Best radios to use in an emergency (2021)

If you hike, camp, backpack, this is from a very experienced Search and Rescue leader who I took course from:<p>-First, have a Personal Locator Beacon. If funds allow, have one with two-way messaging (there&#x27;s a monthly subscription fee). Needless to say, be mindful of battery condition.<p>-Second, have a GPS with maps from your area, or the equivalent smartphone app. Learn basic map reading, a good Youtube video about it will do.<p>-Third, take 3 hours to study for a ham license. Pass the easy exam and get a reliable, easy to use HT (Amateur radio&#x27;s name for walkie talkie). Learn to use the repeaters in your area.<p>You&#x27;re good to go.<p>P.S. this is concerning a getting lost scenario. He also recommended taking a First-Aid course.<p>edit: My recommendation for an HT is still, after 10 years, the Yaesu FT-60r. Pros: Very solid build, easy to learn and operate (compared to others), reliable. Cons: Bigger and heavier than newer models, battery not as good but can be upgraded. Also, analog only, but to me this is a plus as I want simple, reliable comms and don&#x27;t want to invest time in zillion other features.

In an extreme emergancy (eg: captured in a POW camp) you might just have to build your own:<p>Queensland Prisoners secret radio revealed<p>&gt;&gt; Two Queensland brothers, Ernest and Charles Hildebrandt, built a secret wireless radio receiver which they operated in the camp near Bandoeng in Java which was overran by Japanese soldiers in 1942.<p>&gt;&gt; Constructed of parts scrounged from the internment camp where they were held prisoner in Java during the war, the transmitter was built into a Dutch gas-mask container and hidden under a square of concrete measuring 12 by 7 inches.<p>[*] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.qm.qld.gov.au&#x2F;2019&#x2F;11&#x2F;12&#x2F;on-this-day-queensland-prisoners-secret-radio-revealed&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.qm.qld.gov.au&#x2F;2019&#x2F;11&#x2F;12&#x2F;on-this-day-queensland...</a>

I woke up yesterday to: no home internet; no mobile connection. I own no broadcast tv service. (Why yes, I am a Canadian Rogers customer).<p>I literally started searching through my junk to see if I owned a radio of any kind, just to try to hear news of what the hell was going on.<p>Eventually I gave up and walked to the library instead, discovering 500 other people in the same situation sharing the wifi.<p>Time to invest in a nice radio for emergencies.

Whether or not this is a good list, I find the topic very interesting. For more exercise I&#x27;ve started to increase the range of my usual hikes, from just mooching around a 10 mile radius of home to some much more ambitious yomps out into wilderness. Being alone out there obviously raises thoughts about safety.<p>Everyone knows I hate &quot;smartphones&quot; with a passion. For possible emergencies I carry a powered-down (battery flipped) Nokia wax-sealed in a dry-sack. Regardless, the cell coverage can&#x27;t be relied upon and I don&#x27;t fully trust it.<p>Lately I started looking at alternatives, and considering the fascinating array of features some devices have.<p>Stand alone GPS devices with loadable OSM maps seem really useful. Emergency beacons seem to fill a need for the bad case where you really need rescue. But there&#x27;s also powerful handheld radios and sat phones. The landscape of affordable civilian RF gear seems to be changing fast.<p>What kit do people pack for hiking? Or what gadgets do you wish existed?

If anyone is thinking about buying a two-way radio and you see something like &quot;35-mile range!&quot; on the package, know that this is pure marketing. Yes, if you have a <i>clear</i>, as in unobstructed, as in &quot;I can see you from my binoculars&quot; view of the other person you want to talk to, then yes, you can do it. If there are trees, hills or anything else, forget about it. Invest the time to learn basic ham radio operation, learn to use repeaters, and with a handheld you can reach longer distances than that.

The list is appears to be a random mix of AM&#x2F;FM radios (receiver only), walkie talkies for different frequency bands, etc. Without any context, this list is not helpful at all - or outright confusing.<p>It&#x27;s also noteworthy that different countries have different allowed frequency bands and usage restrictions.<p>I suppose those who have an interest in emergency communication may want to have a look at what their national amateur radio society has to offer.

If you really want to be prepared to use a radio in an emergency you need to know how to use it well. Being able to construct an improvised antenna and knowing the basics of RF and propagation will make all the difference.<p>The US MCRP 8-10b.11 Antenna Handbook is a great starting point.

There are one or two competing and&#x2F;or converging standards for texting over ham radios and I find them very interesting…<p>But as I have said again and again - <i>the handsets are missing</i>.<p>I’m not going to take a laptop with a serial link to a yaesu into the woods, nor am I going to 9key in my texts on one of the two models that support it.<p>Where is a teenage engineering for radio handhelds ?<p>Where is a qwerty ham handheld ?

If you’re going to use a radio in an emergency, the radio is less important than the skill of the operator. So, if you’re serious, go do the test and get the license so that you can practice.<p>Radios don’t work like in the movies. There’s a lot to know. You’re not likely to get help in a timely manner by slapping 146.52 into that shitty Baofeng spurious emissions potato.

And not a single mention of the BaoFeng UV5R, what a shame.

Emergency types &amp; context vary and the appropriate radio will depend on the situation. Sometimes it’s not just about the hardware, but knowing where &amp; when to get a signal — and the best way to use the signal while you have access to it.<p>Beyond that, having apps, systems and data that are available offline and have appropriate plans for powering them without grid power is also critical.

The biggest flaw of all prepper radio lists is that they do not contain knowledge about how easy it is to locate a radio transmitter. Every radio user should do at least one &quot;radio fox hunt&quot; to understand how to locate other people and &#x2F; or how easy it is to be located.<p>You can do that even with radios on this list, no special equipment needed.

I have a windup radio (receive-only). Being not all that serious about prepping, I just got interested in GMRS. Yeah, go ahead, make fun of me. I live in a developed area, so I think it&#x27;ll be pretty easy to find help, and I do know a lot of the neighbors.<p>Since the GMRS radios are reasonably cheap, I was thinking of getting one and just trying it out, to see who&#x27;s normally on. Also so I don&#x27;t have a panicky read-the-manual moment in a real emergency. Thoughts?

the answer IMO as an amateur radio enthusiast is a portable shortwave.<p>you get FM for local stations to rebroadcast EAS, am for longer distance in the event the emergency affects multiple counties or provinces, and shortwave if your dumpster fire communications monopoly just wrecked the country.<p>you also have antennae options that can be spooled from most cheap household wire to boost the signal

&gt; It is a common conception or misconception that the more moving parts that something has the more it may unreliable that something could be. This is true (...)<p>Is not a great start when the second line contradicts the first one...

I have an assortment of Icom handhelds that I collected dirt-cheap on Craigslist a decade ago. They seem to have appreciated quite a bit since then. They&#x27;re extremely well made kit.

Good discussion point but the list is a little weak. You can probably google up better. My power was out for a week earlier this summer, so here&#x27;s my hot take:<p>Once cell coverage was restored I was charging my phone and calling in to meetings in my air-conditioned car. Not too long after that I was able to borrow a generator and keep my freezer from defrosting. I would rank the generator and a good cooler over fancy radios even though I am the sort of person who occasionally buys radios he doesn&#x27;t need.<p>You probably don&#x27;t need anything more than a decent portable AM&#x2F;FM radio: one with a speaker and conventional analog dial controls and that runs on batteries. You&#x27;ll want a good supply of batteries, which are another topic. You will possibly benefit from a way of telling time that doesn&#x27;t plug into the wall so you can turn the radio on for scheduled broadcasts to save batteries. A wall supply for normal use of the radio is also nice. You will want to listen to the station that broadcasts baseball games in the summer and high school football games in the fall and agricultural commodity prices at 5:00AM.<p>If you need a weather radio, you probably know it already and already have one. Otherwise they are merely nice to have, and inexpensive enough. If you want one you should get one. A dedicated weather radio with alerts that plugs in the wall and has a battery backup is ideal. I don&#x27;t own one, though I would have to stop to count the radios I own that can receive weather band. I tuned in to the weather band maybe once while the power was out. We got weather alerts on our phones during the actual storm.<p>FRS&#x2F;GMRS radios beat shouting by at least a quarter mile. You probably don&#x27;t need a set. Some people get irritated, upset, tired, offended, or embarassed by shouting though, and they do let you avoid that. I like mine, which live in my toolbox and allow me to say &quot;is it on now?&quot; in a normal tone of voice. They&#x27;re also nice for comms on multiple-car road trips and have a number of other use cases. I did not use mine while the power was out.<p>Scanners: mine are outdated and not much use. Useful ones that will cover digital modes and trunked systems are kind of expensive. I have found scanners nice on occasion for situational awareness beyond CB on road trips. I would have liked to have had a handheld one ready but I didn&#x27;t suffer for not having one.<p>Ham radio: I am licensed but don&#x27;t operate. I did not find my HT useful. It&#x27;s a nice hobby and if you are interested at all in it you should get licensed and get a cheap radio and have fun.<p>CB: I have a portable CB and mag mount antenna for road trips. Great for finding out from truckers why the interstate is backed up and the best local road detour to take. It was not useful while the power was out.<p>Shortwave: hahah. Just not what it was since the big international broadcasters have mostly shut down. I like mine, but I don&#x27;t listen to SW on it much. I cannot imagine the catastrophe that would bring back SW broadcasting in the USA. It&#x27;s my favorite FM radio though so it did technically see use.