I have a budget of under $50
I’ll be using them indoors mostly inside a church but it’ll be used on field trips once in a while.
What are the options I have?
So far I’ve seen Motorola MH230R being the best for what I need but is there other options for my unused AA eneloops?
Is it allowed in your country to use FRS/GMRS radios?
Mike
Maybe this thread could help :
Baofeng GT-3
I’m not an expert, but i’ve heard some friends, who use Baofeng radios daily, say they’ve no problems with it.
Bottom line: you can use radios which are allowed to use by law in your country or you are licensed for. Period.
Mike
My experience (with 8 Motorolla wt's for work), plus what I read, with cheap under $50 walkie talkies is they can work very well, but also that it is highly likely that they fail, even within the first year. Apparently there are components in them that are expensive to produce well.
if somehow possible get licensed for ham and it will be worth it!
those cheapo walkies for 50 bucks are not bad, but you can get two Baofengs for the same money! they are cheaper in packs and online you can get 4W older models for 25 per radio. way better than the rest.
and you’ll learn a lot too!
Motorola used to be top quality but they split the company and now their radios are questionable at best. If FRS and GMRS are open to you there are many that work well; you’ll need to research that on sites dedicated to their use. With them, select a channel in the middle- many simply use the highest or lowest so there’s less shared-use interference in the middle. Most of these are generics or a generic circuit design, so about all the same save for appearance. BaoFeng is highly regarded for the price.
Range is as much a function of antenna design as power, in general a longer antenna will do better. In ideal conditions 100mW can go at least 120 miles- I’ve done that with a Ham HT once on a mountaintop. Less power usually means longer lasting time between batteries/charges and heavy use will affect that as well.
Don’t buy anything you can’t find several independent good reviews for done by people with some experience in use, and be sure to stay legal as the fines in some places can be astronomical including jail time if you get caught operating illegally.
Phil
For inside a building, the cheap handy-talky things should be good enough.
Learn about the bands (“channels”) used in your country so you can shop for however many you want and teach people to use them.
Some will be for general use, some likely for commercial use, and they may be very busy if you’re in an urban area.
For indoor use you don’t want a highly sensitive radio, you want one that isn’t picking up people far away from you.
For any greater distance, get a few of your folks to qualify for their first level ham radio operator’s license.
Great power, with great responsibility.
http://www.skmm.gov.my/skmmgovmy/files/attachments/Guideline_Amateur_Radio_Service_2012.pdf
consider looking at:
Yaesu, Vertex, and/or Standard Horizon
Three names same company.
I have found that over the years the marine VHF standard horizon radios are super tough, and when you need one of those is not the time you want it to fail. It can be a true life saver, cant say enough good stuff about the ones I have had and recommended for years.
And yes looking at the used market can A) save you some money, and B) indicate which ones hold there value, aka (market tested good ones) and which ones do not.
+1
And a sort of analogy is watts are like flashlight amps (more is good but more does not fix everything and comes with a cost) while antennas are more like reflectors/TIR they determine how that power is used. It is like the flood vs thrower debate taken to the extreme, some antennas spread the signal everywhere (the ultimate flood “like a lantern” in all directions) and some are much more focused (like “throwers”) and concentrate the signal, but if not aimed at the “target” do little to no actual good.
And enjoy the process because ham stuff is a whole-nuther bag of tech/spec worms.
FYI
Walkie-talkie
Amateur radio
Walkie-talkies (also known as HTs or “handheld transceivers”) are widely used among amateur radio operators. While converted commercial gear by companies such as Motorola are not uncommon, many companies such as Yaesu, Icom, and Kenwood design models specifically for amateur use. While superficially similar to commercial and personal units (including such things as CTCSS and DCS squelch functions, used primarily to activate amateur radio repeaters), amateur gear usually has a number of features that are not common to other gear, including:
Wide-band receivers, often including radio scanner functionality, for listening to non-amateur radio bands.
Multiple bands; while some operate only on specific bands such as 2 meters or 70 cm, others support several UHF and VHF amateur allocations available to the user.
Since amateur allocations usually are not channelized, the user can dial in any frequency desired in the authorized band.
Multiple modulation schemes: a few amateur HTs may allow modulation modes other than FM, including AM, SSB, and CW,[5][6] and digital modes such as radioteletype or PSK31. Some may have TNCs built in to support packet radio data transmission without additional hardware.
A newer addition to the Amateur Radio service is Digital Smart Technology for Amateur Radio or D-STAR. Handheld radios with this technology have several advanced features, including narrower bandwidth, simultaneous voice and messaging, GPS position reporting, and callsign routed radio calls over a wide ranging international network.
As mentioned, commercial walkie-talkies can sometimes be reprogrammed to operate on amateur frequencies. Amateur radio operators may do this for cost reasons or due to a perception that commercial gear is more solidly constructed or better designed than purpose-built amateur gear.
Looks like several of us Hams here :bigsmile:
Being inside of a building may be a tougher situation than you’d think. A wire-reinforced concrete floor makes a good RF shield as do windows that have a metallic “Low-E” coating on them. UHF will work better there and in general is better for short-range work. Normally most anything will do for short range though.
Do check legality- I don’t mean to harp on that but in some places first-offense fines go into the $10K range for use of unauthorized transmitters and IIRC Malaysia is one of the tougher countries for that, though my memory may be wrong. My HF is down or I’d get you an answer on that from a Ham living there!
Phil
Don’t become a ham … you’ll lose IQ points .
buy a CB , a really big linear and a power mic.
I am glad that I have learned a lot as I never knew there would be so many rules related to these.
After a lot of reading, I am sure that I’ll be going low powered as license isn’t worth investing for my needs.
Seems that I am open to PMR446 or UHF that are below 800mw
I guess I’ll visit my nearby police station and ask about radios.
All these radio talk reminds me of fallout 4 somehow
if no amateur license, then FRS/GRMS is the only option…well MURS is an option but those radios are usually pretty expensive
I guess that’s probably it until I found a job that allows me to venture into amateur radio hobby.
FRS radios
For $50 you should go with baofeng uv82
If you trust refurbished Baofeng UV-5R V2+
A few links for you
http://thetravelinsider.info/2003/0627.htm
Which means you can get those cheapy BaoFeng (or other Chinese radio models with dual band) radios and program ONLY the MURS VHF channels and the FRS/GRMS UHF (while setting low power for TX) and be 100% legal
Zelee — did you check what Malaysia’s band plan allows power911 to use there?
Power911 — I’d be surprised if your police station can help you much on this, though no reason not to ask. Someone there may happen to know the answers or point you to someone.
You will want to learn both what Malaysia’s regulations say and what agreements the local radio operators have made within those limits — it’s a shared resource plentiful when managed cooperatively.
For example I use a “2-meter” radio often. The regulation in the US specifies a range of frequencies for the 2-meter band, and lets beginner ham operators use that.
Remember I’m talking about where I am in the US — you need to find out how it’s set up in Malaysia.
My local area band plan for 2-meters is the agreement among ham operators on how frequencies within that 2-meter band get used for various kinds of communication.
EDIT: It looks like this: http://ncpa.n0ary.org/overall_2_M_band_plan.pdf
There are band plans for each band. The regulations say what level of license is required for operating on that band. The band plan says how it’s shared.
My local area band plan says how far apart the “steps” should be — if someone’s working on 147.495 mhz, in my area, the separation is 15 mHz — so I’d go to 147.480 or 147.510 to see if that’s free at the moment.
But if I were living a little further south, the separation in the band plan is 20 mHz. So I have to know where I am, and where the person I’m communicating with is, to get it right.
If you’re transmitting in between two accepted frequencies, you produce noise on them, and you hear what sounds like a lot of noise from the people using the accepted frequencies. There’s some “spread” around the specified frequency. Cheap radios generally are worse about that. You need to look up the reviews of the radio, and know your local situation. As with anything else, you can probably buy anything you want mail order from China, and it won’t necessarily be at all suited to your needs, since they won’t know what they’re selling.
Ask locally.
Let me tell you an anecdote about why it works this way:
An idiot I know bought a couple of ham radios — without passing the beginner test to get a call sign and license — ’because “Freedom!” he said — and he was using parts of the band set aside for repeater operation, or for moon-bounce, or for morse code, or for digital radio, or for other satellites including communication with the International Space Station (yeah, you can do that with a ham radio if one of the astronauts or cosmonauts passing overhead happens to be available). And that idiot was trying to teach someone how to fly an aircraft, and ended up screaming at everyone else to stay off “his” channel so his student could hear him. Caused an emergency situation. Could’ve gotten someone killed. Had no clue how far his signal propagated or what machines or relays were causing “noise” on those bands he was trampling through.
EDIT:
Those of us who heard him ranting about this at a party tried to straighten him out — because it’s our issue, first. If he kept screwing up, the FCC would find him eventually. Better it doesn’t go that far.
I don’t know how the rules of the road work in Malaysia — but I expect that most traffic stays within lanes and turns as expected and that occasionally you have someone who decides to go against the traffic.
That kind of interference happens unless the radio bandwidth is shared. Freedom doesn’t mean screwing up a shared resource.
