What's a radio good for anyway?

[nokones]

5 hours ago, Davichko5650 said:

When the first brick sized Cellphones came out, a buddy got one for work. He'd call us when he was down at the lake and ask us to call back in 5 minutes. He would walk by the sunbathing girls on the beach and take that call trying to impress them.

 

Didn't really work...

They probably didn't know what he was doing at the time.

[SteveShannon]

1 hour ago, nokones said:

They probably didn't know what he was doing at the time.

“That idiot’s talking to a brick!!!” is less of a chick magnet than a good belt clip handheld. 

[nokones]

And they may have been blondes and blue eyed!

[nokones]

I guess I should at least respond to the subject title. The radios are not good for the SHTF situations. Who in the hell are you going to talk to in those situations. You'll be lucky to talk to your next door neighbor given all the channel congestion occurring.

[LeoG]

Depends on where you are.  Around here it might not be so bad.  In LA it's already worthless without an emergency situation.

[amaff]

2 hours ago, nokones said:

I guess I should at least respond to the subject title. The radios are not good for the SHTF situations. Who in the hell are you going to talk to in those situations. You'll be lucky to talk to your next door neighbor given all the channel congestion occurring.

True, if your definition of "SHTF" is only "massive, region or nation wide calamity or collapse."

There's a whole lot of gray area between that and "normal", even more localized disasters (weather events, wildfires out in the sticks or on the edge of town, extended power outages) where they're totally appropriate for a situation where the shit has totally hit the fan, just maybe not to the point to where the zombies are chewing on the door knobs.

Which is a long way of saying, they're useful in a whole lot of real world situations that might not reach the level of a massive, metro-wide (or worse) problem, but which someone is a lot more likely to encounter in reality than those larger scale problems.

[WRUE951]

19 minutes ago, amaff said:

True, if your definition of "SHTF" is only "massive, region or nation wide calamity or collapse."

There's a whole lot of gray area between that and "normal", even more localized disasters (weather events, wildfires out in the sticks or on the edge of town, extended power outages) where they're totally appropriate for a situation where the shit has totally hit the fan, just maybe not to the point to where the zombies are chewing on the door knobs.

Which is a long way of saying, they're useful in a whole lot of real world situations that might not reach the level of a massive, metro-wide (or worse) problem, but which someone is a lot more likely to encounter in reality than those larger scale problems.

i defiantly would rather have a radio that i can program for many frequencies versus a cell phone.   I remember the big earthquake we had her in 2019  and our cell service brought to its knees.  Radio comms were working great and pretty busy.

[WRDJ205]

20 minutes ago, WRUE951 said:

I remember the big earthquake we had her in 2019  and our cell service brought to its knees.  

I can confirm that during hurricanes, the same thing happens.  

[WRHS218]

1 hour ago, amaff said:

Who in the hell are you going to talk to in those situations. You'll be lucky to talk to your next door neighbor given all the channel congestion occurring.

A couple of years we got snowed in and then the power went out for a week. Cell service was down as well. We used GMRS radios to check on a couple of neighbors and to contact family members who lived at a lower elevation. My well neighbor and I were helping other folks in our area dig out and I used my radios to stay in touch with my wife while I was away from our property. I'm trying to get others in our area to get a radio and learn how to use it so we can check on each other when local crap happens. Sometimes all you need to do is talk to a neighbor.

[amaff]

11 minutes ago, WRHS218 said:

A couple of years we got snowed in and then the power went out for a week....

To be clear, I didn't write the line you quoted 

[WRXB215]

7 minutes ago, amaff said:

To be clear, I didn't write the line you quoted 

Yeah, that's weird. First time I've seen that happen.