Alan Browne ) writes:
AA wrote:
The claimed range of these radios (FRS) is on the order of 2 miles. The
manufs mention terrain and weather as limitations.
How do they do in a wooded (flat) environment?
Heh....I LOVE those claims! Two miles...in a vacuum and direct LOS (line of
sight)....yup. Normal terrain? 1/2 mile to 1 mile for the typical FRS units.
The GMRS units will do better, as they're higher power out....but the licence
is $75 in the US...not sure what the deal is in Canada.
MURS (if legal in Ca.) is another good choice....if you can find the units.
FRS units are ubiquitious....MURS less so. The difference is frequency...MURS
is in the 155 mhz range, FRS is in the 462 mhz range. MURS also has no licence
requirements here, IIRC. They do well LOS and better than FRS (in my opinion)
non-LOS. I picked up a set of cheapie RatShak MURS mobiles and have had as
much as 10 mi. between them with decent reception. (external antenni) Don't
know how MURS is handled in Canada, do check with the local authorities.
Cheers;
A
Thanks, I've never heard of MURS. I'll look into it. If I read the tea
leaves correctly, GMRS will be usable w/o a licence in Canada by the
fall. Might be worth waiting until then.
Cheers,
Alan
But what tea leaves are you reading?
This sort of radio news is not the sort of thing we'd hear about in
the newspaper or on the local news. It might hit as such things become
legal, but I can't see much word about any impending rule change being
visible before the fact.
And after that, one has to judge the source of information. Tea leaves
aren't a good source. Even some guy saying somewhere that the rules might
change isn't a definitive source.
Now, if you actually go to the pertinent government site, then yes indeed
there does seem to be forthcoming rule changes to allow "GMRS" in Canada.
But that's not "tea leaves" or interpretation, it's an outright statement.
If you do a search on "GMRS canada" one site you hit is the Radio Amateurs
of Canada website,
http://www.rac.ca They happen to have a page about
FRS in Canada,
http://www.rac.ca/frs Now that page mentions GMRS and
MURS, but states they are not legal in Canada.
But there's a link to the Industries Canada website,
http://strategis.ic.gc.ca and if you go there and use "GMRS" for
a search, you get this page:
http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/epic/inter.../sf08144e.html
which is a policy paper on the government's intention to allow GMRS.
I've only looked at the synopsis, the whole paper is in pdf, but note
that at the very least, there will be a changeover period because
others are using that frequency range at the moment.
The Gazette notice about this, from March, suggesting it could come as
early as September 2004:
http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/epic/inter.../sf08145e.html
So one does not tea leaves, which also have a tendency to be wrong anyway.
Michael VE2BVW