I a looking at buying a pair of two-way radios for use while road tripping, skiing, etc. They don't have to be fancy and <$60 would be perfect.

Does anyone have any experience with these and any suggestions on what to buy (motorolla, insignia, midland)?

Thanks

My family have used the Motorola T4500 series for a few years now. We use it while caravaning, hiking and fishing in seperate (but close) proximity. Would rather ruin a $25 two-way than my cell phone.

I would probably reccomend a beefier Motorola two-way if you are planning on skiing with them, but for manufacturer I have had no complaints with Moto.

Stick to Motorola, I've had good luck with them.

ive used motorola ones for things from working inside at big events to skiing and never had a problem with them... i would recommend them... not sure exactly which series though

I'm thinking of getting the cheapy Moto Walk-A-Bout for $25ish.

Most of the websites say that a GMRS two-way radio , which most off the shelf two-ways are, requires an FCC license for use in the U.S. WTF? Does anyone actually get the license?

I grew up with two way radios. We used to have one in nearly every vehicle including combines and tractors.

My 9 foot whip antenna on my 67 Mustang really got a lot of surprised looks.

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My 9 foot whip antenna on my 67 Mustang really got a lot of surprised looks.

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I would recommend using GMRS/FRS instead of the CB band unless you really want the distinction of having a 9' whip on your vehicle.

The performance of the UHF band is much better and fewer hardware hassles than the HF CB band. I don't think that anyone is actually buying GMRS licenses because the FCC is not enforcing power output limits for the license free FRS channels. I would bet that the FCC issues GMRS licenses for only 1% of the GMRS radios sold. Of the 22 GMRS channels in the 462MHz band 14 of them are also used by the lower power license free FRS radios. Unless someone (FCC) is triangulating your transmissions to determine location and infer power output they won't know whether you are using FRS power limits or GMRS.

FRS is limited to 500mw power output and GMRS handhelds are limited to not more than 15W but you will likely not find any pushing more than 5W for under $100. Disregard the advertisement on the package that advertise a range of 8+ miles. A 5W handheld radio without a separate external antenna will be lucky to talk even five miles distance in wide open terrain. Look for a set of GMRS handhelds that transmit 5W on high power and you should have no problems for car to car communication on a road trip.

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I would recommend using GMRS/FRS instead of the CB band unless you really want the distinction of having a 9' whip on your vehicle.

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At that time, I don't know that GMRS/FRS was even available. And hardly anyone had ever heard of CB radio at that time. Lots of people thought it was some kind of really wierd police car.

It was a few years later that the CB craze hit.

By the way, we later did switch to GMRS and used it for years. And we did have a valid license.

[This message has been edited by eric76 (edited 2/17/2008 6:25p).]

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And hardly anyone had ever heard of CB radio at that time. Lots of people thought it was some kind of really wierd police car.

It was a few years later that the CB craze hit.

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Now I'm really plumbing the depths of nerdhood.

I was in elementary school when C.W. McCall brought CB radio (all 23 channels) to mainstream America with the song Convoy (and then a dozen AM radio follow-up songs). I remember that the infatuation with CB radios and truckers even got to the point where NBC put on a prime time TV show called Movin On that pretty much was about two truckers who talked a lot on CB radio. This was long before BJ and The Bear.



The "It" toy of 1975 was the Cox Yapper CB radio and because everybody was buying and trying to talk at the same time on chrone faced Midland CBs the FCC expanded the CB band all the way up to 40 channels.



I wasted a lot of money (for a kid) on those crappy old toy CB walkie talkies that only had one channel (14). I owned several of the ones pictured on this web site.

[url]http://www.museo-cb.com/museo-cb/emisoras-de-juguete/[/url]

I recall having a set of these (but branded as SoundDesign) that lasted almost two weeks before the telescoping antenna bent.

I don't remember precisely when we started using them, but it was sometime in the late 50's to the mid 60's.

At that time, you had to have an FCC assigned callsign and broadcast it with every call along with an identifier of the specific radio. As near as I can remember, the call sign was KKV4175 or something similar.