We live in a hurricane zone and have weathered many storms without evacuating. Can typical 2-way radios function in a 20–30-mile range if we were hit by a storm or do we need something very expensive.
How difficult would it be to connect with a family member with an off the shelf set.
Do you have experience with the radios that claim to have 40-50mile range? I know some at the sporting goods suppliers will reach those distances in the wilderness but curious about in a crowded area.
This should tell you all you want.
https://www.reddit.com/r/preppers/search/?q=Radio&type=link&cId=8b539573-e5fa-424f-a668-e8855f427bb5&iId=39c460cb-50f6-42fc-afc0-8c9de869ee7a
I did some digging here and there is no simple handheld solution. The family members know they need to come to our house since we have hurricane supplies, but we were hoping to communicate. Thanks for the link.
That would be hilltop to hilltop ...
I,follow a you tube channel that uses these things and talks about them a lot. I don't belive their are any small cheep units with that kind of range. These things are line of sight,you would need a tall antenna.
I'm not expert i just kind of casually follow this stuff.
You would need the make and model they say have that kind of range,and do some research. Or look on the prepper boards. I do know you would need a ham radio license to use anything with range,and the ham radio community is pretty F- ed up.
How is the ham radio community “pretty F- ed up”?
They listen for people breaking the rules and rat them out and such,from what I heard.
I've heard several people repeat that they are very very strange and not friendly like you would expect.
We are vey protective of the frequencies we are allocated, they are constantly being used by unauthorized people and are continuously attempted to be allocated to corporate users for commercial use. Some frequencies have world-wide propagation and can interfere with legitimate users many hundreds or thousands of miles away. We are licensed and learn about the regulations governing the use of our equipment and frequency bands. Take CB for instance, the radios are limited in power for a reason. The 11 meter band can propagate world-wide under certain conditions and adding an amplifier can interfere with communications far away, to say nothing of the havoc caused by a lack of understanding of basic electrical principals.
Licensing is dead easy, no more Morse code and a few hours of reading a prep manual for a multiple-choise test and you’re on your way.
As far as unfriendly, keying up a repeater without a license can lead to being busted for that, so can unauthorized use of public service frequencies and those users can send you to prison. Part of what you learn is proper procedure in the ham bands and where in the RF spectrum you can operate. Also, in a population of around 750,000, there are bound to be a few assholes, but that is so in every walk of life.
If you are really interested, check out a local club meeting. If not, use your FRS, GMRS or CB within the rules for those services and enjoy.