Questions on Radios

Its very difficult to advise somebody where and when to use walkie-talkies, its comes down to how you play and who you play with. One day you may be mid game and think "I need a radio yo" then you may not need to use it again for months. others may use it every time, its an entirely personal thing.

I rarely use mine as I usually play fairly small sites, where a small team can communicate effectively without them, however when I played Free Fire Zone in Peterborough, that place is huge and being able to communicate with my own team (or the other team) would have been beneficial.

its also worth noting that walkie-talkies don't create good communication, walkie-talkies are simply an extension tool. If you can't effectively communicate with a team in close ranges a walkie-talkie will just exaggerate that mis-communication. It sound obvious and a little patronising (not aimed at anyone personally) but as we have discussed elsewhere there is a lot of bad transitions and its very tedious to those who want to use a radio effectively to enhance the game.

[Edit] It is all sounding a bit too serious and "train spotting" so from now I think we should refer to all comms as "walkie-talkies". :lol:

 
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Yeah, intelligibility and good comms discipline are the main problem and answer to it respectively - even the best radio equipment and/or accessories has/have limitations. TBH I had given up taking mine due to frustration with garbled messages, but I've just bought a 2nd hand XTR446 (£14 posted ~ fleabay) to use as a loaner: as Chock says, for times when I want comms with people i've just teamed up with on an ad hoc basis. I'm determined to put stuff I was taught last year by an ex Marine sergeant into practice and just hope that doing so rubs off on whomever I'm communicating with. Part of the problem is that I hate sounding like some kind of walty gamer, but the reasons why the military use the procedures they do are to overcome exactly the same problems we are faced with, so call signs and clarity will be the order of the day, as it were - "bellend one to bumcrack six, over" may take the edge off :lol:

Can you show us those Bell South handsets, Chock? If they were from a dealer, can you give us a linky too, because yeah, that is a spectacularly good deal.

One thing on features: if a handset is equipped with a "Roger Beep" it must also be able to turn it off, because the bloody thing is soooo annoying in general use - it is so loud in comparison to speech, so whatever volume you have your gear set to in order to hear messages clearly, a roger beep will be excessive... and when in typical airsoft use... "Say again?" "...t theyreoverthere! DIDDLY-DING-BEEP" "...at you mean? BING-BONG-BEEP" "Who are you talking to?" "...kinell! DIDDLY-DING-BEEP" "...hind the bush. BING-BONG-BEEP" it becomes justification for homicide... but only marginally more so than not waiting a second before speaking after pressing the PTT to avoid your initial speech being cut off by auto-squelch.

Hopefully someone who has done it can help me out here: how do you program a CTCSS code into a Baofeng handset? As I understand it, the Baofeng is only interested in the frequency and the privacy "channel" is nothing to do with that.

 
Ian_Gere said:
Can you show us those Bell South handsets, Chock? If they were from a dealer, can you give us a linky too, because yeah, that is a spectacularly good deal.
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Yup, here you go:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/111331756228?_trksid=p2059210.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

And yes, you can turn off the roger beep on them, although the manual is a bit 'Chinglish' Still, it's not like there's a million buttons on the things, so you hardly really need the manual anyway. :D

 
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The G9E is bound to be good, but tbh it's probably over-spec'd for what you need.

 
Ian_Gere said:
Yeah, intelligibility and good comms discipline are the main problem and answer to it respectively - even the best radio equipment and/or accessories has/have limitations. TBH I had given up taking mine due to frustration with garbled messages, but I've just bought a 2nd hand XTR446 (£14 posted ~ fleabay) to use as a loaner: as Chock says, for times when I want comms with people i've just teamed up with on an ad hoc basis. I'm determined to put stuff I was taught last year by an ex Marine sergeant into practice and just hope that doing so rubs off on whomever I'm communicating with. Part of the problem is that I hate sounding like some kind of walty gamer, but the reasons why the military use the procedures they do are to overcome exactly the same problems we are faced with, so call signs and clarity will be the order of the day, as it were - "bellend one to bumcrack six, over" may take the edge off :lol:

Can you show us those Bell South handsets, Chock? If they were from a dealer, can you give us a linky too, because yeah, that is a spectacularly good deal.

One thing on features: if a handset is equipped with a "Roger Beep" it must also be able to turn it off, because the bloody thing is soooo annoying in general use - it is so loud in comparison to speech, so whatever volume you have your gear set to in order to hear messages clearly, a roger beep will be excessive... and when in typical airsoft use... "Say again?" "...t theyreoverthere! DIDDLY-DING-BEEP" "...at you mean? BING-BONG-BEEP" "Who are you talking to?" "...kinell! DIDDLY-DING-BEEP" "...hind the bush. BING-BONG-BEEP" it becomes justification for homicide... but only marginally more so than not waiting a second before speaking after pressing the PTT to avoid your initial speech being cut off by auto-squelch.

Hopefully someone who has done it can help me out here: how do you program a CTCSS code into a Baofeng handset? As I understand it, the Baofeng is only interested in the frequency and the privacy "channel" is nothing to do with that.
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from my use Ian, i believe that you use the software to program your Baofeng handsets. within the software there is a column for CTC/DCS ENC i believe these are CTSS codes - i tried this with my team's radios, and whilst we were using one channel with the CTSS codes on (say ch11 446.00625, 67.0), i went to the general frequency channel (ch1 446.00625) and i could hear them, but they couldnt hear me. once i moved back to our channel i could be heard.

 
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