2 way radios

[Nesikep]

As logging has restarted and there are some bat shyt crazy truck drivers on our road now, I'm looking at getting a VHF 2 way radio. I don't need the latest and greatest, It will be receiving far more than tranmitting so extreme power is not necessary.

I found a Midland Titan 70-1341B, it's 50 watt, 120 channel from 150-174mhz for $150, I'll have to get it programmed and get a correctly tuned antenna too.

Anyone else have comments or suggestions?

 

[SmokinM]

We use them hunting all the time. The antenna best I can tell is the big kicker on these. I need to find someone here that can help me get mine straight. When you have the right antenna they do very well and a 8-10 mi. range is not impossible. The mountains will hurt you some obviously. You also have to know the frequency of who you want to talk or listen to. We have some Midlands but also use a lot of Icom radios. Also on the antenna it seems smaller is better the big ones kill these radios.

 

[jedstivers]

We use Kenwood. They are better than Midland and Motorola.

 

[skyhightree1]

The ones we use for hunting are cobra they work fine but if you get in some heavy pines that really kills the signal. We use cb's here also with upper and lower sideband to cut out the nonsense of all the folks on the regular channel frequency garbage.

 

[Bigfoot]

Kenwood all the way. Nothing else comes close.

 

[Nesikep]

What about Vertex?

I know Kenwood makes good stuff.. Just haven't seen much for sale here at an affordable price. I'm mainly going to be using it so *I* know where the truckers are.. I would get the antenna custom made at a 2 way radio shop.. I hear just 1/4" difference in antenna length can make a big difference in performance.

 

[lavacarancher]

I use Motorala hand helds to communicate from the field (tractor) to the house. I also have a marine VHF on my boat and it is a Ray Marine. As far as the antenna goes you will either have to find someone with a SWR meter or buy one yourself. You can get one fairly cheap and then the next time you need to tune your antenna you'll have it. Yes, 1/4" will make a difference in the 150 Mhz range. Every antenna I've tuned before was too long so some had to be trimmed off to get it right. Also, the frequency range for VHF bands is very wide. When tuning you probably need to do it on a frequency in the middle of the range. Otherwise if you tune the antenna length at 157 Mhz it will be off at the upper end of the band. Make sense?

 

[Nesikep]

Yep, makes sense... though I might tune mine a little lower than middle of the range.. probably 153 or so.. most the the channels I'll be using are right around 150

 

[Supa Dexta]

Since you are in canada, check out durham radios site. Good prices, and I have used them a couple of times. I just use a hand held kenwood now thk20a, I think it's something like this you'd see in a lot of oil field trucks>

http://www.durhamradio.com/icom-icv8000 ... anada.html