channels from 137-174mhz. Operation is only legal on channels though that are open to public use, or have private permission while following the power laws. There is not a chip in these units to be removed. It is simply a diode in them that has to be removed, or something similar. The yaesu 2800 for example is remove one solder pad, and create another. Very simple. The handhelds get a little more tricky as the parts are smaller. All the the icom v8 handheld is just a matter of pushing a few buttons.

Range on all these things will still depend on line of sight. Line of sight is not always how far you can see. It is the distaqnce your antenna may be able to see. So if your antenna can see 30 miles that would be your line of sight. Now toss a hill in there at 10 miles. Your line of sight is 10 miles. Line of sight is basically 2x the square root of the height of your antenna. So if your handheld antenna is sitting at 5ft the line of sight is basically 4.4 miles. This may very depending on the terrain. Power is a another confusing issue. Think of it as a volume control knob. Line of sight does not change with power. Just how loud you can be heard within your line of sight circle. So with 1 watt you may be barely able to hear me, but can. At the same distance I will be louder with 5watts. This is assuming one has the squelch turned off.

Atmoshereic conditions will also place a role in this stuff. Sunspots, clouds,etc. Ther are days when top range from truck radio to truck radio may be 10 miles at best. Other days we may get 50 miles. Terrain then has it's part. Mountain top to Mountain top you make get 80 miles. If we are at the base of the mountain on opposing sides. Well then we may not hear a word from each other. So there is no set range with ANYTHING!!!

The one thing I have yet to try is the push to talk phones. Talking with a friend of mine that has one. He says they will work in push to talk mode even if the phone does not work. I do not know. It does require everyone to have a push to talk phone though. In theory you can talk to anyone anywhere in the country with one. if these do work where there is little cell coverage. They may be the best way to go. As they are private. No need to worry about a warden following you to a tree in hopes of finding a ticket.

what if you went through the legalities and such what would your capabilities be--handheld to mobile, mobile to base, handheld to base? might be hunting where there is no cell phone service. could i contact a base unit with a truck unit 100 miles away?

KB- Basically even with the legalities your range would still be just as I have said already.

The only way to increase the range would be through the use of a repeater. There is some satellite stuff available to ham users. I don not know much about that though. I believe most of that is digital code. To use the ham repeaters you would need a license to use the band on which the repeater is allocated. May have to join the club that has the repeater. That all depends.

Although VHF is the way to go. It still has it's limitations. Police, Fire, EMS all use VHF. If they were restricted to just the use of the truck and handheld radio range they would have problems. That is why they all have repeater towers. Some of the squad cars are even set up as a repeater. So that when the officer is out of the car on the handheld his transmission can be sent out to dispatch or other units. This is not used as much anymore though with all the towers up now. Most everyone already knows that cell phones use towers. Without them your range on the cell would be very close to nil. Even your favorite radio station has to use a tower. The higher up they go the farther out you can hear them.

If I was hunting mountain terrain on a regular basis. Part of the gear in my day pack would include 50ft of coax and connectors to hook up antenna. This would add a pound or 2, but may make the differnce one day. Simply to toss a piece of fishing line over a high try limb and pull the antenna up. Thus increasing the distance I could get out in an emergency.

So unless using a repeater, or satellite setup. Even being a legal beagle. You are still going to be restricted by the damm basic laws of physics. Although there are many that believe with radios, trackers, etc. These laws do not apply to them. You may be able to get away with speeding once in awhile, but you can never get away from line of sight.