During group drives, often two-way radios are used to stay in touch with everyone. How do you manage your radio and microphone while driving soli or with a passenger?

 

I use a headset. An in ear earbud type thing, with an over ear loop, and a boom mic. Its wired, and cord has a ptt button.

Can operate it without taking eyes off road.

 

I slip the radio on my seatbelt and grab it when I need it. It tends to slide down and on hard braking it flies into my foot well so my feet can hear all the chatter.
darcy

 

this, works really well and fairly inexpensive

 

FRS radios normally have connections for headsets and they're included in many (most?) packages. Commonly sold as pairs for $50. For some reason Channel 4 is the "group drive" channel on every one I've been on.

The need for constant chatter has not existed in the drives I've been on so earbuds and boom mics haven't been necessary for me. A clothes pin on the seatbelt will hold the transceiver near my ear and I listen 99% of the time and can easily grab the little radio and push to talk when necessary which you still have to do with a boom mic although it's usually handier.

Beware of "hands free" VOX (commonly called voice operated transmission, but technically voice-operated exchange) as road noise sets these off all the time and creates a hot mic preventing hearing anyone else unless they have a high powered transmitter and can override it. There's always "that guy" using VOX...

Lead car alerts for traffic, people, wildlife, gravel, low ground clearances, etc. always appreciated.

-- Chuck

 

In terms of affordable radios, I bought a set of the same ones our club has been using for the past couple of years for autocross events. They are Baofeng (Also labeled as Pofung) UV-82. The two pack is around $50 usually and they are very capable radios. I like them for autocross events since I am EM a lot and it allows me to listen/talk to course or control frequency with the press of a button since they have two talk buttons and allow for setting up to listen to two frequencies. They cover pretty much all the legal to use walkie talkie frequencies. Plus you can set up all the channels you want to keep stored and save the program and clone to other radios which is nice too. We have used them when off roading with others and they work very well. They also come with mic/earbud attachments

 

Baofeng makes some nice, inexpensive transceivers. I suspect all the Baofengs use the same internal circuitry. They have some rudimentary scanning ability too. Listening to the school buses during Ohio winter weather was the best road report available.

The UV-82 (like the BF-F8HP sitting on my desk) has a claimed maximum power output of 8 watts which is 4x the allowed 2 watts on FRS. But no one seems to care as the FCC has done nothing to limit their sales.

-- Chuck