This is going to get long, but I think radios are great, so I hope to give you some useful information. Some things might be a bit different today, since I last had a lot to do with radios at camp in the late 90s, but I don't think much has changed in the basic business radios (compared to police radios which have changed a lot).
You should be looking at two way radios that operate in the "business band" and for use outdoors in the woods that would probably be VHF High Band (around 150 MHz). These require a license from the FCC and a call sign, which isn't a big deal unless you start using the radios without getting one. They have some frequencies that are widespread (color dot channels) and more generic in nature, and you might want a license for one of those also, if you plan to use these on road trips away from your base station. You probably don't want only a dot channel, because it may result in your receiving excessive unwanted calls from other businesses.
A drawback of radios is the lack of privacy, because everyone hears what is going on (anyone with a scanner, for instance). Since you have a phone system, you are fortunate, and probably should keep it operating as a way of taking a radio conversation private when needed over the land line.
The Talkabout radios are fine, but they are consumer grade and it shows in the poor reception, lousy audio quality, etc. Business radios have more money into the electronics, and are more stable and vastly better. There is really no comparison, and I think it is an unfortunate development that the "family radios" have worked their way into camps where they previously were not. Unless your camp is in an open field, their limitations become obvious right away.
I'm mostly familiar with Maxon and Motorola radios from 10 years ago at another camp, but they haven't changed much since then. At that time we had dozens of portables (handheld) and mobiles (in vehicles) going at that camp. Right around then the FCC reduced channel spacing from 25 kHz to 12.5 kHz, but we were allowed to keep the old ones with an existing license. Some of this may have changed, and a radio shop (yellow pages: radio communications equipment and systems) could fill you in. Why I mention this is because you might find someone who would donate radios in the VHF high band, but you should know before hand if you could obtain a new license to use them at 25 kHz channel. You certainly wouldn't want any radios from before the mid-90s where they used crystals instead of chips, nor would you want any that are otherwise modern enough but require abnormally expensive battery packs.
For privacy, business radios can be set to have an inaudible tone that triggers only certain units. Motorola calls this "PL" (private line) tone. That might be more hassle than it's worth to have these for different areas in your camp, but where you need one most is to squelch conversations from other businesses that may be on the same channel.
Portables have a limited range and limited to line of sight. They may have difficulty talking to each other across distances or over hills.
So you will need a base station (usually these are really a mobile radio mounted in a small steel cabinet with a voltage regulator) and a proper antenna, meaning one intended for use outdoors as a base station antenna. Vehicle antennas will not work very well mounted outside a wooden building, because they are designed to sit atop a large body of steel. An enormous tower is probably not needed, but a good tripod as high as possible on the roof with an element (cut for your specific frequency) connected by heavy gauge coax antenna cable and proper grounding is probably the minimum. Maybe you do need a real tower, but it depends on your desired range. Generally, the antenna reaps more benefits than increasing the power of the base radio.
A repeater works one of two ways. Either you have two separate radios and two channels, one for transmit and one for receive (with all of this coordinated properly amongst the portables and base) or the repeater has a recording function and uses one radio. That results in a portable user making a call which is (up to a limit) recorded by the base and then played back to relay that call to all the other portables. Your need for a repeater should be determined by whether or not the portables need to talk to each other. It probably isn't that necessary. And, you don't need to decide right away, as long as you make sure to get a base that is commonly offered in a repeater configuration.
If you have two office type buildings with phone cable between them, you can also get remote control units (that look like phones without keypads) that can be setup with add on circuitry to allow those other offices to make calls using the base remotely over the phone lines. This saves huge cost, because these units are much cheaper than multiple base stations.
There's lots of sources for radios, both new and used. If you do some searches online for shops in your area that are in the "2-way radio communication" business, you should find some that way. It seems best to me to work with someone like that initially. Or, find the person who handles the radios at a local truck garage, etc., and they might refer you to some useful contacts. It is possible to buy portables online or from Grainger, etc., but that isn't going to result in the best system. The FCC website should also be useful, I know they used to have a bunch of info and a license lookup database there.
Training for your staff will also need to be done, because there are rules in using a business radio such as call sign use, monitoring for other calls on your channel (from busineses with same channel but different PL tone) before calling, etc.
Good luck, and I hope you get a proper system established at your camp!
Nick
Last edited by cmpranger; 03/11/09 12:42 AM.
