Walike Talkie Recommendations

[Peter Aslan]

Suggestions please for a decent and reasonably priced wireless Talkie-Talkies to replace a wired system, change has been forced on us by a change of venue.

 

We need headsets which connect to the equipment, and as we also use wireless microphones, should not interfere.

 

Thanks in advance for any and all suggestions.

[paulears]

If you want cheap and cheerful - Chinese radios, for sheer simplicity the Baofeng 888, or the newer 900 series - channel change - volume and that's it, but can have headsets, or ear pieces. If you want cleverer ones, then TYT. The kenwood clones can be had for sensible money and are good, touch and can have multi chargers. Jump up in price to Icoms and Motorolas and HYT. The Baofeng chinese ones are cheap enough that if you break them, you buy more. Typical licence cost around £75 for reasonable interference free use. You can buy cheap PMR446 radios but probably best avoided as co-channel interference too risky for serious use. My sound people have Motorola 446 radios on the licence free band and often get interfered with by the hotel next door.

 

They won't interfere with wireless mics. Walkie talkies are pretty horrible sounding - and turning the volume up for noisy shows gives you ear ache and whistling because of the narrow audio spectrum.

[Ynot]

And don't forget that with pretty much most standard walkie talkies you ONLY get a half-duplex transmission option - ie only ONE person can talk at any one time and there's no 2-way continuous comms that you have with a decent wired setup.

[timsabre]

Personally I'd be thinking of hiring in a wired comms system. Doing show comms on walkie talkies is often quite painful, there are times when it's unavoidable but if you can go wired, I would.

[GaryNattrass]

I have quite a few of the Baofeng UV-5r radios and have found them very good for numerous applications.

 

As Paul said get the private business radio licence for £75 and it opens up lots of UHF and VHF channels as well as the free lower power PMR ones.

 

They are cheap as chips and I also now use them on the marine band for my boat in London.

 

A wired system will always be more reliable but it all depends what you want.

 

I personally have an old canford VHF transmitter on 174.600 and use that for a production talkback stream and the UV-5R as return radio talkback on UHF as they are semi duplex.

[paulears]

probably worth noting that semi-duplex in this situation is NOT what we're doing, we're using simplex - all radios operate on the same frequency. Semi-duplex indicates two separate frequencies, and either a control station, or a repeater. The repeater allows everyone to hear everything but with an antenna up high, low power from the radios (to help interference to other kit) works fine. For radio to radio, with three or more radios and NO repeater, it has to be simplex (single frequency). My system has semi-duplex radios, a repeater and a canford tecpro in one rack - the wired people go out to the radios continuously - and the people on radios can interrupt a conversation on the loop if they wish. The restriction is that because the radios are not duplex (like phones) if they are transmitting, they cannot listen at the same time. The Baofeng Gary mentions is also available with a double size battery for long shifts.

[timsabre]

The main problem I've had with using radios for show comms is getting people to shut up, because unlike a wired system if someone keeps talking then nobody else can talk. You only need someone to start messing around and nobody can hear cues any more. If you can keep it so the only person speaking is the person calling the show then it'll work.

[AnthonyHunt]

Baofeng BF-888s Plus. Worth every penny.

 

In terms of stopping people messing around; very easy, you kick them out. If you can't do that, take the radio of of them and give it to the next person.

 

The Baofeng radios allow you to program different Tx/Rx channels. So you can make all the radios "talk" to the master; and the master "talk" to all other radios but you'll have no other radio to radio traffic..

[sunray]

The main problem I've had with using radios for show comms is getting people to shut up, because unlike a wired system if someone keeps talking then nobody else can talk. You only need someone to start messing around and nobody can hear cues any more. If you can keep it so the only person speaking is the person calling the show then it'll work.

 

WHAT TIM SAYS

 

In terms of stopping people messing around; very easy, you kick them out.  If you can't do that, take the radio of of them and give it to the next person.

Sadly you can't suddenly do that in the middle of a show.

[kerry davies]

Why use radios in a standard theatre style venue when you have that lovely grid to throw loose comms cables over? Yes on site specific gigs in shipyards, castles and the like but there is no need to take the risks or suffer the limitations of radio in a venue which has all sorts of possible glitches built in.

 

My attitude was to only use comms of any kind where absolutely necessary. In small receiving houses there was usually only a followspot op to mutter death threats at anyway and they certainly weren't allowed the capacity to talk back.

[paulears]

So you can make all the radios "talk" to the master; and the master "talk" to all other radios but you'll have no other radio to radio traffic..

ah - but here lays a real issue - in a semi-duplex system where you all talk to the stage, manager, for example - the other users will NOT be aware the channel is in use, and could easily try to talk - this can result in a real mess. Probably OK with just a couple of people out there with radios, but if you have just two, plus the SM, you probably would be better with simplex.