Thread: UHF Radio

Originally Posted by discodazz98

I see on all of your trips/outings its allmost mandatory to have a UHF radio as I am intending to join this club I have been looking at radios of different types and i am leaning toward a handhed uhf type.Any suggestions would be great

Hi Dazz

Many options available to you but my suggestion would be to instal a vehicle mounted one if you can stretch (although you should be able to pick up a reasonably cheap 2nd hand one for the price of a new hand held.) The reason I would suggest a vehicle mounted is generally you will get better range from them due to wattage of the unit and better aerials. If you do decide hand held then you really should look at 1watt minimum otherwise it is just not worth it if you are at the back of a 10 car convoy IMHO.

Talk to Stevo68 on this forum who is a member of our club as he has a 5 watt hand held unit and seems happy with it. I have a 5 watt GME TX3200
vehicle mounted unit (which looks like it has been superceded by the TX3220) plus a GME TX610 1 watt hand held and both work well but for the sort of club stuff we do, the cab mounted one is great - I also have a 6db and a 3db aerial for various terrain. My hand held is simply for when I jump out of the car to help guide etc.

Also talk to Icefyre in our club as he knows his stuff when it comes to UHF etc.

Hope this helps and good luck. Also if you are checking out prices try these guys http://www.prestigecom.net.au/default.asp which I have linked to above already but they have very good service and reasonable prices for new gear - I bouhg tmy aerial and hand held from them.

Look forward to perhsps meeting you soon.

Aye, Mick

Hand held is very useful as you can be outside your vehicle and giving assistance to another driver without having to yell or put yourself in harms way but they do have a few short comings.
They are loose in the car and can be thrown all over the place in the rough stuff meaning you are trying to keep the radio under control while trying to keep the car under control. Not a good situation.
The batteries can run flat, usually when you need the most. An adaptor lead will overcome this but can get in the way.
What a lot of peoples in my club including myself have done is buy a good one to mount in car and then buy a set of $40 cheapies for use outside the car.
Steve.

go with the higest watt output you can afford, i have a uhf installed in my rig but have two cheap .5w, when in convoy its real easy to pick the guys with handhelds as there seems to be more interference when they transmit

not sure if you can buy rechargeable ones that you can plug into the cig lighter, it might be worth investigating as they chew AAA batteries

The main difference with results from a handheld is the antenna - I have used a handheld with an gutter grip antenna quite successfully on my company car in the past (couldn't install one).

John

Agree with the general concensus - vehicle mounted 5W unit plus a 1W handheld.

I use and recommend GME in both cases - the TX3200 (or 3220) and the TX610. I also carry a separate battery charger for the AAA's in the TX610 - buy a good one though, one that will charge 1,2 ,3 or 4 batteries (the TX610 uses 3 x AAA's - with some of the cheaper chargers you can only charge 4 batteries at a time - which is not good if 3 are near flat and 1 is fully charged, reduces the life of all 4.
Charger also does the AA's for my camera and GPS.

Check out eBay, I picked my TX610's up there (new) at a very reasonable price.

I bought a cigarette charger at the same time I bought my hand held TX610 and it's great.....means I always have charge when in my car. As a rule, whenever I am heading to a trip i plug it in and this gives me charge for the day on the hand held.

what do you guys think about this one GME tx630 ita 2watt

Hi discodazz98, over the last 35 years I’ve had a large number of vehicle mounted ones and a couple of handhelds.

If you have the room and this is not always the case, a vehicle mounted one will give you the best range but it would still pay to have an elcheapo handheld for off roading.

When I started doing some off roading with the original guys that eventually formed the GCLRO Club, I neither had a vehicle mounted CB nor wanted to put one in my Rangie ( and still don’t ) so I bought a 1/2 watt handheld and while there was only four or five vehicles on a trip, this worked fairly well, BUT once we formed the club and our trip vehicle numbers grew, these small wattage radios proved to be next to useless to me, particularly if I was near the front or rear of a convoy, I just could not communicate with vehicles at the opposite end.

I’ve just bought a 1.5 watt handheld but haven’t had a chance to test it yet.

Which ever way you go, as pointed out by others, just get a bit of power.

Cheers.