How one
Reader Chose
FRS Radios for a Ski Trip
I am a skier who also likes two way
radio equipment. I was curious about the new FRS radios and wanted to see if
they would work out on a ski trip. My investigations led me to this really
great Internet site where I spent the better part of a Saturday reading most of
the entries about the FRS radios. The radios that I looked into were the ICOM
IC-4008A, the Motorola Talkabout series, the Motorola distance (this unit is
GMRS, not FRS, but I still looked into it), the Cobra FRS-300, a Midland unit
and a MAXON unit. I knew from other skiing friends that the Motorola units were
very good quality and performed quite well. In the end, I narrowed my choices
down between the ICOM and Cobra units because I liked the idea of the fold down
antenna and water resistance features offered by these units. In the end, I
chose the ICOM for the following reasons:
- Compact size (especially with antenna
folded down)
- Good battery life (30 hours claimed)
Cobra uses 4 AAA which does not give enough battery life for me.
- Good performance
- Water resistance
- Compatibility with Motorola units
(same squelch code frequencies)
- Competitive price (Motorola seems a
bit pricey for same features)
- Fold down antenna
- Side mounted PTT button (Motorola
units have PTT in center of radio which makes one handed use a bit clumsy for
me)
I ordered two ICOM radios from Bills
2-Way (www.bills2way.com). I skipped getting the lapel
mikes and rechargeable battery (NiMH AA) at the time of the order. I wanted to
see how the radios would work before dropping too much money on them.
How were the
radios used......
On 3/22/99, our ski club went to Sun
Valley, Idaho (www.sunvalley.com) for a week long ski trip. I let a buddy of
mine use my second radio. While on this trip, I talked to my other ICOM unit,
to other Motorola Talkabout units and to a pair of Motorola distance GMRS
units. We picked channel 5 so the Motorola Distance units could also talk to us
(the low 7 channels of the FRS units are compatible with GMRS units). The ICOM
units communicated just fine with all the Motorola units.
People in our ski club tended to break
up into smaller groups so we were scattered all over the mountain. The radios
allowed us to arrange lunch together, etc. The radios also allowed us to
separate and ski various runs according to our ability and then rejoin either
at the bottom or top of the lift. Most of the time (some communication was
blocked due to ridges -- that line of sight thing again) we had no problem
talking to our friends anywhere on the mountain or even in town (Ketchum,
Idaho) and the mountain. We also found the units useful between our condos (we
were spread out among several condos due to our group size) to arrange
activities, etc.
We drove rental vans from the airport
to the ski area. Our trip leader found them useful to keep the vans together
while on the road and for lunch stops. The radios were also useful at the
airport terminal for the trip leader to keep the club posted on important
events (like the plane is now boarding). I had the radio with me at all times
so the unit was on all day and into the evening. I feel he battery performance
was quite good. The first set of (alkaline) batteries lasted 2 days (since
these were new toys, we tended to jabber a lot). The second set lasted the rest
of the trip and are still doing just fine.
Now for a performance story....
Since we had 5 out of 6 day lift
tickets, I decided to take off one day to rest a bit. A friend of mine, who is
a private pilot, decided to take a lesson on flying in the mountains. I tagged
along as a passenger. Our flight started at the Friedman Memorial airport in
Hailey and took us past the Sun Valley ski hill. During the flight, I took the
opportunity to try to call my friends who were skiing. I had no problem talking
with them as I flew by. After I landed, I got off and another friend, who had a
Motorola Talkabout, got on for his flight. I stayed at the airport to wait for
their return. While at the airport (Lat 43* 30' 39", Lon -114* 18'
06"), I was curious to see if I could hear my friend in the airplane talk
to skiers so I opened the squelch on my ICOM unit (I assumed that the signal
would be too weak to break squelch). I could always hear (noisy but always
readable), and mostly talk (his squelch was active so maybe I did not break it)
with my friend who was in the airplane. I could clearly talk with my friend on
the ski hill (Lat 43* 39' 17", Lon -114* 24' 39") that had my other
ICOM unit as well as others that had the Motorola units. I later determined (by
use of DeLorme Topo USA mapping software) that the two ICOM units were 11.357
miles apart from each other. My friend in the airplane was farther at times and
was in a metal airplane (Faraday cage). This is still line of sight! From the
top of chair lift 14, you can look down into the valley and see the airport,
miles away in Hailey.
Conclusions and
suggestions...
I am very pleased with the ICOM unit. I
also feel that the Motorola units are equally good. After having used these
units on a ski trip, I would suggest that you also buy the lapel speaker/mikes.
The folks that had the Motorola units all had them and ended up doing more
talking because of ease of use. The effort to dig the radio out from my ski
jacket became a hassle after a while so I tended to not use it if other friends
with the Motorola units were with me. The ICOM radio received just fine most of
the time with the antenna folded down and in my jacket but worked best when in
my hand and with the antenna unfolded.
The Motorola units have an eyelet
allowing you to thread a line thereby attaching the radio to yourself. The ICOM
unit does not have this feature so I was very nervous about using the radio
while on a chair lift. The ICOM is small and slippery with ski gloves, it could
easily squirt out of my hand and be lost.
The two watt Motorola Distance units
seemed to offer no significant performance improvement over the half watt FRS
units in a skiing application. If a ridge blocked the FRS units then it also
seemed to block the higher powered Distance units. If not blocked by a ridge
then the lower power FRS units worked fine since we were not all that far apart
anyway. The battery demand (the rechargeable NiCad batteries lasted about half
a day so my friend gave up on them and switched to alkaline batteries), the
extra weight, cost and the size of the Distance unit does not seem to justify
the performance improvement in a skiing application. Besides, I would hate to
take a bad fall and land on one of the Distance units.
The ICOM unit has an alerting feature
which makes the unit ring like a telephone. This ring is easily heard over
noise making it an effective way to alert others. I later discovered that one
of the folks in our club was using a Motorola unit with bud earplugs. The
shrill ring was very annoying when delivered directly to their ears so I
stopped using it.
If you get an FRS radio for skiing then
be sure it supports the button lock feature which renders button push
ineffective. At first, I did not lock the buttons on my ICOM unit. As the radio
bumped around in my jacket, the channel was changed, etc. Not all Motorola
units support his feature so if you decide on a Motorola, make sure the model
supports this.
Some Motorola units support scanning;
the ICOM unit does not. Scanning does not seem to be a useful feature when your
real purpose is two way communication. As it turns out, the Motorola unit will
retain the last scanned channel, that had activity, as the channel to use for
transmission. When you attempt to transmit, you may end up on the wrong
channel. My friend disabled this as soon as he figured out why he could never
seem to reach the rest of us.
The ICOM unit has 5 buttons, including
the PTT button. In order to access all the features of the radio, you must use
the buttons either alone, in pairs, or by holding them for a period of time.
This design may help make a more water resistant radio but I found it difficult
to remember how to access some of the features. The button labels document only
the single button push functions. I think the Motorola radios are a bit easier
to use in this respect.
Another feature the ICOM has, for those
of you that want to be polite, is the ability to tell if someone else is using
the same channel as you. A "lighting bolt" icon points to a radio
icon on the display whenever the radio is receiving a signal on your channel.
This will happen even if your radio is on a different squelch code (your radio
is silent but the channel you are on is still in use by others). I remember
waiting for the "lighting bolt" icon to remain idle for a while
before I keyed the radio for transmission. If the radio is buried in your
jacket and you are using a speaker/mike on your lapel then this feature is
useless. Since this is unlicensed radio, most the people using the radios were
amateurs (I don't mean real amateur radio operators who know what they are
doing but people who are amateurs at using radios) so they keyed their radios
over others who may have been using the same channel. This, in fact, is a
fundamental flaw with all FRS radios using selective squelch codes. Normally,
one would think that it is OK to transmit when their radio is silent; with FRS
this is not so.
While I did not find these useful on my
trip, the ICOM has some additional features:
- Ring tone type: program your alert
from 10 different sounds so others can tell who is calling.
- Automatic radio shutdown after 2 hours
of inactivity (can be disabled).
- In range confirm: one radio will poll
the other once a minute to tell if it is in range.
- Remote ring confirmed: an indication
is given that the remote radio received your ring.
- Silent buttons: beep or no beep on
button push
- PTT hold: the transmitter can be
locked on without having to hold any buttons. (great for spy situations but
really hard on batteries)
- Backlit display. Touch any button and
LED illuminates the display for 5 seconds.
Current usage
measurements.....
This paragraph lists the current drain
of my 2 ICOM (R1 and R2) during different operating modes:
Radio Off: R1 21.8 ua, R2 16.7 ua
Receive, Standby mode: R1
~10.1->27.4ma, R2 same (varies a lot as circuit is polling)
Receive, non-standby but no signal: R1
40.7ma, R2 40.1 ma (this mode lasts 5 seconds after last received signal, then
receiver enters standby mode)
Receive, open squelch no volume quiet
carrier: R1 46.9ma, R2 46.3ma
Receive, normal volume + speech: R1
~60->80ma, R2 same (varies with speech)
Receive, lit display: R1 56.9ma, R2
56.5ma (radio also leaves standby so LED takes ~16 ma)
Transmit: R1 377ma, R2 341ma
During the test, I used a new set of
alkaline batteries and I used the same set for each radio. Since current is
being drawn even while off, I remove the batteries when the unit will not be
used for long time periods. During the ski vacation, I never removed the
batteries except to put in a fresh set.
I hope this information will be useful
to those of you considering the FRS radios in a skiing application. I am sorry
this feedback is so slanted toward skiing but it is the only data point I have.
I also want to thank Doug Smith for creating this web site. I found it to be
very useful.
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