Thanks for the suggestions. I hadn't thought about volunteer events communication before.

BTW, I went and purchased the Cobra 7020s (camouflaged version) as they were on sale at Canadian Tire the other day. Reg $129 Sale $89 minus the "CT-money" credits I had = very cheap! Almost free!
http://www.cobra.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=product.display&product_id=429&category_ID=29

The Midlands do not seem to have much of a sales base here in Canada so outside of ordering from EBay, it's wasn't going to happen - I can't find them retail locally. BTW, they would have to be CSA approved before I could bring them up here anyway. As it turns out, the web sites that I checked seemed to give the nod to the Cobras over the Midlands for range (2.2 miles vs 1.5 miles in heavy urban).

I asked a co-worker of mine to compare these with a pair of business radios (Motorolas). Mind you, those units use different business frequencies but they are in the same band as the GMRS radios. I couldn't use them for general purpose stuff because the frequencies are more restricted which means even if I managed to get a hold of them, I would only be able to communicate with other business radios! Not very practical and probably not legal. They have them because of the need to penetrate into building cavities while performing maintenance work. Business are not supposed to be using GMRS radios either.

He previously tried a pair of older less capable Cobras before going with the business radios; my radios worked in all the same locations they compared them with the commercial radios! Actually these had a longer outdoor range! I was impressed that these consumer grade equipment matched the heavier business quality equipment for half the retail cost.

I researched a bit more and found out that all handhelds in Canada cannot access the repeater channels by law and the max. a handheld can be is a 2-watt ERP output. The government knew that policing the licensing of these radios would be next to impossible so instead the regulated the supplier side of the equation instead of the consumer side. The units I have are 5-watt input, 1.78 watts measured ERP which means there is headroom to go before the manufacturers actually produce a full 2-watt radio. (Most consumer grade radios are only approx 1-watt ERP despite what the manufacturers claim!) I suspect that the biggest factor in not putting a even higher quality unit is the battery usage and drain that it would take. The circuitry would have to be more efficient and the battery even larger than the 1500 mah li-ion batteries these Cobras have. The batteries in this unit are really quite large - ie about the total size of my cell-phone! They pack considerably more energy then the AA or AAA batteries the competition uses. Stand-by time is 2 days vs the 12 hours of some other units. Big brick-like radios will probably won't be as marketable as today's smaller units.

I had a pair of 14 channel, 1/2 watt, AAA battery, FRS radios a few years ago but I didn't like the range so I gave them to my brother to use at the family farm. In the wide open prairies, he does get 2 miles from those 1/2 watt units but then again EVERYWHERE is direct line of sight at the farm when you don't have any trees!

I've got to do some more real world testing of these units - they are beginning to grow on me so far! (However, eavesdropping on a couple idiots on a beer run is really not that fascinating!) The other feature I like is the NOAA weather radio (channel 1 in my area). This will be great for my backcountry hiking. Secondly, I am going to add some screen protectors so the display doesn't get all scratched up.

Privacy codes are a misnomer - all they really allow you to do is clean up the incoming signals on a channel so that you can isolate the conversation that you want to participate in. It does nothing to prevent others from listening to YOU. Although Motorola seems to have found some way of scrambling the signal so that it is less intelligible to those trying to listen in on your conversation. This also makes communication between a Motorola unit and other unit a bit more challenging (or so I've read...)

Advertising claims for range are not just wildly exaggerating the usability of the units but they border on misleading or false advertising. Something needs to be done to get them to be more honest with the consumer. So many people have returned units to stores because the hype turned out not to be true and they went away disappointed or they returned them for an even higher priced model to get a "bit more range"!
- 2 watt handsets range has 25-30 miles in theory (mountain top to mountain top!)
- 2 watt handsets range of 2-3 miles in practise
- range over open water is roughly 7 miles for a 6' person to talk to another 6' person due to curvature of the earth and line of sight