Isle Royale Forums

Has anyone used walkie talkies to communicate up to 7 miles?

With the terrain and trees 7 miles is very optimistic with consumer grade radios, despite what they may claim. Generally they're limited to a relatively clear line of sight. For a party with different hiking speeds they may be useful, however, I wouldn't count on more than a mile or maybe two, and even then it's highly variable.

Agree with Ingo on all counts. In addition, walkie talkies can be noisy which won't be appreciated in the wilderness.

It's expensive, but you could buy several of the satellite communicators that let you share text messages with others, and use them instead.

Unless you play elevation and directional antenna games you aren't going to get more than a mile or two unless you're on open water on the island in my opinion. The Park rangers HT's are using a repeaters/towers. Even a cheap Baofeng type handheld is really only useful for emergency Channel 16 marine communications & CH16 is monitored by the rangers 24x7. The Wx Station reception on those cheap handhelds isn't very good either, might be better on some or the North side but the south side reception wasn't reliable for me.

Nope, never got close to 7 miles on any walkies. Best we could do is probably 3/4 of a mile

fonixmunkee wrote: ↑Wed Apr 24, 2024 12:35 pm Nope, never got close to 7 miles on any walkies. Best we could do is probably 3/4 of a mile

Agree, I was going to say the same thing. 1 mile would be pushing it under the best circumstances.

No but we did use them at state parks to communicate from the boat to the campsite and even in that case it was spotty at best (1mile max - open terrain/lake). I wouldn’t think they would be worth the weight to carry them.