Originally Posted By Scalped:
I know Baofeng also makes two-way UHF walkies that are sold in pairs for cheap.

Originally Posted By ColtRifle:




Interesting.  I'm going to have to look into that one.  I have a small Cobra CB radio in the Jeep and since I don't use it much (most of the people we off road with use GMRS) I'm not sure if there would be a good reason to upgrade or not.  The extra power of the Anytone radio might add a fair amount of range to CB use.  

I use a TYT TH8600 for FRS/GMRS/MURS.  I really like it because it's weather and dust proof.  I have one on my ATV and my side by side as well and have gotten them wet and dusty numerous times without issue.  The Jeep only really sees dust inside.  

FRS/GMRS/MURS is great but if you've ever off roaded in a popular place, those frequencies are used very heavily in places like that.  I have not used CB in a popular area yet but with as many frequencies as CB offers, I suspect CB might be less used in a popular riding area.

Originally Posted By Radio_Man:
I am in the mood to burst bubbles today and say it square as I see it ...... so here we go.

Reality

In a real SHTF scenario you had best be doing a hell of a lot more listening than transmitting if you ever transmit at all.

In the modern age if the stuff hits the oscillating air movement device you had best be like the quiet church mouse in your electronic signature if you want to think about surviving long.  Modern direction finding equipment can pinpoint you to 200 yard radius within two or three one second transmissions from a lot further away than you think possible.  For example, I make a phone call for my work to another shop and they pinpoint stuff for me to within half that circular error from a distance of more than 40 air miles.  And this isn't even the .fed world.  Imagine what the feds have available from DARPA or some other alphabet soup agency that loves their techie toys.  Thats commercial off the shelf tech available to anyone with the checkbook to write the check.

With that reality in mind, comms in a SHTF world is much more about gathering intelligence and figuring out who is around you and where they are than it is about telling folks around you what you see or don't see.  Or listening to broader range communications to see whats happening around the wider area or country to see if things are getting worse or better in the broader scheme of things.

Very little of it should be trying to talk to anyone else.  Thats just inviting bad juju to your world.

My opnion and my opinion alone ... but I bet in a SHTF world with society as we know it gone to hell using my comms advice will get you a hell of a lot further than chit chatting what you see to your friends on little or even big radios of any frequency, power, cost, or lack there of.

A couple good sensitive low noise receivers with large omnidirectional antennas and small portable directional antennas to cover VHF, UHF, 7/800MHz and public broadcast frequencies from HF to VHF for both FM AM and SSB modulation types would be your best bet.  7/800 is more for just detecting signals than trying to decode digital modes that might be encrypted.  Hear a modem noise on 7/800 with a strong signal, get to figuring out where its coming from cause you are probably being hunted by someone a lot better off than you are so shut up and get to the important stuff rather than giving away where you are by yapping about it on your baofeng.

YMMV

Radio Man

**edited to make it english rather than typonese**

Originally Posted By seek2:


A-men to that. Where I'm at I'd love to just program channels for just a couple CB freqs and different DCS tones and names
assigned to various neighbors, everyone here would be on board with that and it'd take the user interface issues people
have to zero.

There doesn't seem to be many choices at all if you want something that does CB or VHF low band these days, let alone
programmable.

The further craziness of AT-500M is it's a 10M ham rig on paper, but it's channelized -- it'd make far more sense to
have the memories programmable instead and have it frequency-tunable. I think what's going on is that the AT-500M
looks an awful lot like the President Thomas/Harrison CB series, and I suspect President had them do the design and
then AT just made a near clone and didn't do much else.