With a MINI event coming up and some club rallyes in the offing thought I would get a set of walkie talkies Looking over the options on the web you get reviews from 'awesome' to 'junk' one after the other. Most negative ones I suspect are user errors but difficult to tell the bone heads from the crap equipment . Soooo if you could, share your experience and recomendations with walkie talkies if you would please. Decent range needed for rallyes?
I really like the Cobra radios that I've bought in the past. The sound quality has been very good - which I consider to be the main difference between brands. My favorite Cobra's are pretty old (model FRS250) - I paid over $100 for the pair originally, because I bought them before FRS radios caught on. Later I bought Cobra GMRS radios, but to be honest - we almost never use the high power channels because typically people on our runs have a mix of FRS and GMRS radios - so you have to use the FRS channels in order not to leave anyone out. In fact pretty much all of our runs use channel 7 with no sub-channel. The sub-channels generally just add a delay. So since you end up running on an FRS channel, and all FRS radios basically have the same range - it all comes down to audio quality. Motorola's can also be good, most of the time. But I have run into people who bought very cheap Motorola radios that sounded worse than the teacher from the charlie brown cartoons... ;-) I will suggest this - whatever you buy, look closely at what's included. Sometimes the more expensive package that includes rechargable batteries, chargers, maybe even earbud headsets, will turn out to be a better deal that the super-cheap pair of radios that include nothing. (and then force you to buy all the extras later) And don't plan on running alkaline batteries - you'll go through them very quick and will surely fill up your local landfill in no time. Rechargeable NiMh - or LiIon if you can find it - are the way to go.
Good guidance. Check on what YOUR club does... OUR club ONLY supports GMRS channels. If you have an FRS-only radio, you're outta luck (but we bring spares and loan them to the unfortunate :lol. I have a pair of Cobras and a pair of Motorolas (which are actually made and sold by Giant - they bought the Motorola consumer brand). Both work fine. I like most of the features on the Motos better, but I like the way multi-channel scan works on the Cobras, so I use them for scanning channels at large events like MOTD.
Most of what I'm seeing cover both GMRS and FRS so it looks like I won't be the unfortunate one for MSSD! Sounds like for Rallye use a med to high end model, no need for top, should do the trick. They make reference to how many miles coverage if everything is perfect conditions. So I'll stick to the 20+ mile models
Reality is, in the twisties, you almost never get more than a couple of miles of range out of any of 'em. Marketing Hype FTW.
I WISH our club did this! They don't even ask who has FRS or GMRS, they just assume someone will have an old radio. All GMRS radios will also cover FRS channels. FRS is a sub-set of GMRS. And you can ignore those range claims. You will NEVER EVER get 20 miles out of one of these - unless you're using them in a perfectly flat area with no obstructions, no interference, no trees or buildings - any of your runs in the desert?. If you can find REAL specs, you'll probably see that the radio broadcasting power is the same on all of the GMRS radios you're looking at. I'll say this - your car actually blocks a fair amount of signal. But you pretty much need to use the radio while driving. So what I've done is wear a headset, open the sunroof, and clip the radio to the sunroof molding. This puts the antenna almost out of the car - and range improves dramatically. Not recommended for rainy day runs tho...