Communication

Cell phone towers are down, now what? I've been trying to figure out this problem for awhile. I know ham radio is the next best thing but somebody like my grandparents are not going to bother to get a ham license.

 

I have 27meg AM+SSB radio and 477meg radios for local comms!
I can power all indefinatly !
But I will use my mobile while it works

 

Each person in my little group has a BAOFENG UV-5R
with extended battery and remote speaker mic setup!
It has 1w-5w power so when really close we don't waste power!
Basic radio was AUS$50ea and all the extra accesseries added another $50 ea
Awesome little radios!

 

Each of my radios have a spare rechargeable battery and a battery case that takes 6XAA batteries!
I can recharge from 240v or 12vdc or little solar panels I have setup!
The big 3800mAH batteries last soooo much longer than the regular batteries!

My old radios Uniden UH-052 sets were good but I only got about six hours use out of a charge!
these new ones go a full twenty four hours plus no worries!

 

Mine are used when hunting, they sometimes come in handy when flushing pigs out of dense scrub and when a heavy kill is made you can call in a pickup to save carrying all the way back to camp!

 

That's our go-to communication -- hand-held walkie-talkies.

Tom, can you tell me how yours are rechargeable? That is, are they solar-powered in and of themselves, or do you use rechargeable batteries (and if so, how do you recharge them)?

For the record, we have hand-held walkie-talkies which use batteries we recharge with a suitcase-sized solar recharger (as well as an old-school, 4-channel portable CB radio that plugs into a vehicle's cigarette lighter).

I'm very interested in finding alternatives (e.g., solar-charged walkie-talkies that won't suck the juice out of our "suitcase" recharger).

 

Homing pigeons? I'm not being facetious here. Pigeons were commonly used for pre-telegraphic communication, have been used extensivley in war zones (still are in some places), don't need batteries and can be eaten when they reach the end of their usefulness. I had a friend who used to describe unpleasant foodstuffs as being as edible as a walkie-talkie. He may have had a point!