Like so many things in life, timing is everything. Just wait for rush hour, and the freeways become very long parking lots....

Yes, plan for a very pessimistic miles per hour in car or on foot. - See Atlanta during recent storms.

adding cash, meds, contacts ( sunglasses) tiny FM radio
phone charger ( battery)

I wonder is a frms radio would be worth it?

I traded in points for a weather radio at a store. It's fine for am/fm and listening to people on 2 way radios, but I never have found a single weather band on the airwaves with it.

NOAA WX freqs
7 primary channels
162.400 MHz to 162.550MHz in 25MHz increments

FRS, GMRS and MURS don't have much the in way of range. If you are keeping in touch with someone specific they make sense, if you're hoping to find someone, you may find it more challenging.

I have an amateur radio HT in each car -- this presupposes that you can get a ham license, which isn't that hard. The HT's have much better range when there is no repeater in reach and there is an established calling frequency that hams use to contact one another. With a working repeater, you can cover MUCH wider areas (and hams will be easy to find). The HT's are programmed with FRS, GMRS, MURS and some of the more useful Marine VHF frequencies, locked out so that one cannot accidentally transmit on them (the radio is not type-accepted for those services). In a life-threatening emergency the transmit lockout can be removed.

The HTs are also programmed to receive broadcast radio and weather radio frequencies.

Not bad for a radio that costs less than $50.

Les

I've spent a few hours scrolling up and down the dedicated weather channel dial and have found nothing but 2 way chatter on it.

Chaos

Where were you when I asked this question in my PFD thread?
Do you have a link to the radios you described, please? I was poking around a survivalist site (I know, they're nuts, but they do have some good information. Sometimes.) One of them was asking for a tiny, flip phone sized Ham radio he could place in a PSK. I liked the idea myself. Would you know if there is anything like that out there?
Thanks

That's nothing less than shocking. The FCC Enforcement Bureau is shorthanded but highly competent. Intentional violators who attract their attention are going to get caught. I can't think of too much that would get them to come find you more quickly than intentionally transmitting on weather frequencies. Is it possible that your radio is incorrectly tuned or malfunctioning in some other way?



Patagonia, visiting my buddy Roberts.



It is legal for non-hams to own Amateur Radio gear but it is illegal for non-hams to transmit with it. It's also illegal to transmit on FRS, GMRS, MURS and public safety frequencies with radios that aren't type-accepted for those services. This radio is not type-accepted for those services. I've seen public safety agencies use radios like this one on their assigned frequencies and get in trouble for it.

So with all those legal cautions out of the way, it's a Baofeng UV-5R. Now some technical cautions. This radio is VERY challenging to program from the keypad, and I state this as a long-time ham and IT professional who is used to programming crazy things. I would strongly urge you to use programming software and a cable. It isn't especially easy to program that way either. Also, the stock antenna isn't very good, you can get significantly improved performance by adding a better one, such as a Nagoya SMA NA-701 or better still a roll-up J-pole. You can program a memory to not be able to transmit by leaving the transmit frequency blank (ie GMRS / FRS Channel 1 has a receive frequency of 462.56250 and a transmit frequency left blank).

Weather channels start at 162.400 MHz and go up by 0.025 MHz to 162.550 MHz for seven channels total.

I was thinking the same thing. I listen to NOAA weather radio regularly and I have never heard anything other than NOAA annoucements.

I'm wondering if maybe Deathwind has a two-way radio that also includes the weather channels? In that case, he might be listening in on the FRS/GMRS channels and hearing the chatter on those freqs? Just a thought.

Arney

No it's a weather radio, that's why I got it. No idea why it does what it does, unless it's not set right as AKSAR suggested. It has no transmitting abilities.

AKSAR

Sound's a bit too complicated for my limited abilities, I'd probably have to hire it done. I'll continue to look for a very small radio to go in my PSK. I prefer the idea of actually speaking to a live person than hoping a PLB is working and that someone will come see if I need extraction.