Radio for South Florida Family Urban Emergency Kit

FRS / GMRS Radios
1

Greetings everyone. Thank you for your informative posts and Danny, thank you for a great forum.

I’ve been reading these boards looking for an analogous need/situation, but I figured I’d post to the group because none of the threads I’ve read really deal with my “needs” scenario.

Background:

I live in Miami, FL and have lived through Hurricanes Andrew (Cat 5, 1992), Katrina (Cat 1, 2005) and Wilma (Cat 1 or 2, 2005) and yesterday’s power outage.

In preparation for 2008’s Hurricane season as well as for other uses (around the neighborhood/cruises/theme park trips), I’d like to add a set of 2-way radios to my Emergency Kit. One for me and one for my wife, so we can communicate, while I clean up debris and start repairs or help neighbors do the same after a storm.

My research on this board and Amazon has shown that in an urban setting, I can’t expect more than .5 miles to maybe a mile with FRS/GMRS radios. The furthest I’d have to communicate would be my wife’s office (she works in the medical profession) is .84 miles from our house. The other closest family is 4 miles away, so no FRS/GMRS would work.

My query to the group is:

If you were making this decision would you go with either the:

Midland GXT850 VP4 or TriSquare TSX-300

I’m leaning towards the TSX-300 after reading both the reviews here and Popular Communications and because of the digital signal and non-congestion issue. There are so many FRS/GMRS radios in this town that I can only imagine after a storm they’d be all on up. I imagine that the radio traffic in Miami would be high especially and after a storm/emergency as I’m sure others will be using their comms gear too, but I’d like to get a “group think” thought process on this.

I appreciate all of your time and suggestions. Thank you.

2

Another benefit of the TriSquares is that no license is required. To use GMRS, you need a license.

FRS/GMRS is also very congested. In some areas they are totally unusable, due to interference from other users.

I’ve used the TriSquares and really think they will render FRS obsolete.

3

Thank you kindly for your post. I look forward to testing them in the coming weeks.

Hopefully, I’ll never have to put my “kit” into use and they’ll become useful in other ways…but should the day come, I’d like to think I’m a bit more prepared.

Cheers!

4

any 18mile motorola family talk radios will work. there cheap and work great just make sure that they stay dry and you have AA batteries on hand just in case.

i use motorola 18mile ones everyday.

if you do get famil talk radios visit my site and
add a pin to our map

2wayradios.tk