Suggest a small 2 way Radio

Gents,

I'm looking to replace the Motorola Talkabout radios we have at work. I would like something smaller and we only need about a mile range at the most. It will be used by mostly female caregivers in a 9000 square foot elderly care facility.

I've tried a couple of different channels, but it seems that they still pick up signals from other radio equipment and they make unexpected noises that are annoying and disruptive to our work envioronment.

I'd be curious if anyone knows of something better.

On the other hand, the Motorolas are still working after a year and get the job done. Each unit comes with a charger and rechargeable 3.6v NiCd battery pack that doesn't last the whole 8 hour shift. Some of the battery packs have died. The radios will also run on AA alkalines. If I put some good rechargeable AA's in there, would they charge in the Motorola charger that came with the units? That would be great to get longer run times and the staff would not have to hassle with charging the batteries seperately.

Thanks,
Dave

A few years ago I got my wife a set of 4 Uniden two-way radios for use at her school. At the time they were the smallest (quite pocketable) full coverage units I could find. And, they were considerably cheaper than Motorola. These used rechargeable AAA's. They have performed well. Three of the four still are fine. One of them doesn't charge well, even with new batts, but that's probably just the fault of the supplied charger.

Geoff

In order to get away from the cross channel pickup you will probably have to go to a Federally regulated spread spectrum frequency. Not sure if the Talkabouts are a regulated frequency, but the spread spectum technology helps with avoiding cross channel contamination in RF handheld computer units, perhaps they have something similar in radios.

Dave,

If you are using FRS-band radios, remember that they use shared frequencies that everyone else with a FRS radio is using. So you can hear their chatter and they can hear yours and you're all talking on the same 'channels'. That's the way that particular frequency spectrum is allocated, the frequencies are common and shared and are not for anyone's private use.

If you are using a GMRS radio for business use, you are most likely doing so illegally (unless you have a grandfathered business license, but that doesn't sound like it from your initial posting). The GMRS radios also use shared frequencies, so you may still have the "many people talking on the radio at once" issue.

To further confuse things, there are also 'hybrid' radios, that are FRS/GMRS radios. And some of the frequencies are also shared between the FRS and the GMRS spectrums.

Your post doesn't have enough info to tell -what- Motorola radio you are using. They make several different models of Talkabout radios. Some were FRS radios, some are GMRS radios, some are FRS/GMRS radios, etc.

If you want to reduce the whole "other people talking on 'your' radio channels" issue, you should get a business radio license and then you will have your own mostly private radio channel(s).

Just remember that almost no radio is really 'private', if you transmit it then someone can listen to it.

Also, be aware that a radio broadcasting a signal -may- interfere with electronic medical equipment, if you have/use such in your facility. Also, a radio signal inside a building with a lot of structural steel (beams or even steel studs) is kind of a tough environment for the radio signal to work in.

Maybe all you really need is a cordless intercom-type system? Maybe you can just get a cordless-phone system with multiple handsets that can intercom to each other? The newer 5+ GHz cordless phones usually have a decent signal and a pretty good range (note the steel-in-the-building problem as stated above).

Or just turn on the CTCSS

Bigger battery packs will last longer. Get AA powered radios, not AAA, if runtime is an issue.

Yes, use CTCSS to cut down on those extraneous noises.

Beware of broadcasting private medical stuff over the radio.

1 mile range is a lot for these types of radios, despite the blurbs on the packages claiming 2-5 miles. 9000 sq ft should be much less than a mile in diameter though.

have a look at MURS radios. They tend to be better quality than the FRS toys out there and there are far fewer casual users of MURS frequencies. With that said, the equipment is much more money.

Here is a link to Motorola pro radios that can be programmed to MURS freqs. These radios will last you forever.
http://cgi.ebay.com/6x-Motorola-MT1...839644280QQcategoryZ40068QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Tysonb

Best two way radios I have seen are the TK3131 from Kenwood. They are GMRS/FRS, have 1W output and have all 38 CTSS codes PLUS a whole slew of digital ones.

We EASILY get 10 hours out of charge, plus you can swap battery packs or use standard nimn batteries in them. YMMV depending on how much transmitting you do. Using the 90% receive/10% transmit metric, I think these would get you through a shift no problem.

Audio quality is very good. Will work with a variety of accessories like speaker mikes, ear phones etc...

The units are not the usual bubble packed GMRS radios but they are very similar in construction to the UHF 2 channel radios that Kenwood sells for use in retail environments (commercial). I actually dunked one of these in the river we live on 18 months ago (full dunk, down abotu 2' ) and it still works perfectly.

The digital codes are a big deal. You can go into a crowded situation where there are a lot of people using these radios, and have no interference. In the last couple of years using digital codes skiing (like 30 days a year or more), we have never had any interference. With standard GMRS codes, we would routinely have interference.

One think you may want to think about, if this has any medical application at all, is that since none of these are encrypted, you should be very careful about HIPPA issues (Patient Privacy).

J.

FWIW, I asked about radios in this thread:

GMRS Radio Question and Recommendation Request

I think if I could do it again, I'd probably look at the Icom IC-F21GM radios. Looks like you can get them for about $140 ea.

-john