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The Water Cooler
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walkie talkies looking to buy need recommendations
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<blockquote data-quote="BReeves" data-source="post: 1487299" data-attributes="member: 10973"><p>Spent most of my life working as a communications tech for Motorola. Bottom line, you can't do it with just walkie talkies or the proper term "portable radios". As said they are line of sight and due to us living on a ball at sea level you can only see about 3 miles. Lower frequencies <100mhz will follow the earth's curve better but low band portables aren't very common and would require an FCC license. The best you can do without licensing is the 150mhz band and they have to be less than 2 watts. This is from memory and it's been a long time so the two watts number may not be accurate and I'm too lazy to look it up. I know it won't be higher but may be less.</p><p></p><p>The distance can be greatly increased by moving up from the earth's surface and the reason you see all the towers with antennas hanging off the top. What the commercial and government entities do is put in repeaters with the antennas at the top of a tower. Now the portable just needs to be able to see the antenna at the top of the tower. There is a formula for this but I have long forgotten it..</p><p></p><p>Anyway the best you can <strong>reliably</strong> hope for out of any portable to portable communications is about 6 miles. This will increase as the two people climb higher and will decrease depending on stuff in the way, trees, buildings etc.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="BReeves, post: 1487299, member: 10973"] Spent most of my life working as a communications tech for Motorola. Bottom line, you can't do it with just walkie talkies or the proper term "portable radios". As said they are line of sight and due to us living on a ball at sea level you can only see about 3 miles. Lower frequencies <100mhz will follow the earth's curve better but low band portables aren't very common and would require an FCC license. The best you can do without licensing is the 150mhz band and they have to be less than 2 watts. This is from memory and it's been a long time so the two watts number may not be accurate and I'm too lazy to look it up. I know it won't be higher but may be less. The distance can be greatly increased by moving up from the earth's surface and the reason you see all the towers with antennas hanging off the top. What the commercial and government entities do is put in repeaters with the antennas at the top of a tower. Now the portable just needs to be able to see the antenna at the top of the tower. There is a formula for this but I have long forgotten it.. Anyway the best you can [B]reliably[/B] hope for out of any portable to portable communications is about 6 miles. This will increase as the two people climb higher and will decrease depending on stuff in the way, trees, buildings etc. [/QUOTE]
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