Years ago I used to manage a wilderness Search & Rescue Team. Most of the members were not Amateur Radio Operators. We used FRS (Family Radio Service) radios for intra-team communications. They do not require a license and are all channelized alike. They were simple to operate, cheap, readily available and worked quite well at the distances that we worked from each other. We used them for many training events as well. If one broke, we tossed it and bought another one. (Actually, we kept several spares in stock.)
Today, I still find them quite useful if I need to communicate via radio with non-amateurs, but I seldom use one anymore. Most of my local radio communications now are by way of an inexpensive Baofeng UV-5R or some variant of it. Like the FRS radios, they are cheap so I won?t mind too much if it gets lost, stolen, or broken.
It makes it easy to keep a spare available.
In a recent post, pkveazey mentioned giving an HT to a neighbor. I have to admit that I have a ?few? extra FRS and Baofeng radios that I bought specifically to be distributed and used if I need to be able to communicate with neighbors in a normal comms-out situation. I originally bought them with the idea of passing them out to neighbors in the unlikely event that we have to defend our neighborhood or something similar.
I like the FRS radios for this because other than inadvertently turning the volume down or accidentally changing the channel, it is more difficult for a non-operator to screw up the radio as can be done on a UV-5R or similar with so many buttons to push.
Having said that, I find the UV-5R variants much more useful. I just spent all morning digging out my stored radios, charging the batteries, and reprogramming them so that they all have the same frequencies/channels in them. I found that some had been stored with no programmed channels. With the channels all the same, it will make it easier for inexperienced folks to learn to use them when needed.
