I need some serious help finding a radio. I've done a lot of reading here. Half the information has been really helpful. Unfortunately, the other half has served to further confuse me, so it feels like I'm taking two steps forward and one step back. One thing I've learned is that the type of radio you get is determined as much by your needs as your budget. So, here is what I need, at least according to what I understand at this point:

1. I want it to be portable, but it doesn't have to be hand-held. If it can operate on AA batteries, that's a definite plus. Basically, I need to be able to throw it in my BOB and have a portable means of powering it.
2. I want to be able to receive just about any band. The more I can listen to, the more I can learn and the more informed I would be in times of crisis.
3. I would like to be able to transmit at least on both short wave and CB, if that is even legal and possible. The more bands I can transmit on, the better. I don't yet understand the relationship between HF, VHF and UHF (other than they are maybe High, Very High and Ultra High frequencies?). I don't know what each is used for. Same with 2m, 6m, 10m. I mean I know what they are (references to ranges of frequencies), and I understand where the numbers come from, I just don't know what each is used for, or what the benefits of either might be.
4. My budget is probably $200-300 max. I'm sure that's a pretty limiting factor. Maybe I'll get a pleasant surprise and someone will tell me that's not true....anyone?

I know, I guess I want a radio that does it all or at least as much as possible within my budget. The problem is that I'm not sure what the various features best provide. Basically, when the SHTF, I want to be able to find other survivors or otherwise like-minded people virtually anyplace on this continent if possible.

Any radio suggestions or insight that might better equip me to make a decision would be appreciated. I would like to end up with something I could use from home as a base station (for listening purposes, of course) while preparing for my operator exam(s).

I hate to say it but your budget is too small for what you want it to do. An all mode HF+2m+70cm rig will be in the 500$ish and up range. On top of that you will still need a power supply and antennas (at least 2) and other stuff depending on what you'll be using it for.

1) HF isn't really a portable thing. You can do qrf (low wattage) with it, with a wizbang antenna and get some places but it won't be great. Also, you won't get it to run on AAs. You'll need a 12v power supply of some sort, or start designing something from scratch.
2) Any advertised freqs on a transciever have an even wider band of transmit capability. So for example, a 2m handheld will transmit from 144-148mhz but will receive generally from about 135-155 or even wider. depending on the radio of course.
3) I'm not sure about CB on a HAM radio. I think the freqs fall under the 11m category in ham terms but I don't know if they overlap at all, or what is or isn't legal about it. I do know that most HF rigs do like 2-30mhz and so theoretically could work in the CB range, with the right antenna.
4)You're asking for NASA Space shuttle equipment on a college drop-outs budget.

My recommendation for you is to center your radio use around a car as the power supply. You can buy a good 2m/440 radio+ antenna setup for around 250$, that will get you really good range (compared to a handheld) locally. Then buy a used or low-end HF Rig at 4-500$, and spend about 100$ in antennas and peripherals, and plan on using car batteries as your power source for both. You should be able to listen for a looong time off a car battery with mild transmission abilities at full wattage. You can use a solar trickle charger to keep the power coming. Though you won't be using it all day every day.
[/$.02]

Good luck...

Thanks, jazzman. Yeah, I knew I was looking for more than my budget will allow. A large part of what I'm looking for is information on what is available for that kind of money that will provide the most flexibility in a bug out scenario. I assume my automobiles will only get me so far. I'm hoping for a portable solution that doesn't involve lugging around a car battery.

This page is long, but it will give you a good background on what various kinds of radios are capable of doing. It won't give you specific answers, but it will at least get you thinking in terms of the right questions:

http://www.w0is.com/index.php?p=1_17_Em ... unications

The type of radio you get should be determined by your needs. Set down and decide what you need to do with the radio, How far do you need to talk, who do you need to talk to. What do you need to receive?

Then we can help with a radio. Your budget isnt going to get you much of an HF radio, minimal mobile radio and an ok UHF/VHF portable radio.

I would recommend getting a 2m radio, maybe you can find one that can scan other bands, but not transmit.

This you can do on your budget some hand held 2m radios will take AA batteries with a special battery case. You could also get a good sw receiver and learn about antennas to get it to work to its full potential, so much depends on a good antenna and they are not small. You got to start somewhere and these will always be useful later. So if I were you I would start my product research there. If you take this advice make sure your sw receiver has a upper side band, lower side band capability and a way to connect an external antenna. Many do not have these features and they are of no value if you want to monitor the ham bands and that is where you should listen for uncensored news.
You will not be doing a lot of transmitting with only AA batteries.

A lot of the newer radios have gone to lithium ion so the battery back can be smaller and they can sell replacements but there are a few that you can get an AA pack.
Even with the ham license needed to transmit on the other frequencies won't allow you to transmit on CB band, you will need a dedicated CB radio for that. There was really nice CB model with separate battery packs, it was sold as the midland 75-820 and 75-822, Cobra road trip (can't recall the model), a Cherokee with SSB and currently cheapened down and sold by radio shack. The battery packs would hold 6 alkaline AA's or you could get packs to hold 8 NiCad/NiMH. I have the 6AA and bought two of the 8 aa packs before they were discontinued. I keep the 6 AA as a backup backup and keep both rechargeable packs with sanyo eneloops ready to go. This was if one gets low I can just swap the pack rather than swapping 8 individual cells. It also had a vehicle adapter and there was a handsfree mic like you see police clip on their shirt.

The other question is who are you going to talk to? I have a cb in my truck as well as the handheld so if someone needs to get out and spot or scout around the area. Cb is also useful to ask about traffic conditions. Thats why I started there.

I think what I'm looking for is a portable solution that can receive signals from just about anywhere in the world with favorable conditions and transmit as far as neighboring states, perhaps. Of course the top priority would be communication within a 60-80 mile radius. I also have family that live about 120 miles away, so it would be nice if I could reach that far.

I would just like to be prepared in the event that I'm literally running to the hills, i.e. not merely cutoff from civilization from a communication standpoint, but forced to vacate my home. This wouldn't be something I would have to be able to pack about a lot, but merely something I could transport from my automobile to a "base camp" of sorts. Running it off of a car battery isn't out of the question, but a smaller 12v solution would be more convenient from a transport and recharging standpoint.

So I guess from that I need to determine which band would suit me best? Not knowing the strengths and weaknesses of the various bands, I'm unable to make that decision yet. Some have suggested 2m?

Like I said, a hand held solution isn't out of the question by any means. The portability would definitely be a plus. I just need something that would have some kick if I needed it. Again, I'm talking about bug-out gear here.

Thanks to everyone taking the time to try to help this newbie out.

Man Portable HF is not gonna be cheap.
Thread from awhile back:
http://zombiehunters.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=26028

The 120 miles you need to communicate between family members, are there any major cities or mountains between them? If so, there might be a repeater solution. For instance, in Washington the Evergreen intertie is a good sytem that spans the state:
http://www.evergreenintertie.com/

receiving signals is the easy part, transmitting takes more power and requires proper licensing (though I believe the FCC allows emergency transmission without a license, but you can't test/practice before).

Start researching any repeaters around and in between your AO and bug out location(s), see what bands/systems are most common out of those and start with those first.

I'd just as soon not spec my solution to rely on repeaters if necessary. In an emergency situation, I may not be able to rely on repeaters.

Anything that could receive up to 10m or more but transmit only up to maybe 2m? I've been looking at equipment, but often it is spec'ed by band rather than freq's, and in cross-referencing, with my limited level of knowledge on the subject, whether or not it meets my criteria or not starts to get a bit fuzzy, and I have trouble making that determination.

Also, I've got (another) dumb question. When looking over the various amateur radio bands on the following chart:

Ham Band Color Chart

I don't see any references to VHF and UHF. Wikipedia tells me that VHF ranges from 30MHz to 300MHz and UHF ranges from 300MHz to 3GHz. If that's the case, a) why isn't it listed on the above color chart, and b) would that mean that 6m, 2m and 1.25m bands are actually all considered VHF bands, and 70cm, 33cm, 23cm and lower are all UHF?

Yep. The 2m and 70cm bands are much more popular than the other V/UHF bands, so when somebody refers to a "VHF handeld" they're almost certainly talking about a 2m radio (likewise for using "UHF" to mean 70cm), despite the fact that there are two (in some places three) other VHF ham bands. It's sloppy language, but it's pretty common.

Going the distance you need without repeaters is the difficult part. You may have to plan around repeaters then if the repeaters fail have a plan b where you transmit a signal at specific times so you can stop, point your antenna and transmit at full power and hope they receive.

If you don't mind, where are you located? (QTH in fancy pants Ham talk ). Flat or mountainous?

Central Indiana, so it's mostly flat. I have family living some 120 miles south in the hills of southern Indiana. Nothing like mountain foothills, though.

Yup, That's rough. The two feasible options for that distance are vhf/uhf repeaters or NVIS. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near_Verti ... ce_Skywave
The NVIS option is not something a solo dude would want to add to his pack, It's a lot o gear.

ETA: here in Oregon, It's possible to get those miles from mountaintop to mountaintop line of sight, but not in Indiana.

Not sure how NVIS adds that much weight to a pack. A hank of wire, some paracord and a short piece of coax is all you need.

I'm re-thinking batteries. I think I'm going to want a portable 12v power system, rechargeable with solar panels. I was looking at these. They only weigh 1.3lbs each, so I could pack a couple (one to use while the other recharges, or use them both in series for more power/run time). If I'm reading the spec sheet correctly (which I'm probably not), it looks like one battery would support a 50w load for approx. 30-minutes? Also, would that translate to 5w for 5-hours?

In the fairly likely event that I'm reading the charts wrong or not taking something into consideration, does anyone know of any good-quality 12v rechargeable batteries that could be used to power a mobile ham station? I would like to get a couple hours of run time if possible, though less would be better than nothing, if it could power a radio that would allow me to make contact at ranges of 100 miles or brief attempts at much longer. What should I look for in such a battery?

Quick google search found this:

http://www.12voltrechargeablebattery.com/

might be worth a look, YMMV

That link doesn't go to a product. From the weight and energy, I'll guess you were looking at ~2 Ah sealed lead-acid batteries? Those will work okay, if you don't mind the weight. The capacity is generally specified for a 10 hour discharge, and will be lower for faster discharging. A 50W load may only run for 15 or 20 minutes. Also, lead-acids don't like to be discharged below about 50%. They'll give you that energy if you need it, but it reduces their capacity for subsequent charges. At a 5W load, you'll get pretty close to the specified capacity, so yes, about 5 hours. Keep in mind that a "50W mobile rig" puts 50W out the antenna, but eats about 120W of electricity to do it.

If you care about weight, I'd suggest NiMH or Li-ion, depending on how complex you want to get. Ni-MH is relatively easy to charge and gives you much better energy per weight than lead-acid. Li-ion is complicated to charge (and hard to do with solar), but gives you awesome amounts of energy for the weight. Lead-acid is okay if you don't have to carry it very far, and can't be beat for simplicity of charging.

on a budget of $300, you cannot get any of the newer all-band portable rigs like the

817 http://www.universal-radio.com/catalog/hamhf/1817.html
857 http://www.universal-radio.com/catalog/hamhf/1857.html

or the
897 http://www.universal-radio.com/catalog/hamhf/1897.html

Those are all considered the smallest 'all-band' transceivers, and cost a fair amount of coin.



Unfortunately, only hand-held radios have a AA option. However, a small lead-acid cell that puts out 12V will run any amateur radio, so if you have the room in your bag for a larger radio and a heavy battery, you *could* do that. That said, there's a reason why the RTO in military units was a full-time job description



You may want to consider a tiny receive-only radio for $50, and then something more modest for transmitting. There are a ton of AA and even crank-powered shortwave receivers in the sub $50 range.


Legal, no. To legally transmit on CB, you have to use a type-certificated radio made just for CB.
Possible, sure. The 40-channel HF radios most people think of when they think 'CB' are 11m AM radios, which is pretty close to 10m, and many can be modified to work on 11m for emergency use.



Okay, for amatur bands, here's the breakdown:

anything between 160m and 10m wavelength is considered HF.
6m, 2m, and 1.25m are VHF.
70cm on up us UHF.

In terms of practical use, 2m and 70cm are the only popular VHF/UHF bands.

For ranges, it works like this in a nutshell:

All radios work for line-of sight, meaning "from where your antenna with no terrain features between you and the receiving antenna"

Additionally, the HF bands can bounce between the earth and the ionosphere, giving you constantly shifting areas of 'bounce coverage' where your signal will cover additional ground. Depending on the electromagnetic conditions of the ionosphere, HF can go around the world, or nowhere. Different wavelengths will have different 'propagation' patterns under any given set of conditions.

Additionally, VHF and UHF radios typically use FM and are better able to penetrate buildings, foliage, and minor terrain features than 10m or CB.



The budget is less of a limiting factor than your requirements. There just aren't ANY radio kits out there that do everything, for the simple following reason:

While you can receive any signal that your antenna is long enough to pull in, a transmitting antenna MUST be tuned for the specific band you want to transmit on.

What this means is, that at a minimum, an all-band radio needs 2 antennas: One gigantic HF antenna with an antenna tuner that gets adjusted to send on the band you want, and a smaller VHF/UHF combo antenna.

So, thats 5 pieces of bulky and heavy hardware right there for the all-band solution:

1. radio
2. power source
3. HF antenna tuner
4. HF antenna
5. 2m/70cm combo antenna

Thats also about $1200 bucks of stuff if you want it to weigh less than 70lb.


Honestly, my recommendation would be to confine your mobile setup to 'receive on everything, transmit on a little'.

I'd do it with the following things:

1. shortwave receiver (lots of options here) http://www.universal-radio.com/catalog/portable.html
I like Sangean radios, a lot. Theres some really good ones in the $60-80 range

2. External roll-up antenna http://www.universal-radio.com/catalog/sw_ant/3184.html
$13, and a must-have for AM reception.

That covers reception on pretty much everything. Transmitting is trickier.

First off, I'll come right out and say it: You're not going to get 120 miles of coverage on anything but HF with ionospheric skip. And those are all way too heavy, and bulky for a BOB, as well as being out of your price range. So, forget about it.

To meet your "runs off AA" requirement, you're going to end up with one of 2 radios:

Either a handheld CB, or a handheld VHF/UHF radio.

a *good* handheld CB radio is about $100, I like the Midland ones, because they come with a vehicle mount kit as well as a battery case. http://www.google.com/products/catalog? ... ps-sellers


In a SHTF scenario, 11m CB will probably still be the longest range radio in popular use, because they're the only consumer-market radios to have decent antennas. You can get 5-7 miles out of flat terrain on a CB.

With a 5W handheld (VHF or UHF) ham radio, you can get about that much too.

With a cheap GMRS (UHF) or MURS (VHF) radio you can get about half that.

With a FRS (UHF) radio you can get maybe a mile or two.



PS: There are many ways to get more range out of both CB's and VHF/UHF radios, they are all a combination of better antennas, better antenna placement, and higher output power. For example, a 2m mobile in a car putting out 50W with a good whip antenna can reliably transmit over flatland out to the horizon, 20 miles away. But, a 50w radio with power source and a 3 foot whip arent exactly bugout bag material, even if they do fit into your price range.

While your price is close your weight it off.

1) Radio, Yaesu 817.. $600 new $450 used about 3lbs.
2) power, Internal AA or a small gell cell $6-$30 and upto 3lbs.
3) Hf tuner lDG z817 $129 new 9oz
4) Hf antenna/coax $5-$30 10oz
5 u/vhf antena $10 4oz


SO $800 and a little under 8lbs.

Bah. My bad. Link fixed.