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  • Author Author: gervasi
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Two-Way Radio Alive and Well

gervasi

Last week the local two-way radio vender in my area, General Communications, had an open house for customers to see their new facility and the radios they sell.  Two-way radios were a hobby for me in the late 80s and 90s when I was in high school and college.  Commercial equipment was generally superior to equipment marketed to hobbyists.  Some of my friends pirated the software to program commercial equipment, and we used it to program radios that we found at hamfests.  In those days, when a business or public safety agency got new radios, they would often send a guy with little knowledge of radios to a hamfest with instructions to get a couple hundred dollars for a box of transceivers to fund the next holiday party.  image

 

After college radios ceased being an avocation.  This was around the time we went back to calling radio “wireless” again.  I lost track of commercial two-way radio technology.  I assumed it had mostly been replaced by mobile phones.  Since most people own phones with plenty of free minutes, it's hard to imagine an enterprise putting up a tower and installing radios in their vehicles anymore. 

 

According to GenComm sales manager Jennifer Luchsinger, plenty of people subscribe to the local trunked radio system and some even put up their own towers just as they did in the 80s.  Phones, she says, haven't really put a dent in it.  She has been a volunteer firefighter for 20 years and seemed to share a hobbyist enthusiasm for two-way radios.  image

 

Most of the handhelds have a maximum output power of 5W or 3W in VHF and UHF respectively.  The mobiles have output power up to 100W.  Access to the local NextEdge trunking system costs $15/month/radio.  You can pay a little more and get coverage over a broader region.  Firefighters still use small receivers like the Motorola Minitor. 

 

This has me wanting to test some modern commercial two-way radios.  I sold my commercial two-way (I think it was a Motorola P100) about ten years ago.  It was a VHF radio I had bought at a hamfest 10 years before that.  Amazingly, I bought it at the hamfest for around $150 and sold it to a small ambulance company for twice that then years later.  Motorola radios are a rare example in electronics of something that holds its value. 

 

I'm interested in hearing from people who have experimented with modern two-way radios from a hobbyist standpoint. 

 

See my next post discussing feedback I received from hobbyists.

 


  • They are still used here in the UK and Europe. They are used by a lot of organisations as point-point contact, such as St John Ambulance and Mountain Rescue. Apart from the big players such as Kenwood and Motorola they are new players such as Wouxon in the commercial market. These fit a niche market very well. Although many of the public services have gone over to TETRA, there are people who still retain these because it fits their needs, and apart from the licence has no service costs tied in.

     

    There used to be a lot of ex-PMR kit in Ham use, but now it's dwindled as a new transceiver from China comes at less cost and less trouble to set up, as you mentioned with the software. FRS/PMR446 has also taken a chunk out, when licence free and off the shelf is much easier to deal with. Now some the Ham equipment seems to be superior- multiple receivers, DTMF equipped, rather more sensitive and even IP67 waterproof with built in GPS.

     

    One important fact is the radios will work wherever your signal can reach the other station, you are not restricted by the base station coverage. Indeed sometimes a temporary relay/repeater can be set up, such as in places with patchy mobile/cell phone coverage.

  • I no longer use the two way radio system, but I fully understand why it is still used.

    I have many friends who are HAM radio operators and they continue to use their rigs because they really enjoy the technology.

    It is not about communication per se, but about the band of equally talented technical folks.

    In many ways its a fraternity, because only those people who can pass the tests for the license can play in their sandbox.

     

    Plus there is just a lot of personal satisfaction in manipulating the equipment to do very difficult things.

     

    Everyone loves a challenge and these folks derive a lot of personal satisfaction.

     

    DAB