This may be a long shot, but have any of you ever successfully used one of the popular FRS or GMRS radios in a big city with lots of obstacles? I'm thinking of a family communication backup in case of blackout or phone outage scenario. What general range should I expect?

Maybe I'm looking for another kind of radio. Maybe it's impossible. Although I see NYC bike messengers with something that looks like a radio. Any thoughts?

The FRS/GMRS work fine for short range. How short depends, going mountain top to mountain top with no obstructions, say a couple of miles, maybe even more. But in the city that would drop. The key is to somehow get use of a Repeater, that would extend your range considerably. There may be a Repeater in your area for GMRS users or you all could get Ametuer Licenses and join a local club that has a repeater (or maybe more than 1) to use. The repeaters need power to run them, so they also can stop working. Keep in mind that you can also loose the repeater if the structure it is on is damaged or burns (WTC).

The bike messengers are using trunked radios, or conventional business band radios on coordinated repeaters.
GMRS/FRS will get you - at best - 3 blocks or 1 floor in NYC.
Better bet is ham radio, but even that's not great. It's RF soup there.

Two miles at best, and obstructions will cut down on that. If you want any kind of distance, you'll need something that uses a repeater or something (over five watts and illegal without licencing) that will have the FCC paying you a visit.

RF Soup, yes, but Ham radio works very well.

There is some intermod, particularly on UHF, but we have repeaters that cover MOST of the city (there are some holes covered by other boxes - NYC is a big place). Good radios with a fairly good, tight receiver are fine. Hint - rigs with dc-daylight receive do worse with intermod than rigs that ONLY receive "in band"

Disclaimer - I'm the Queens County ARES EC - NYC District ARES

I don't know squat about HAM, been thinking of getting the no code license for years, but just keep putting it off. My question is this...in the event of a blackout, would repeaters and other in-place comm aids work??? Do they have generator backup, or will they die just like cell phones do???

Yes and no - It all depends on the repeater! Some are on batteries and/or generators, and obviously they will stay up, so are not, and they go down. Of the primary freqs ARES uses in NYC, about 25% are on backup, including one with citywide coverage

Now, one of the things we train for is "simplex" operations - aka, direct radio to radio with NO repeaters. Not that big a deal, just don't try to go from, lets say the Bronx to Staten Island with a 5 watt HT and a rubber duckie antenna - It's NOT going to happen. Heck that going to be a stretch even with mobile units - but people will relay your traffic

On HF, that kind of distance is "trivial", and in jact, depending on antennas can be to SHORT (due to skip)

To give you an example - I live in the FAR NE corner of Queens - I can get my signal into most on Manhattan, the Bronx, MOST of Brooklyn, and small parts of Staten Island, along with oh, 85% of Nassau - enough that I can reach repeaters in all but Staten Island. Depending on what kind of antenna and power you are running, you may reach me from those same spots, SIMPLEX

We had no problems keeping at least 3-4 repeaters on the air during the last balackout in NYC alone, and a lot of the stuff in Nassau was up (they have more sites with batteries than we do, simply because of space - room for batteries in repeater locations can cost BIG dollars and is usually NOT available on a donation basis)

Well, let me rephrase my ham radio comment.
Yes, you can get ham radio coverage in NYC...however, I've found that (esp on UHF) that pager intermod makes it very, very hard to tolerate.

2M is better, but is chopy in terms of coverage.

I used to have a lot of problem with intermod - then I started buying commercial gear that is type accepted in the ham bands - aka, the good (but VERY expensive if you buy new )stuff. I have not been bothered by intermod since. That's part of my comment about gear that is designed for DC-daylight receive - it suffers from intermod a LOT more than stuff with more selective receiver sections

It's worth it to me, because I know where to buy used, have the contacts to program the stuff, and being one of the 5 ARES ECs in the city, I feel it's important that _I_ can get on the air

I never would have thougth of batteries, I would have figured that even deep cycle batteries would go flat too fast. Learn something new every day...

LOTS of batteries - figure 3 or 4 (maybe more) 90Ah gel cells. If the repeater draws say, 25 amps, that 360 Ah will get you 1/2 day of continuious use. You'll find however, that after the first couple of hours, the use falls off to about 50% duty cycle. In addition, most repeaters that ARE on battery have foldback setups that will drop their output from around 100 watts to around 50 watts if running on battery - Now your only drawing 10 amps or so, so you can go 36 hours full time, and with duty cycle built in, usually a bit more than 2 days

Our repeater systems are very similar out here. Most have some battery backup, some have excellent backup including generators. My RACES groups practice simplex relays in case everything goes out.

Unfortunately the Ham license is just hard enough to keep people out of the service, but actually requires only a few hours of study to pass. A book, a few hours of reading, a couple of on-line practice tests and just about anyone can get the Technician ticket. This allows full use of the best local VHF and UHF frequencies for community service.

I highly recommend a HAM license to everyone who wants an alternative communication method. The best thing about HAM is that it has had emergency use as a part of its plan from the very beginning. The infrastructure and training is all a part of the "hobby". It is a rare community of any size that does not have an ARES or RACES group with an emergency plan in place and depending on volunteer HAM's.

FRS works fine in cities, with a range of a few blocks. That's plenty for many purposes and completely inadequate for many others. Ham repeaters have much more range. In a real emergency, ham communications can switch over to a message handling mode with emergency traffic (medical stuff etc., where someone will die if the message doesn't get through) taking priority. Stuff like coordinating family movements (what it sounds like you have in mind) would be lower priority.

I've been thinking for a while that the ham world needs a good, portable, text-only communications device that would use very low bandwidth (up to several minutes to send a 100 character text message). Because of the low data rate, it could cover long distances with very little xmit power. I'd been thinking of it more as a cheap alternative to a satellite phone for remote locations, but it could also be good in those urban situations.

Low data rate, low power, ham radio, text only........ QRP CW?? <img src="/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />

PSK31? Pactor?

APRS?

Is there such a thing as a single handheld radio that can operate on FRS, GMRS and CB as well as receive NOAA Alerts? More specifically what I'm looking for is simply a radio that can use CB channel 9 and also receive NOAA alerts. Having other CB channels and/or GMRS/FRS capabilities would be considered a bonus but not necessary. Licensing is not any issue. I can and am willing to get a license.

Not low data rate, low power. Requires a bunch of infrastructure. This comes from someone who runs a 24x7 relay

So in order to get NOAA alerts and also have access to CB channel 9, my only option would be to carry two radios?

I guess I am getting a little off topic in this already large thread. I will address my question more accuratly in a new thread. Sorry.

Thanks all for your insight. I thought this might be a little more complicated than going to Wall-Mart and picking up a couple of radios. Looks like I need to do more research. Thanks again.