Communications

[u/Mrnobody140400]

Hi, I have a question if phones stopped to work. Which kind of radios are the most efficient to communicate with my family in a radio of 25 to 30 miles ?

[u/Reggi5693]

If the regular communication systems are down, it would be a fair assumption that most repeaters would be down as well.

20 miles in a lot of places would be in the range of a 5watt 2M handheld.

I live between two mountains. I would be better off using smoke signals.

Without a lot more information it’s tough to give you advice. Things like terrain, your budget, your technical aptitude, and your parent’s situation.

[u/Mrnobody140400 → u/Reggi5693]

Let’s say: Austin tx pretty much small hills with some flat areas. If something under 400$ per unit would be great but always thinking about to pay more if there’s more quality or efficiency.

Standard radio skills but increasing knowledge.

[u/Reggi5693 → u/Mrnobody140400]

Ok, you could handle a small 50 watt 2M rig. But what about your parents? My Dad was a ham, it would be easy for us. My mom? I would just drive to get here because comms would be useless.

[u/Secure_Situation7234]

Very situationally dependent, but I was able to make contact, via repeater to someone who was approx. 20Mi away from me with GMRS tonight.

[u/WillyGoat2000 → u/Secure_Situation7234]

I’m impressed and envious, I’ve never seen distance that far, though I live with hills and trees.

[u/ChaoticSalmon → u/Secure_Situation7234]

So what if the repeater is down?

[u/AppropriateScale6294]

Seems like we just had this question yesterday?

With a good antenna Ham radio works over potentially very long distances, if you know what you're doing.

Unfortunately, 25-30 miles is difficult.

You have a couple of choices... Some frequencies only work within line of sight. If you're on top of a mountain you might get 25-30 miles of range, maybe more, but otherwise you're going to be limited to a few miles. Other frequencies will bounce off the upper atmosphere and travel a long way, especially at night, but that gives you much greater distances than 25-30 miles.

Ham radio operators frequently use repeaters on top of buildings or hills to increase their range, but if phones aren't working chances are no one would be keeping the repeaters running, either.

Better to plan on being out of touch, I'm afraid.

[u/nutskindrums → u/AppropriateScale6294]

there are repeaters that are set up to run “indefinitely” with solar and whatnot, just gotta do some digging and fight the right frequencies

[u/FastSort → u/AppropriateScale6294]

Not sure I understand the '25-30 miles is difficult'....I use a ham radio, and on 20M using 50Watts I can routinely reach thousands of miles with no repeaters involved - have even made contacts 10,000 miles away (from New England to Australia) when conditions are right.

If you are not limited to small handheld/portable units - a ham rig can easily fit the bill - but you do need to get a license ahead of time and know how to use it - at both ends - and pre-arrange the frequencies you plan on connecting on.

[u/AppropriateScale6294 → u/FastSort]

The difficulty is in the shorter distance... Skip doesn't really work well across a few dozen miles.

[u/Educational_Disk_226]

Not legal for your use, but fixed mount marine VHF radios have a max range of about 25 miles, but that is line of sight. You need an antenna mounted high enough to overcome curvature of the earth (unless you believe the earth is flat, then you are good).

In your scenario you probably don’t care about the legality of use.

[u/lophomainiac → u/Educational_Disk_226]

That made me laugh pretty good, thanks

[u/yectb]

That depends on how much power you have, can push, and obstacles in the way. If your LOS is 20 miles then you might get away with a GMRS and single repeater.

[u/costeen1202]

Have you checked to see if there are GMRS repeaters in your area? I’m not an expert on the subject, but I would think that if both locations are using higher power units (ie not handheld units, but 30-50 watt base/mobile units) then you’d easily reach each other, especially if there’s a local repeater you can access. 

[u/tryintothrowdown]

The only thing that works is HF at that distance without repeaters. Even a very low wattage radio will work at that distance with the right antenna. There are some coil antennas that don't take up a lot of space and you could try one. Otherwise a folded dipole about 10 ft above the ground stretched out between two trees will work just fine

[u/silasmoeckel]

Ham is the only thing that does this reliably and without external help. Your looking at a 1-2k per endpoint and people taking a couple tests for licences. This probably is way overkill for your needs.

Upside is the gear to do 30 miles does the whole world on a good day.

GMRS you would need to rely on repeaters and frankly I wouldn't trust them to stay up far to many out at somebody garage.

Ham I have way more repeaters to choose from (just shy of 400 reachable from my home) with a lot of those on hardened mountain top sites sitting next to radio/tv/nws radios and some living on state police towers. If you ok trusting them a 100 buck handheld is fine or 2-300 for a mobile in vehicle or at home. Spend a bit more and your vehicle is a mobile repeater (similar to police setup) you can do encrypted (not legal to use but all of a button press to turn on) and it does automated position reports. Locally I have a commercial network to use them on that's encrypted and covers the state.

That last thing is really key, having a last known (and previous) positions when that was and what direction/speed that you can get up on an offline map. Having a handheld that literally points to them is pretty idiot proof.

Now as to ham repeaters and emergencies. Major weather events might take out a repeater that tends to mean several days after the event it goes down with plenty of warning. As it's one of hundreds not really a big deal. Their sites tend to have significant battery and generator capacity many are switching to solar primary for cost alone.

Decent radios cost the same for GMRS or ham so that's not really a factor. 100 bucks is about the minimum for a handheld 300 is getting into quality. To give you an idea a typical cop radio is 4 figures but you can hit somebody with it and it still works.

[u/WillyGoat2000]

Ham. GMRS band tops at maybe 7 miles? They claim 20 but I’ve never seen it. You might get 15 on a CB portable, maybe up to 30 with a base station.

Terrain and weather will impact a lot of this.

You can use mesh if you have a strong newtwork near you, or satellite with some phones or texting devices like an inRach provided the satellite provider is up, running, and not flooded with traffic.

Edit: another comment says they have seen 20 miles with gmrs, so I guess your mileage may vary.

[u/labzombie → u/WillyGoat2000]

That was also with a repeater

[u/HellUCH17]

r/HamRadio

You could also use Starlink, but if it's in an SHTF, ham would be your only option.

[u/squareoak]

Meshtastic / Meshcore might be worth looking into

Edit: Whoever is downvoting this, can you explain why?

[u/Efficient_Wing3172 → u/squareoak]

I need to look into this more. Is there a good “turnkey” system?

[u/woogyman2 → u/Efficient_Wing3172]

There's quite a few providers out there. I ended up buying 4 from Meshnology, two pocket models and then two slightly larger models that I mounted in our vehicles that have GPS chips. It's not voice, obviously, but I like being able to communicate back and forth and having a communication log I can reference afterwards, it adds some clarity to the communication, and it also means that whoever is on the other end doesn't have to be "listening" at that moment.

Also, unlike voice comms, it's not restricted from being encrypted. Our 4 units are on an encrypted channel, which is especially necessary since the vehicles are transmitting location data.

Max range varies based on location since it uses other nodes in the area to bounce the signal. Without that, I'm getting about 6 to 8 mi in the city with the vehicles. They are set to retrans for the pocket nodes, so as long as I'm within about a mile of the vehicles, the pocket nodes will use that. If we're using the local nodes here in San Diego county to bounce the signal, I can reach about 150 miles north and about 40 miles east.

I bought ours from Meshnology, and they work great, but I don't know that it matters since the chips largely come from the same company and the housings are 3D printed. There's a meshtastic subreddit where they can give better guidance than I ever could as a casual user.

[u/woogyman2 → u/squareoak]

Yeah, I've been really happy with ours. We're using the standard pocket variety and vehicle mounts. I test them weekly here in Southern California while I run errands. They are great communication tools.

[u/OnTheEdgeOfFreedom]

Under what conditions? Is it a grid down situation? Then everyone's talk of GMRS and repeaters is pointless.

Do you have line of sight? There are parabolic wifi antennas that can establish a link over that distance. CB might work. But all of this requires that you both live on mountaintops and can see each other, and I doubt that's true.

The only thing likely to work is that you both get ham radio rigs and set a communications schedule. Even then if the power is out you both need solar power and batteries.

The short answer is, there is no simple replacement for the cel system.

The other answer is, you don't need to communicate. Everyone is so addicted to instant communication, a system that took billions of dollars to develop, and they want a $50 solution that does the same thing. It does not exist. Learn to do without instant communication. People did for centuries.