Offroad Comms - Dirt bike communication radio setup

What's wrong with everyone? I've received several questions over the past few months about our

communication

setup

for when we go off-road. I've been meaning to make this video for quite some time, but it's a bit complicated so I thought. about it and I'm going to simplify it a lot and hopefully just cover the basics to help you figure out what you want to do. In North America, the FCC is in charge of all

communication

frequencies and that includes multiple different frequencies. bands uh some you've probably heard of cb

radio

there are frs there are gmrs there are mers and there are amateur frequencies so ham is the image of the

radio

um so the basic radios that you can buy at Walmart for 10 are probably frs or gmrs and they have a limited range due to hardware and power limitations, so they are not ideal for communicating over mountainous terrain or longer distances, for that reason my group uses amateur radio and frequencies, so I am a licensed amateur radio operator, as did other people in my group, so we chose to use the most versatile and, in my opinion, easiest to use

setup

we could come up with that is also durable enough to withstand driving and not the conditions in which that we drive in the rain and mud, everything else is fine, so there are There are so many options for amateur radio, you can get anything from something as basic as what we have here to much more expensive radios and they will vary in feature set and audio quality and some advanced features as well as for our use case we wanted some very basic communication capabilities so what I have here are two bofang radios so Bothang is a Chinese manufacturer they have been making these radios for quite a while time.

There are different models, the most popular is this one, the uv5r. I also have this bff9 v2 plus this one. one claims to have a slightly higher power i.e. transmit power than this, at the end of the day there is very little difference because a lot of the limitations are on the antenna, we chose to use these standard antennas because although you can get a replaceable whip antenna that risk is the screws in here uh they are longer and um more flexible I don't know what to call it and that's why they stick out more uh you'll see how I have it hooked on my backpack um and I just found them a little cumbersome because they would hit the back of my helmet , so we stuck with these and so far they have been pretty durable.

Now that they are not expensive radios, I will give you some links on Amazon, you can get those too. On eBay they cost approximately between 20 and 30 dollars, depending on the time of year you are going to buy them. They have lithium batteries that actually last us almost all day. They come with a rechargeable station, so you just turn on the radio and We're ready, we consider more expensive options, but in reality, at least for me, it doesn't make sense to put a 100 radio in the backpack I'm going to fall into, if I can get away with the same type of communication. using a 20 radio now these radios take shortcuts in terms of audio quality but again when you're off the road you just want to hear that your body is alive or if it needs help you don't need it you know the highest quality. streams available for our use cases, uh, there are a lot of them, so basically the way they work is you turn them on.

I'm going to turn this on right and turn on this one panel mode, okay, so I hope you can see. So when you press this one on the left, this one will light up, see that, and when you press this one, that one will light up, so the standard quote-unquote and walkie-talkie behavior, right, we're using the same frequency here, um and so, In a perfect world, these two radios can communicate over a distance of, I want to say, a mile or two, but where we go we're very lucky and we can get up to half a mile because you know that ham radio signals propagate with the right terrain. and So it depends on where you are, what kind of terrain you're driving on and the distance at which they're going to work will vary a lot, so essentially we set them to a frequency that we all know you can jam the radio and So now, if I press the buttons, it's okay, you can still transmit, but you can't change the settings, so when you put this in your backpack, like I'm going to do in a second, this prevents the radio from changing anyway while you're typing, okay?

Let's take a look at how we have this set up here. So this is my riding backpack, it's just a USB backpack, so I have this microphone attached to my strap, I run it down the side of the strap to one of my pockets here. so I have my toe strap here and this is where I normally put the radio so basically you just plug it in like this and plug it in tight and I jam it in here it's a little tight but I like it like this because that keeps the plug from coming out, it also prevents the radio from bouncing around too much and getting damaged, so close the zipper when you notice the antenna sticking out, which is why I don't want the longer whip. antenna because that was like I said hitting my helmet, but now the radio is connected to this microphone, so what I'm going to do is hopefully not knock everything down.

If I turn this on now, this is the key here. I'll see this radio light up to the right and vice versa so this is both the microphone and the speaker so when I wear this on my back I basically crouch down and press this button and talk to it and you want something. distance between your face and this microphone because it's a pretty cheap microphone and if you talk directly to it you're going to end up basically dominating the radio and it's going to be a little difficult to understand on the other side and like To start with, you guys noticed that I barely speak English, so I want to make sure I have some distance when I speak.

Okay, so let's talk about this microphone real quick. This microphone has been through hell and back with me and holding up pretty well. Basically, this is the microphone. It is also made in China. I will provide a link below along with some links to the radios. I also get it from Amazon. I think you can get it on eBay, but again, these are cheap Chinese products. and so unfortunately the only places you can get them but it only comes with the microphone a little card and essentially you know if you saw plugs nothing special it has a nice little clip that actually works decently well you can find microphones cheaper.

For these Ballfang radios on Amazon and like I said on eBay, I wouldn't recommend buying the Bowfang mic or any of the five dollar ones because honestly, they are garbage and are almost impossible to understand when someone is talking through them and half. the times they don't work, this one has proven to be pretty good from time to time, you have to move it in the plugs, in the holes, I mean for the plug, I just lick it and put it in what it is. It's not the best thing to do, but it seems to prevent it from not working, but every once in a while it doesn't work when you first plug it in, so we always do a

comms

test before we leave to make sure everyone's microphone is working correctly.

Well, one thing I want to talk about real quick here is the FCC, so as I mentioned, the FCC has a ton of rules in place and I'm not here to tell you what they are. Okay, you should do your own research and calculate. Find out what the FCC intended with different sections of the rules. I am a licensed amateur radio operator and therefore I and the other amateur radio operators in the group can legally use these radios to communicate. The FCC also has a rule that says that during an emergency. Anyone can use any frequency for a transmission, which means that in an emergency you can use this radio on available frequencies, not have a license, and not violate FCC rules.

Now, how is an emergency defined? That's up to you, but a couple needless to say. of our unlicensed bodies still carry their radio in case something happens to them, they get stuck on their

bike

, you know, they crashed into a tree, uh, got eaten by a bear, true thing, and they still have the ability to communicate with us if necessary, now another. What's worth noting is that these Ballfang radios are not liked by the FCC; in fact, last time I checked, they are not approved by the FCC to operate on manual frequencies because they are kind of a wild child.

You can do a lot with this video. You are not supposed to be able to do this, for example these radios can transmit on frs and gmrs frequencies which violates FCC rules and I would not recommend doing so. They are capable of it, but they are not supposed to be. Again, the Chinese manufacturer decided to ignore those rules and therefore the FCC is not happy with the sale of these radios. However, we choose to follow the rules and we choose to operate within what the FCC has recommended with these radios and therefore we do not believe we can do so.

Anyway, we're breaking some of those rules, guys, thanks for sticking around and listening to me babble for a while here. If you have any questions like I said, leave them below; Otherwise, see you in the next video.