Radios/Headsets
 

During my first game of the year on the 18th of this month, I was unable to take part in a lot of the DAs while our guys assaulted bunkers and various hard points, mainly due to the fact I was a sniper, which carrying the dragonov was a large gun and impractical for raiding, but with my next game im attending, I'd like to do more in the game, and am looking at investing in a radio and headset.
I'm unsure of the make, but I'm looking at a 2 way Motorola radio and looking at also investing in a headset,
What else is a good radio/headset to buy? The Motorola one I'm looming at on Kijiji is $100 bucks and comes with two radios and the charging station, dont have a pic to provide but these radios seem to be everywhere, and they're yellow.

Anyone know if these would be compatible with other radios that'd be on my team so I could communicate with them?

Yellow motorolas are probably blister pack radios and are therefore crap. The advertised range is way, way more then that actually get. Those little things won't be able to punch through all the foliage at our local fields.

Grab yourself a decent 4W radio like a Puxing 777/888k, a Wouxun UDV-1P or a Baofeng (I don't remember what model everyone uses...)

Thank you spike, will give them a look.

Continue with Spike's post

Baofeng UV-5R (or UV-5R*** versions)
Baofeng UV-82 (or same as UV-82L)
Baofeng BF-F8 (BF-F8+)
Baofeng GT-3

I got the less expensive BF-777S, and it still has 5watts of power. I like the lack of keypad to reduce accidental presses and complexity. Still programmable, good battery life, and channel changing knob with audio channel verification.


Location: YYZ VOR 062 radial, 17.5 DME FL5280

UB-V5 is the easiest to program without the USB cable in my experience. Battery life has been exceptional as well.

-Grant

Get a Puxing 888k, Its only slightly more expensive but it has two channel monitoring, AND you can listen to the radio or any other channel and it will be cut off if anyone transmits or oyu transmit on the frequencies you are listening to. Neat little radio.

For a headset a Ztactical comm tac2 and a ztactical kenwood two pin will be a good starting point. I ran those for a few years but finally ditched them for a mid range bone mic because I disliked not being able to hear other people talking to me unless I had the external mics on (which die very quickly) and the weight and heat from wearing them.

Just so you know the BF666/777/888 models are all 2 watts max. You can tell because they use a 3.7v battery versus a 7.4 on the 4/5 watt models. The model sticker is very tricky in that it shows "≤ 5W".

- Wouxun (recommended)
- Boafeng
- Puxing
- Linton

You can get a good quality Kenwood headset with a boom mic for about $30 - $60.

The Wouxun UVD-1 are water resistant and can have up to two active channels at once. The benefit is you can easily clone them or manually punch in whatever channels you need, wherever you are. Grab yourself a backup battery as well($15 - $25). The high gain antennas work really well also ($10 - $15).

Most players who run the little Motorola or Cobra style handhelds will not be privy to the preprogrammed channels.

Recently received my BaoFeng UV-82 in the mail (review here), and so far it's been a great device.
5W, comfortable to hold, and a few other nice things inside. Also came with an earpiece PTT in the package.
For $40 I paid for it, it's a quality piece of hardware.

Aww, I suck. The advert I bought from stated 5W too. Well I guess I need to upgrade sooner than expected. Now I'm wondering how likely it'd be bought on our classifieds, lol.


Location: YYZ VOR 062 radial, 17.5 DME FL5280

lol unless you're planning on airsofting in caves, 2W should still be way more than you need to keep in contact with your squad....

You'd be surprised. Some airsoft fields/events are massive, not to mention any interference from various causes. Our radios worked fine, mostly, but many buildings, rolling hills, thick forest, etc, have caused issues. We bumped up to a higher gain antenna and it worked wonders. Guaranteed comms is worth the small price.

Then I suppose a better antenna would be a suitable bandaid until I can upgrade the radio itself? I mean, a better antenna could just be swapped over to the replacement anyway.


Location: YYZ VOR 062 radial, 17.5 DME FL5280

True enough. One of our guys came up with an amazing idea, he went to an radio shop and had them craft a cable to run from the radio to the antenna. The high gains we bought were quite long, so now we just run it up through the molle webbing and run a cable to the radio.

Using external antenna is sure a great way to acheive better range. I would suggest getting 5/8 no ground antenna for best results.