To those of you who do operating sessions, what’s a good radio/headset set up to use for our club op sessions? Go to Wal Mart and pick up some camping walkie talkies or is there a cheaper easier system out there? Any info would be great.
Chad
I don’t know what a Walmart camping radio is, but the radios I’ve seen used at operating sessions are called FRS radios. Probably the same thing.
I’d recommend that you get one that has a push to talk headset. I don’t know if they come with only voice activated headsets, but you don’t want that because any side conversation you might have gets picked up and transmitted. One other thing that you might want to look into is whether or not the radio has some sort of squelch control. Mine doesn’t, and the static will blow out your ear drums.
I agree with the prior poster. Avoid the old walkie-talkies that are really low power CB radios. Also avoid the old FM requency sets. I don’t remember their formal name but the leading vendor was Maxon.
Instead go with the FRS units. I agree with all his other comments too. Make certain they had have a connection for a head-set with microphone, make certain they have push-to-talk operation especially on the head set. I have several sets that came with a charger base for their lithium-hydroxide batteries. It is so nice not to have to worry about overcharging stupid NiCd type batteries, and always having them ready to go.
The ones we have are made by I think CObra. They use like 4 AAA batteries - we have rechargeables for them. They actually draw very little power so while throttle batteries may have to be swapped during an 8 hour day, the radios can go for more than a day.
I’m not a big headset fan, so I clip my radio to my shirt collar. A lot of the other guys who work for the railroad do this too, tince that’s usualyl what they do with their actual railroad radios as well. Close enough to my ear to hear what peopel say withotu having the volume cranked, and I can hit the button and talk and it’s right by my mouth so others can hear me talking.
Only downside to these radios seems to be the design of the belt clip. You have to take it off to open the battery door to change the batteries, and it’s not immediately obvious how you do this. ANd the defaults every time you power them on include beeping when you push the talk switch, like an alert to let others know someone is about to talk. This has to be turned off every time you power up the radio. Otherwise, they are nice and lightweight, and support either 8 or 10 channels so if there is another club with similar radios we can go to another channel. Or, though noone’s done it yet, a yardmaster cna be one channel while dispatch is another and the conversations kept seperate.
–Randy