On our never-ending quest to improve this place by listening to feedback from the B&B, we are taking a new tack with these product posts, choosing instead to focus on items we use and have deployed in our travels. After all, if we’re giving you the truth about cars, we ought to give you the truth about car accessories.
It’s been a minute or five since we’ve covered two-way radios in this series. With the holidays around the corner and these things serving as a pretty good gift for the gearhead in yer life, we felt it was time to bring the subject to the top of our list.
First – a few definitions. Many of us think Smokey & The Bandit talking about two-way radios; after all, a gearheads reading this august publication either grew up using the tech or watched our heroes use it on television or in movies. That service was likely Citizen’s Band – the ubiquitous CB radio. The main differences between CB and the radios in this article are range, channels, and general privacy.
Two-way radios, on the other hand, also have a couple of different classifications with the demarcation being the amount of power being used. Short-range FRS radios, which stands for Family Radio Service, use 2 watts or less and one doesn’t need a license to use it in the country. These are generally little handheld units with a built-in antenna jutting from it and a small screen on its face for channel information and the like.
Range isn’t huge, typically petering out at around a mile or two in normal conditions when a line of sight is blocked by buildings or hills. Get in the right spot, like communicating on open water or from hilltop to hilltop, and range can skyrocket to 20 miles or more in this author’s experience. But it’s rare. They’re also not very expensive, with options from companies like Cobra often coming in at less than 50 bucks for a pair.
The other common type of two-way radio is GMRS, standing for General Mobile Radio Service, which can run up to 50 watts of power and run on the same frequencies as FRS (which, if you’re wondering, is way up in the 400s of the FM band). Americans do need technically need a license to use GMRS but it’s just a matter of paying a $35 fee and getting the paperwork which is then also good for one’s immediate family.
Depending on the power being hove out by your particular GMRS radio and the positioning of antenna range is reliably several miles in my experience, though line of sight is always better. Random crap between you and the person with whom you are communicating will conspire to generally scupper range.
Good luck has been experienced with the Midland brand of radios, such as a 50-watt MXT575 radio which has found its way into pickup trucks and side-by-sides to which I hold the keys. This radio places its buttons and LCD screen right on the mic, permitting the base itself to be tucked out of the way. In the truck it gets mounted onto a custom bracket on the console hump but in the side-by-side it gets hove under the seat with a bit of shielding to protect against water. If I was frequently submerging the machine on my routes, I’d choose a different spot up higher.
Midland also makes a GXT3000 radio which looks like an FRS but has GMRS capabilities. This is a great option for someone who’d rather dump their radio in a cupholder or fling it into a dashboard cubby whilst frequently changing vehicles. Other brands like Garmin offer similar, though that crew also has its Tread series which incorporates a 5.5-inch tablet which is a style familiar to the generations which grew up with an iPad in their hands; this does help user-friendliness and removes some of the intimidation new users may feel handling a two-way radio.
As planned, this series of posts will continue to focus on items we actually use and have bought with our own money. We hope you found this one helpful.
[Image: Sellers, Author]
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