Rocky Talkies —> mountain versus expedition radios

Caleb Hils wrote:

Sweet man! I like the design! I am likely planning to sell my own design eventually, but I’ve started mine and we both took different approaches but I really appreciate you sharing the file! 

Sounds good, excited to see your design! Do you think you’re going to wind up covering the antenna? I’d be curious to see if it winds up impacting the transmission.

Daniel M wrote:

Sounds good, excited to see your design! Do you think you’re going to wind up covering the antenna? I’d be curious to see if it winds up impacting the transmission.

That’s the plan currently but we shall see, I’m not 100% sure, and I think it will be based on if it impacts it or not. If any radio nerds can give me a heads up about that that would be sweet! 

Caleb Hils wrote:

That’s the plan currently but we shall see, I’m not 100% sure, and I think it will be based on if it impacts it or not. If any radio nerds can give me a heads up about that that would be sweet! 

Having an additional plastic piece over the antenna won't have a significant impact on the transmission if it's a couple of millimeters thick. Most plastic looks the same to radio waves (they're mostly made of the same elements) for transmission, and the dielectric constants aren't really high enough to have a lot of reflection. If you think about it, there's already a plastic piece over the metal radiating antenna - and adding a bit more plastic won't do much more. 

There are a lot of caveats to the above, but none of them are really that important for the FRS radio use case.

Good luck with the project - post up the end result when it gets printed !!

Eric P wrote:

Having an additional plastic piece over the antenna won't have a significant impact on the transmission if it's a couple of millimeters thick. Most plastic looks the same to radio waves (they're mostly made of the same elements) for transmission, and the dielectric constants aren't really high enough to have a lot of reflection. If you think about it, there's already a plastic piece over the metal radiating antenna - and adding a bit more plastic won't do much more. 

There are a lot of caveats to the above, but none of them are really that important for the FRS radio use case.

Good luck with the project - post up the end result when it gets printed !!

Much appreciated, I assumed as such but I wasn’t sure. I will definitely post it up here as it progresses. I have been too busy the past few days to work on it much but I aim to get some done with weekend

Going to give these a try this week. Messing around with the programming on the app, not being a radio guy, I’m struggling to determine if you can or can’t actually set up a privacy code like the RT’s. Our RT’s weren’t working very well last couple of outings, so we decided to try these. BTW, these can be turned on accidentally VERY easily. I thought i had them packed securely last night for a trip this weekend and woke up this morning wondering where the radio voices were coming from?! 😂

Daniel M wrote:

Here is the finished product

That looks nice - how is it to press the side buttons with the recessed case?

NateC wrote:

Thank you for clearing that up for me!

FWIW, I cannot speak to the legality of the tiradio md11, but I purchased a pair and I was able to reprogram them to PMR446 (and have no other channels programmed in. So if the intent is to keep within those bands, I have done so and feel like we are doing the right thing taking these radios to France.

But I could be wrong. I think in the past we accidentally took rocky talkies...

Eric P wrote:

That looks nice - how is it to press the side buttons with the recessed case?

I haven’t really had issues with it. I suppose pressing the change channel buttons might be slightly harder now with gloves. The PTT button sticks out on the side so it’s slightly less likely to accidentally press it with the case.

Daniel M wrote:

Here ya go: 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1M1XYQCfH85Q_1cN93whQ07sGJc6FQfhZ/view?usp=drive_link

Feel free to use/make this/give it away, but please don’t sell it commercially. Standard disclaimers apply - this is released with no warranty and if the carabiner loop breaks and it falls on your partners head, it’s not my fault. That said, they’ve been plenty robust for me.

This was designed to use the petzl Ange but lmk if you want a different sized carabiner hole. 

Huge props to Daniel for sharing the file. Had a friend print 4 for our coming trip to France. FYI, the biner hole works great for 19g.

Here’s a brief picture of mine, I need to do some adjustments before I’d be happy either giving or selling to people, but works very well currently 

One thing to consider is maybe adding a drop of glue to the stem of the volume-on/off knob? Our first day using them the knob slid off at some point and is mia. And it wasn’t like it was getting pressed on or beat up. Or maybe it was just one that wasn’t a tight fit.

Those M11 look really nice! Does anyone have issues with reception on the M11 when there is a lot of rock between the belayer and the climber? 

 I have been using these Boafeng mini radios with great results,. They are even able to use the Rocky Talkie privacy tones, but they are a little too thick in my opinion. I do, however, like that I can lock the channel so that I can hand it off to anyone without a lot of instruction. I 3d printed a little guard for the volume knod (I used abs high temperature plastic) so that they don't accidentally get the volume turned down. I also 3d printed a carabiner mount out of TPU flexible plastic, that mounts with 3M VHB double sided tape to the back of the radio. 

Caleb Hils wrote:

Here’s a brief picture of mine, I need to do some adjustments before I’d be happy either giving or selling to people, but works very well currently 

Does your case fix the volume knob issue? I find that to be the only problem with the radios. There's just so little resistance in the knob that it can easily turn itself on/off or lower the volume without knowing.

just ordered a pair of Midlands with the ear pieces/ head sets.  will be searching for a method of attachment... 

Has anyone thought of keeping the radio in a chest pouch with handset? The midlands I just ordered come with head sets. Wondering if they will work for climbing?  We saw a guide in Canada with a head set but don't remember where or how the radio was attached.  

Mike Larson wrote:

Does your case fix the volume knob issue? I find that to be the only problem with the radios. There's just so little resistance in the knob that it can easily turn itself on/off or lower the volume without knowing.

That was the goal of the piece on the upper right, it needs some adjustment in the design to really work but seems promising 

Just got back  from a 12 day road trip. We did not use the Midlands for sport days but did use them on the 4 trad days. Communication was a breeze despite 50mph winds on two of those days.. 

and out of sight leaders. 

The only problems were from bumped settings. The midland buttons were easy to bump when actually climbing with a full rack in varying terrain. Chimneys, corners etc.  Part of this could be alleviated by actually having both parties RTFM so that when the settings get bumped we would both know how to get back to the correct setting. I do not recall having any of these issues at all with the rocky Talkies. The Rocky Talki buttons are protected?  I see the solution being to buy more accessories like chest pouches and handsets. That will drive the cost up to what the rocky Talkies would have been in the first place.. the Midland head sets are useless for anyone not sitting at a desk so they are off the table. Fortunately they came free with the set.   The Midlands are also considerably more bulky than the rocky talkies.  I think if I did this again I would buy the Rocky Talkies. 

Additionally on a crowded mountain the only folks I heard screaming into the wind were the ones without radios.... 

Has anyone tried one of the longer antennae options on the TD-M11 to boost range? How'd it work and which one would you recommend? 

Noting that I am asking for a paragliding use case where one person may still be on the top of the mountain to get comms with a pilot who may have just landed 2-5+ miles away.