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expiredLovelyCheetah | Staff posted Jul 08, 2025 10:20 PM
Item 1 of 2
Item 1 of 2
expiredLovelyCheetah | Staff posted Jul 08, 2025 10:20 PM
Prime Members: 4-Count Retevis Two Way Radio Long Range Walkie Talkies
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I still prefer C, just pointing out that mini isn't exactly a hassle.
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Range is really determined by line of site. At 3 feet of the ground, the furthest you can normally communicate is 1.2 miles if you calculate the curvature of the earth. Unless you are doing something like AM radio, which can actually reflect off of the ionosphere, you are more constrained by the height of your antenna than by the power of your transmitter. People have used these 0.5w transmitter radios to communicate at 125 miles, but that involved someone being on a mountain.
GMRS technically allows a higher power on the same frequencies, but once again that doesn't matter much if you don't have line of sight. The big advantage of GMRS is that it can use a repeater. Repeaters can be mounted on tall towers. Which means they can communicate much further. This is why they can make use of the higher power. For unlicensed handheld radios, these are as good as everything else.
Range is really determined by line of site. At 3 feet of the ground, the furthest you can normally communicate is 1.2 miles if you calculate the curvature of the earth. Unless you are doing something like AM radio, which can actually reflect off of the ionosphere, you are more constrained by the height of your antenna than by the power of your transmitter. People have used these 0.5w transmitter radios to communicate at 125 miles, but that involved someone being on a mountain.
GMRS technically allows a higher power on the same frequencies, but once again that doesn't matter much if you don't have line of sight. The big advantage of GMRS is that it can use a repeater. Repeaters can be mounted on tall towers. Which means they can communicate much further. This is why they can make use of the higher power. For unlicensed handheld radios, these are as good as everything else.
The FCC increased the FRS power limit to 2 watts now, which is MUCH better than the half-a-watt it was before. Regardless, if you don't have line of sight, pretty much any signal will struggle to reach great distances.
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These will mostly be used for kids to play with in the back yard, but might be nice to have around.
FRS radios are allowed to output 2 watts on channels 1-7 so we stuck to channel 5 when testing just to be assured the radio would be allowed to output as strong a signal as possible.
E: It looks like the owners manual says it outputs 2 watts on all channels.
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Will this FRS radio be OK, absolutely; if you are within line of sight and couple cars apart. Just consider them more of a "toy" than a "tool"
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