Rocky Talkie

[ELK49]

Anyone have any experience using Rocky Talkie in mountainous terrain. Group of 4 of us are archery elk hunting wilderness in Colorado and want to be able to keep track of each other better then the inreach latency.

 

[North of 60]

Curious as well to hear others' experience in mountainous terrain.

In the flat lands/trees the clarity of the rocky talkies is impressive up to about 1/2 mile, then it starts getting a bit crackly and more difficult to understand.

 

[Htm84]

I use these backcountry skiing and climbing. They work well in my experience in the mountains. Sometimes you pick up other groups chatter from miles away. But like any radio they’re real terrain dependent on range. But I’ve been happy with mine. And their customer service has been top notch. I broke an antenna skiing and they sent a new one free of charge.

 

[JohnB]

I also use mine for backcountry skiing and they are pretty good. If you are in complex terrain without good line of sight then you may have some issues.

 

[patagonialuke]

I'd echo the two comments above; I find them very useful in the mountains. I'd estimate the minimum range in the least ideal terrain (e.g., a mountain between me and the other radio) to be very roughly 1/4-1/2 mile in my experience. With line of sight, I've had success from multiple miles away. They've been super useful for skiing and the people in my hunting party, but I've had limited success if, say, trying to radio another group when I'm at the bottom of one drainage / valley and they're at the bottom of the next one a mile+ over.

 

[Macintosh]

In terms of range, they are no different than good quality civilian recreational radios from Motorola or similar brand, they are simply designed to be more weatherproof and carryable when climbing or skiing outside. I don’t remember which frequencies, but there are a couple of channels on these radios that have more power than the others, those are the specific channels you need to use.
These types of radios are popular for backcountry skiing to communicate within a group where you need to be separated in avalanche terrain, but in that use you’re still usually dealing with fairly close distances and usually line of sight, or at least not large terrain features in between people. If you’re in the same basin without ridges in between, you might see up to a mile or more depending on vegetation, etc. You might cut that by a lot if there’s terrain features and whatnot in between. Backcountry skiing here in the east where we deal with a lot of thick trees and small terrain features, it’s not uncommon to have range interrupted after 1/4 of a mile—thats 400 yards. In other places, we’ve gotten good clear communication at several miles.

Beyond that you need to have a more powerful radio that requires an FCC license. The professional level radios used in terrain like that usually require a repeater and a license, and still have poor transmission in some places.

For what it’s worth, I have found my Inreach to be more reliable for communicating if I’m separated while hunting, as I’m off in several miles from my hunting partner. I also still carry radios a lot, my most frequent use at this point is fishing rivers with my wife, so we can fish separately but communicate over the noise of the water and if we’re separated by several hundred yards or more.