Hey all! new to the site but I had a question about 2-way radios.
So I work as maintenance for a school district, and I work between 5 schools. Each school has there own walkie talkies and are on different frequencies. Most are different brands completely.
So to get to the point, I would like to have one radio that would be able to pick up all 5 schools so that I don’t have to use a different radio every time I travel from School to school.
Does anyone have any suggestions on this? Thanks all!
That question can’t be answered unless we knew the frequencies that they are using. Are they using dedicated business frequencies or public (FRS) frequencies? VHF or UHF?
The easiest thing is to just get the list of frequencies. Then we can provide some recommendations.
If you can’t get that, at least list the make and model of all the radios they use. We also need to know what country you are in because laws vary.
It is certainly possible, but there are a LOT of variables here.
If they don’t have the frequencies, there are ways to read them using a scanner or RF frequency counter.
As long as all the radios work in sensible and legal bands, then you should be able to do this. I cannot speak for the US, but some schools here stupidly use the licence exempt channels, and here this means there are rules on the radio spec that is legal. Lot of people obviously consider this law a bit trivial and programme up radios to work, but so much depends on what their channels are and how legal you need to be. Truthfully though, if you bought a radio, found out the frequencies you could do it easily.
Many schools in the US purchase FRS/GMRS, while some others use proper business class radios, so unless you know specifically which types of radios each school uses, finding one radio to talk with them all will be a challenge. Additionally, if one school uses an FRS/GMRS radio and another uses a 900MHz or business digital radio, it’s not going to happen, because all those radios are using different technologies to communicate within their own systems.
Hey,
As far as I familiar with Uniden brand, this model comes preprogrammed with all standard maritime VHF channels as well as NOAA radio channels, so most users won’t need to do any additional programming on this radio, but in exactly your case I think this is suitable to you. Some geeky teenagers should help you to set it right to work within all 5 schools.