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 usually a ways away, some times 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 still communicate over the noise of the water if we’re separated by several hundred yards or more.

Edited to add:
The regulation is this:
47 C.F.R. § 95.567 — FRS transmit power"Each FRS transmitter type must be designed such that the effective radiated power (ERP) on channels 8 through 14 does not exceed 0.5 Watts and the ERP on channels 1 through 7 and 15 through 22 does not exceed 2.0 Watts."

I know my radio owners manual specifies which channels use 2w vs .5w. So you basically just need to be on a radio and frequency/channel that is using 2 watts of power, in order to maximize range. If you’re on the wrong channel it will limit the range.

 

[judders87]

They work well if you're in the same drainage or side of the mountain. Loses effectiveness once you are on opposite sides of a mountain.

 

[WoolyBugger]

IMO they look nice but you are paying a mark up since they are marketed towards our segment of the population. Can get something from baofeng for significantly less that is also weather proof. It just might take a little more effort to setup and I understand not wanting to mess with that. GRMS would be the way to go, it does "require" a $35 license.

 

[isleofGough]

All these types of radios are only reliable for line of site communications, so being on opposite sides of a ridge will likely be an issue. You can improve things somewhat with better antennas. Technically GMRS radios will work with some repeaters, and that increases distance considerably if there is a repeater in your area on a mountain, but realistically gmrs radios are just used for line of site. Ham radios (like baefongs) are much better for repeaters, but require a test and license. Even these are problematic if there is no repeater around. HF radios are the best but not realistic for your description. They require long antennas and are generally heavy and actually easier to set up to transmit long distances than near, due to the way the ionosphere reflects radio waves.

 

[Poser]

All these types of radios are only reliable for line of site communications, so being on opposite sides of a ridge will likely be an issue. You can improve things somewhat with better antennas. Technically GMRS radios will work with some repeaters, and that increases distance considerably if there is a repeater in your area on a mountain, but realistically gmrs radios are just used for line of site. Ham radios (like baefongs) are much better for repeaters, but require a test and license. Even these are problematic if there is no repeater around. HF radios are the best but not realistic for your description. They require long antennas and are generally heavy and actually easier to set up to transmit long distances than near, due to the way the ionosphere reflects radio waves.

I've used Baofengs UV82HPs in the mountains with repeaters around. They are heavy and cumbersome. You are blocked from broadcasting on the low watt FRS channels that conventional hand held walktalkies use. You can listen, but not broadcast so if you want to pair them with walkietalkies, you'll need your party to use the higher watt channels of 15 and higher. Not a big deal, but a notable limitiation.

Next up, I found that I get near constant static and interferance across quite a few channels. You're picking up all kinds of signals either from the increased reception, the repeaters and other radio useage in the area. It can be very loud and disruptive. Same as the FRS walkietalkies, if you loose line of sight, even if its just a mere few hundred vertical feet of steep terrain, you loose reception. For general use of communicating with partners in the mountains, I foud no advantage. In fact, the annoyances made for disadvantages. They don't do well banging around in your pack while skiing -had one stop working after that. The repeaters are are all on summits and high ridge lines, so if you are several hundred feet below them, they'll tend to not be an advantage. Now, if you were out scouting for sheep with a partner who was several miles away and you were both on high ridgelines, they would be useful, but I've picked up ORV traffic several miles away on my FRS radios as well.

The one use I have found for my Baofeng is when I am backcountry skiing solo. In that case, I keep it on one areas S&R frequencies, which may or may not even be monitored when there are no operations underway. Your ability to coordinate directly with Search and Rescue could be advantagous under certain extreme circumstances, but you're not supposed to even broadcast on emergency frquencies anyway which is why your FRS radios are not programmable.

My conlusion: stick with the FRS radios and understand the limiations.

 

[isleofGough]

Baefangs can be programmed to use low watt settings and frs channels, as can most Chinese radios (like anytones). Japanese radios like Yaesu, icom, etc require a mars modification. The squelch settings to reduce static are set differently between brands. I don't personally have a baefang because they are cheap unreliable radios, but a lot of my friends have them.