ptschram
Well-known member
WTF? Maybe where you live but around here, repeaters are often used for ragchewing.
How long before somebody pulls out a Wuoff-hong and beats me with it?
CB or FRS
- Thread starter fishEH
- Start date
WTF? Maybe where you live but around here, repeaters are often used for ragchewing.
How long before somebody pulls out a Wuoff-hong and beats me with it?
This was kind of my thought as well. I don't want to go with some obscure option that very few have. CB, FRS, and HAM all seem to be more common than MURS.
See, I can tell right away you do not trail ride. Because the way it typically goes, and I'm speaking from experience, is that the lead vehicles pull away from the stalled or slower vehicle, or the vehicle who 's driver had to take a piss, and the group gets separated. It does not have to be a large group, either. Then you come to a spot in the trail, or the road between trails, and you do not know which way to go. FRS radios are shit. They're junk. You get much distance between them at all and they do not work. Toss in some trees or even cross over the crest of a ridge, and you may as well be talking into a soup can.
It also seems that the quality of FRS radios has gone way down. You can get a 4-pack of radios now from what, $30? People buy these because they're cheap and a lot of folks have them. But I do not feel these radios work nearly as well as some of the other FRS radios from yesteryear. Nevertheless, it's an FRS radio.
I always like to go by the general rule of, if you can't see the guy behind you, stop and wait for them. There was a time when this worked well. But people have seemed to have forgotten this simple trail etiquette.
I've never wheeled out West, but I can't imagine an FRS radio working well out there when you get distance between guys. Some of these guys meet out in the middle of the desert, miles from any paved road. No cell coverage. No regular passer-by. So I could see how when visiting these places a HAM radio would be a great tool for a number of reasons. But I do visit off-road parks. No way in the world an FRS radio will transmit across one of these parks. And unless you've got your squelch turned all the way down on your CB listening to static, a CB is not going to do much good, either. It's nice to have HAM to find your group at a large off-road park, or to yell at the guy going back to camp to bring you something you forgot. Even on the ride to the trails, on the interstate, etc.. A working radio is a nice thing to have. FRS radios are kids toys.
Sure, if you're within a few miles of each other you do not need a repeater. But you have the option right there at your finger tips in case you do need the repeater, whatever that reason may be.
Nope. I don't. At least, not with people like that, and certainly not with so damned many of them.
Cheers,
Kennith
He referred to "five or six trucks". I wheel with three or four. It is possible for his group to include only one more vehicle than my own. My opinion is relevant.
Cheers,
Kennith
Edit: I didn't type "is".
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I checked Northern Arizona where I'd most likely be off-road. Repeaters are few and far between. You'd need a vehicle mounted rig to have enough power to reach one. I know in Gold Canyon for the '08 AZLRO rally, the trail leader couldn't hit the repeater from our location at lunch break. To be fair, it was pretty deep in a canyon. He was calling rally base at Gold Canyon ranch to check in. I don't know how far out of the canyon we had to be to reach base.
The repeater on the mountain next to me is a bunch of old, uptight people talking. If you listen during rush hour, you can hear one guy driving to work while talking to his retired friends. :yawn:
Some of the old Mcdonald's drive-throughs used MURS frequencies before they were MURS. In 1990 I worked for a company that had a set of Grainger "green dot" radios (154.6 mhz). I had a police scanner set up in my car to scan all the business frequencies. Rolling through a Mickey D's for lunch, the drive through person keyed up and my scanner locked on that channel. Poor girl got an ear full of feedback.
They used PL codes, because I took my work radio with me the next time to screw with them, but they couldn't hear me.The Beofengs can tune that range, so it is another option.
If you have your Ham or GMRS license then you will know that if you are on a repeater with things like; "Turn the wheel left.", "Lunch is in an hour.", "I forgot my Kobe beef.", or "Looks like rain." (Thanks Chapman), then you have to know that you will probably start to piss people off and eventually run the risk of loosing your license. There is a difference between "ragchewing" and nonsence BS like above. I wouldn't even use a simplex ham frequency (off the repeater) for stuff like that. Repeaters have thier own time and place and are great for rallying everyone up or meeting up at the trail head but I wouldn't use it to help someone drive over an obstacle or steering corrections. I would certainly encourage everyone to get your ham or GMRS license and when you do, you start to understand what is allowed on there and the correct protocals. Keep your options open to what is available so don't limit yourself to just one type of system.
MURS was simple a suggestion to open people up to other ideas. FRS is ok at VERY short distances but doesn't carry well over terrain. CB is......well CB and there is a reason why ham radio operators gave up the use of those frequencies years ago, but it is still effective for VERY short range. FRS and CB are reasonably and equally effective for small trail groups but have limitations. Personal experience when it comes to off road parks suggests that it can be a real pain in the A$$ to find an unused frequency that doesn't interfere with another group in the park. MURS can just give you another option to explore when those fail. GMRS and FRS are all UHF and don't carry as well or as far as 2m ham or MURS. If very short distance is your goal, then CB, FRS, and GMRS are great.
az_max is correct. Yes, McDs, Walmart, and nearly every drive-thru in the country uses a form of MURS but I think that is a minimal risk when you are off roading in the mountains somewhere. They are VERY short range and rarely go more than a couple of hundred yards or so. Want to have fun? Get a MURS capible radio, drive by a Walmart, and tell a store manger that "we have a code red" or " a vomit clean up at register 4".
PTScram: "How long before somebody pulls out a Wuoff-hong and beats me with it?" Thanks for introducing me to a little known ham radio termanology. Very interesting and love the story behind it. I first thought you meant a Boufong (radio). Had to look that one up.
Think outside the box a little and know that there are other options out there. Just be careful in what you explore and know the rules. MURS is catching on in places around the country and is becoming another CB in its own right. A good 5 watt base station will get 30-40 (clear) miles with a good antenna and you don't have to hear all the trash that you do on CB. The people tend to be ham radio operators that are a little more friendly then CBers and just want a quite place to chat that is slightly off the norm.
MURS was simple a suggestion to open people up to other ideas. FRS is ok at VERY short distances but doesn't carry well over terrain. CB is......well CB and there is a reason why ham radio operators gave up the use of those frequencies years ago, but it is still effective for VERY short range. FRS and CB are reasonably and equally effective for small trail groups but have limitations. Personal experience when it comes to off road parks suggests that it can be a real pain in the A$$ to find an unused frequency that doesn't interfere with another group in the park. MURS can just give you another option to explore when those fail. GMRS and FRS are all UHF and don't carry as well or as far as 2m ham or MURS. If very short distance is your goal, then CB, FRS, and GMRS are great.
az_max is correct. Yes, McDs, Walmart, and nearly every drive-thru in the country uses a form of MURS but I think that is a minimal risk when you are off roading in the mountains somewhere. They are VERY short range and rarely go more than a couple of hundred yards or so. Want to have fun? Get a MURS capible radio, drive by a Walmart, and tell a store manger that "we have a code red" or " a vomit clean up at register 4".
PTScram: "How long before somebody pulls out a Wuoff-hong and beats me with it?" Thanks for introducing me to a little known ham radio termanology. Very interesting and love the story behind it. I first thought you meant a Boufong (radio). Had to look that one up.
Think outside the box a little and know that there are other options out there. Just be careful in what you explore and know the rules. MURS is catching on in places around the country and is becoming another CB in its own right. A good 5 watt base station will get 30-40 (clear) miles with a good antenna and you don't have to hear all the trash that you do on CB. The people tend to be ham radio operators that are a little more friendly then CBers and just want a quite place to chat that is slightly off the norm.
Thomas, thanks for the lecture on amateur radio etiquette. It's great to have someone here who is an actual ham to help the rest of us out with these confusing issues.
I personally wasn't even going to bother mentioning that, but it's another side of my position.
Of course you wouldn't. You'd probably use one of these:
I know I would.
Cheers,
Kennith
Or just use hand signals. That shits annoying when a spotter is trying to talk to you on a radio when they're 15ft away and easily seen
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Oh, come on. Ham radio doesn't eschew bullshit conversation, it embraces it. Take APRS, for example. Does anyone really give a shit where you are and how fast you're moving? It's the Twitter of the ham radio world, yet it's one of the more popular modes. No, I wouldn't tie up a repeater with spotting talk but there's no need to. I wouldn't hesitate to spot someone over simplex.
ptschram
Well-known member
I told you this would happen when they dropped the CW requirements!
It's the ham radio equivalent of $500 trucks being destroyed at MAR (right Dan?).
Uh.... CB over FRS.
But why not 2 meter? Are people afraid of the math on the test? So much better than FRS or CB.
And you don't have to get anything fancy in a radio. All the bells and whistles are very, very cool, but with what we can do with our cell phones now, it's hardly worth the effort. The clarity and range of a 2m in the truck is well worth it, however.
But why not 2 meter? Are people afraid of the math on the test? So much better than FRS or CB.
And you don't have to get anything fancy in a radio. All the bells and whistles are very, very cool, but with what we can do with our cell phones now, it's hardly worth the effort. The clarity and range of a 2m in the truck is well worth it, however.