Radio communication needed...

[Sonnie]

Anyone know anything about mobile radios or CB radios?

I have a buddy who is in need of 2 way communications via handhelds for about a 5-10 miles radius on their farm. He is currently using Southern Linc push to talk, but they simply do not have good enough reception. He says he and his dad have to repeat things several times before they can understand each other... very aggravating.

I was thinking his cheapest route would be CB radio. He could get a base station for his home so that his wife could contact him if she needed him and a couple of handheld CB radios. Assuming they are small enough to carry and keep a good enough charge for a days work. He has an 80' grain bin that he can install an antenna on if needed.

Does anyone know of what alternatives he has?

[tonyvdb]

We use the new Cobra 6700 22-Mile GMRS radios here at work and they work very well. On a farm they will easily reach that distance you require. And the best part is they require no licensing fee to operate (at least in Canada). For $70 you cant go wrong. The batteries last us almost 5 days using them 8 hrs a day. dont get the newer ones that reach 27miles as the speaker they used in them is not as clear.

EDIT: We tried the Motorola equivalent and they are not as good. Cobra is the way to go for sure.

[Sonnie]

Thanks Tony!

Yeah... no license required here.

Will they work with one person being inside a house and another being inside a chicken house at about 3-5 miles distance?

What are the environmental circumstances at your work and the general distances you guys talk?

[tonyvdb]

Sonnie wrote:

Will they work with one person being inside a house and another being inside a chicken house at about 3-5 miles distance?

What are the environmental circumstances at your work and the general distances you guys talk?

We use them inside and out, The building is all concrete and drywall with 300,000 sq ft and they work from the one end to almost the other end. (they will work allot farther in the farm situation). Wood/drywall will not block the signal much cement/rebar block it much more.

[steverc]

Sonnie:

In the US we have FRS (Family Radio Service) no license required and GMRS (General Mobil Radio Service) which requires a license which I think is $50.00.
These two radio services are in the same band (400MHz) and share some frequencies. Both of these are pretty much line of sight so if you are in a hilly area it could be somewhat problematic and your friend might be better off with an older CB radio however CB can get rather noisy when the sunspots come back and the range can very from a few miles to a few thousand miles depending on the condition of the ionosphere which is dependent on many things mostly Sun spots. FRS radios can be found rather cheap so the investment to just try them out is quit small.

Check these links:
http://www.gmrs.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Radio_Service

As an amateur radio operator I often use radios that operate near the FRS/GMRS frequencies and find that for line of sight very little power is needed and for getting through or around hills high power doesn’t make any difference. The FRS/GMRS radios are FM and usually are very quite when no signal is present CB radios can be much more difficult to set the squelch so that noise is blanked but the set still receives when a signal is present.

Steve
KN7F
www.kn7f.com