Replies

https://www.retevis.com/ip67-waterproof-anti-dust-walkie-talkie-rt6-dual-band-radio/
$39.99 1/3/5 watts

https://baofengtech.com/product/uv-82c/
$54.99 1/5 watts

https://baofengtech.com/product/uv-82hp/
$62.99 1/5/7-8 watts

All three cover 136-174mhz (VHF) 400-520mhz (UHF)

Which covers all the below

Ham 2 meter, 144 MHz to 148 MHz

GMRS/FRS 462.5625 MH to 467.7250 MHz

70cm 420 to 450 MHz

(70cm+gmrs/frs = 420 MHz to 467.7250 MHz with 2m being in that 136-174 range)

Retevis is cheaper and advertised as waterproof. All three also look very similar like one company copied the other. In fact even their websites look much the same.

For mobile 50 watt radios, Baofeng is actually $100 cheaper(now that I look at them again). So if I got two Retevis handhelds for $40 each and Baofeng mobile for $200, that would be $280. If I got all Baofeng, it would be $310 - $326. I suppose for $30-46 difference, I might go with all the same brand. Up until writing this, I was thinking Retevis was cheaper on the mobile too but I might have been looking at 25 watt radios. One benefit of having all Baofeng is that all Baofengs are CHIRP compatible.

The immediate use is that my wife works second shift at a nursing home 20 miles away. 20 miles of hills. We rarely get a cell signal at home and between here and town, only get a signal at the top of 2-3 hills. Each of those spots even has a graveled place to pull off to the side. There's a Ham repeater about 5 miles from here, between here and town and I'm hoping that a radio here, through repeater to vehicle will at least make it so that a signal could be had at the top of every hill instead of the 2-3 cell spots. I'm also looking at a 10/25/50 watt mobile radio for the house. We already have a 12 vdc power supply here and in a month or three, it will be hooked back up to solar panels and battery bank. Our batteries finally crapped out after 8 years. We lived off grid for 5 years and for two of those years, had a land line here with a cordless phone running of the battery bank via inverter. So if the electric was out, I'd still have power for a mobile radio and then carry a handheld in the truck so if she or I broke down in a valley, we could walk to the top of the hill and call for help. That repeater is a little higher than our place and I think, higher or as high as any hill between it and town. Gonna have to stop by and talk to the guy. I did drive by and see the tower. There as an SUV the driveway that had antennas on it so I'm sure he'd know what's what as far as repeater range. I'll stop by next Saturday.

I guess ideally, it would be a mobile at the house, mobile in the truck and also handheld in the truck in case we break down in a valley and need to walk to the top of a hill. We get a lot of wintery mix and then the temp drops as it gets dark and then sometimes changes to snow so you get a condition of a thin layer of ice underneath snow. We also get ice storms here occasionally. Being rural, the state/county can't always keep up with salting the roads, especially the 4 mile paves road closest to us. The trip to town is 4 miles gravel, 4 miles paved county road and 12 miles State Hwy.

My other use of course if shtf scenario and it just so happens that from what I've heard, there's supposed to be a survivalist/prepper community right around where the repeater is. Pretty sure I talked to one guy on the phone who sells solar panels and related components. The conversation subject ended up on prepping. When I told him we were off grid, he really wanted to come see our setup but things were a mess here so I put him off. Never know who's who so I also had to wonder if he wasn't trying to scope things out for a resource come shtf as there are some people who plan on surviving by robbing others. Being new to the area, I didn't have a feel for how people are here. I now know that aside from meth heads, just a bunch of nice people. Then I saw him once at the lumber store. He had his solar business and his name on his pickup which Is how I knew who he was. I didn't strike up a conversation with him. He was already talking to someone. Seemed like a nice normal guy though. If tshtf big time, with just the four of us, life would be tough. A community would fair better than a family. If nothing else, barter and help each other and the repeater guy would likely have info coming through the airwaves. Even if I had the same setup, he's got a better spot. We're 200 foot down from a good high spot. When we don't get a cell signal here, we drive a mile up the gravel road if we need to. If we don't get a signal there, we go another mile up by a big radio tower. Hill country's a biotch.

With the dems being allowed to cheat now, in 2022 or 2024, they'll have the WH and a big majority in the Senate and House at which point they'll be able to do whatever they want. I can see them ratifying a treaty with the UN at which point, we're under the control of globalists. The left's goal is to collapse the US and other Western countries and build their global utopia aka global communism. The collapse and transition will be bad times and probably all times there after. Think I read something about seven years. ;~)

Ya know... about hitting that repeater from your house. We have a DMR repeater which is a mere 5 miles west from where we live. I can RARELY key that repeater. I think it’s because of where it’s located. It’s on a building which is only 50 feet tall or so and its elevation is almost identical to ours. BUT, we’re in a known “bad spot” for both VHF and UHF propogation. It’s low and obstructions coming out of the “hole” (so to speak) can be excessive depending on the direction.

There’s an analog repeater another five miles farther west which is on top of a taller building (a municipal or police department building). The elevation must make a difference, because never is there a time when I can’t key that repeater on both 2M and 70cm freqs.

There’s another DMR repeater however which is 10 miles away to the east. It’s 50 meters higher elevation than us NOT including the antenna tower, which from the looks of it is a couple of hundred feet “maybe”. I can key that repeater “most” of the time.

Then, there’s yet another analog repeater 23 miles to the south east where ground elevation is 50 meters below ours, AND there’s a 800 foot ridge in between us, BUT... that repeater is on top of a 1600 foot tower and it quite literally provides UHF coverage to a 60 mile (approx) area. I did a rough “estimation” one evening, and even though I can’t see it, my signal will cut through the tops of the trees across the road but after that, it’s basically LOS (Line Of Sight) to that particular repeater, so keying it is NEVER a problem.

Having said this, DMR is complex. Tier-2 (WAN - Wide Area Network) depends on Internet being available and functioning. The repeaters are Internet connected. We DO use that sometimes, but tend to stick to local talkgroups as those never leave the repeater, so it’s at least as “local” as an analog repeater. But repeaters in general are something that the owner could “shut down”. IOW, just like Internet, it could just “go away” without us having any say in it. Because of this, HF (old school “shortwave”) is probably the most reliable and consistent. It doesn’t use a repeater and “typically” you can push ground wave propogation a couple of hundred miles... so comms in a local area are virtually assured... providing nobody is jamming you. IF you’re going to consider HF, bear in mind that the FCC amateur technician’s license only permits usage of 28.3 through 28.5MHz for voice. A good portion of the rest of the spectrum can however be used for data and/or radio-TTY...and nowadays you can get a Raspberry Pi, or a desktop PC to do data for you. There ARE still Morse code people out there, and more of that gets passed around HF freqs than anything else. But the entry level license (tech) only lets you use a very small section of that band for voice. Moreover this, data rates are “almost” always restricted to 300bps or less. This isn’t a legal restriction, but a limitation imposed by the bandwidth of a typical sideband channel... which is 6KHz as I remember. There are other mechanisms by which to increase data rates over HF such as combining both sidebands into a single 12khz channel. I’ve actually got an HF base station that WILL do that. But I’m not sure if it’s legal, or even if it’s a proprietary feature. Also...and this is probably the least attractive thing about HF. People can go out and buy “cheap Chinese” radios at prices which are very, VERY affordable...as you’ve well discovered. HF solutions, whether you go mobile or fixed, tend to hover right around $1500 at the moment just for the initial investment of the radio, tuner, power supply, feed line, antenna, and any associated connectors and/or accessories. It’s simply a high initial investment. BUT... once you’re set up, you can key up and talk to somebody 100 miles away, no matter what.

OH...and BTW... I’ve got some Baofeng HTs... BF-F8HPs and a UV-5R that I use for APRS. I’ve also got some Retevis/Ailunce HD1 DMR HTs. It’s my opinion that the Retevis radio is a much, MUCH better radio. It’s simply better built, more rugged, and simply more capable in every way. There’s really no comparison between the two except that they DO have dual band VHF/UHF analog in common. Aside from that, they’re very, VERY different. I definitely like the Retevis /Ailunce better. :-)

After reading the “specs” on that Retevis HT, I meant to mention... Be careful with doing things like configuring FRS/GMRS or MURS on that radio. Technically it’s ILLEGAL. I had a word on this in a previous posting... https://freerepublic.com/focus/news/3926299/posts?page=169#169

The thing to remember with these radios is that what you “can” do isn’t necessarily what you “should” do. A lot of people bought Baofengs for their kids...because they’re CHEAP and relatively powerful... turned them loose and thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread!... because no matter WHERE the kid went, the parent could reach the kid. THEN came the visit from the FCC, because the parents didn’t know ANYTHING about the radios, and they just left them programmed from the factory and transmitted on unauthorized freqs. Unless one “plays by the rules”, it’s advisable to do everything to NOT garner attention.... which generally means to keep power outputs as low as possible on frequencies which aren’t liable to get any attention... such as MURS. It’s VERY easy to irritate the HAM community. Just last week, “somebody” in my AO ... for some reason... transmitted AFSK modulated data through a known repeater. Within minutes, I saw chatter about it on an e-mail group that I’m part of for packet radio. They were very, VERY much interested in knowing WHO did this. Whoever it was only transmitted twice, over a few minutes. They weren’t heard after that. However, if they had kept it up for several minutes... or maybe a little longer... these same guys would FIND them and quite happily turn them over to the FCC. So IF we’re going to play the “unlicensed game”, low power and NOT garnering undue attention is the goal. :-)