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| JWL Member Since: 26 Oct 2011 Location: Hereford Posts: 3443   
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This is probably of no interest to most but, I have a 12 year old who likes to explore especially at Land Rover shows and as my eldest boy is on the Autistic Spectrum I trust the youngest to be sensible(when we were kids our parents were glad to be rid of us). My eldest needs constant supervision mainly for his safety and to help keep him from invading innocent peoples spaces. I've tried in the past to rely on mobile phones to let the youngest feel reassured that he can keep in touch and to keep a "check" on him, I've allways had my eye out for some "walkie talkie" type things as phone signals aren't allways reliable especially when at a club event in the depths of Wales etc. In Lidl from yesterday they are selling PMR radios, a pair for £20 so I went out and picked a pair up. They seem quite tidy with a supposed up to 8km range(if he's out of range then I should class myself as successful as getting away from him
 ) There's loads of extra bits to them, 8 channels plus analogue and digital codes to split the frequencies even further. They're rechargeable with their own little cradle gadget plus they have earphones and the facility to be used hands free by being voice activated which means they could be used as communication between a driver and his winch bitch  |
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26th Feb 2013 2:33pm |
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| davew Member Since: 02 Jan 2012 Location: North Yorkshire Posts: 888 
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PMR is pretty much useless when it comes to driver/co-driver comms, especially when it's voice activated. If you have it set sensitive enough that the co-driver doesn't need to shout to activate it they will almost certainly activate it while running and breathing heavily. This leads to a situation where the co-driver thinks the radio isn't working because they can't get a response from the driver, the driver can't respond because the co-driver is still transmitting.
We used to use PMR before the advent of Bluetooth sets and they did the job OK as long as they were used "manually". A cheap bluetooth set is at least 10x better though for that sort of comms and I'd never go back to PMR for challenge comms. For your use the only caveats I would have are: There are only a small number of channels and there is absolutely no privacy, if you use the sets as you say ensure that anyone using them is aware that everyone else can hear them. At Land Rover shows many of the traders use PMR, especially during setup/breakdown periods. We used commercial radios and filled in the gaps with PMR at Billing a few times, the PMR sets were rendered useless during the start and end of the show because there were so many PMR sets in use. Whilst sub channel filters can stop the receiving set picking up spurious transmissions the other transmissions can still block your communications when they are using the same channel. Some PMR sets don't have a keypad lock, without a keypad lock that locks the channel and volume you may as well not bother - every time you put one in your pocket you'll change channel/subchannel/volume etc... The first sets we bought didn't have a key pad lock function and were binned soon after as a result. http://www.yorkshireoffroadclub.net/ |
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26th Feb 2013 4:00pm |
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| JWL Member Since: 26 Oct 2011 Location: Hereford Posts: 3443
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Well I think they'll do for me, there is a keypad lock and they seem to have all the features more expensive ones have(used to use some fancy ones a few years ago working as a foreman overseeing lorries being loaded, 15 forklifts working in a yard and constantly getting drops altered by the transport manager!)
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26th Feb 2013 6:19pm |
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