Caribbean Cruise

[Jim1348]

My family and I will be going on a Caribbean cruise this winter. We have four Nextel Motorolas that I plan to use on Direct Talk. For those of you that have used these and are familiar with how .6 watt would perform on ship and on islands, will this probably be good enough or should I consider some Motorola DTR650s? I suspect that with a full watt they would out perform the Direct Talk Nextels. Also, is it even legal to use either of these anywhere in the Caribbean?

[MT2000 man]

There has been a "using two ways on a cruise " thread back in 2003 I believe ( just search for "cruise" and you'll find it, I know this because I started it ).

When we took our cruise back in 2002 I bought along my Sp50, MT2000, and we also had an old school sport 7 ( .5 watts ) as well. The range was phenomenal ! We heard eachother throughout the entire ship ( and this was the biggest cruise ship at the time, the Voyager by Royal Caribbean ), and even the .5 watt radio was able to reach through all 15 decks of the ship with zero issues.

Since there was no cell reception, we all left our cell phones home, and used the radios almost exclusively.

Ok, I found the thread about radios and cruises here : http://batboard.batlabs.com/viewtopic.p ... lit=Cruise although the one I started is probably in the archives somewhere.

Also, FRS is SUPER packed with all the other families using it as well. So pick a higher channel, and mix it up with a PL tone.

[Jason]

Leave the uhf at home, the frs/gmrs band is loaded, especially in port. The direct talk on the older iden units works great on the ships. You can get up to 3 to 5 miles or further in the right conditions.

[Jim1348]

Thank you very much. That is exactly what I needed to know. Part of me wants to buy the DTR radios because they are 1 watt on 900, but knowing that I don't need to helps immensely. I guess I won't worry about the legality of these.

[N4KVE]

I'd use some 4 watt UHF radios if you have them. I recently took a cruise, & they worked all over the ship. While I did not compare the UHF radios, & Direct talk Nextel units on the ship, I have compared them in open areas, & the Direct talk gets 1/2 mile, & the UHF radios gets 2 miles. There are plenty of other freq's to use besides FRS/GMRS as they are all being used on a ship. 100's of FRS radios, & so few freq's. Remember, in open sea you're not in any country. However, in port you are, so I'd be mindful of that. You don't want to be using the same freq as some little island dictator. I have also had excellent results between 2 900 GTX handhelds, but UHF still seems to win. Enjoy the cruise. GARY N4KVE

[JustinMoon205]

UHF 4 watt radios work better than anything else. I use UHF Visars. I cruise frequently and have tried the DTRs, the Nextels, 900mhz simplex, and UHF simplex. The UHF works better than anything else inside the ship and on-land. I use a UHF itinerant business band frequency and have never heard anything else on it all over the caribbean and in multiple ports. BTW, the Motorola DTR radios (the ones with the SMA removable antenna) did work better than the Nextels with the direct connect). One note, the Nextels look like a cell phone and not like a radio, so will attract little to no attention, verses a two-way radio. I have never had a problem with the radios on a ship, except once on a Royal Carribbean ship. When the radios went thru the metal detector in the departure port the security pulled them and had them "inspected" by the radio officer of the ship. It turned out nice for me, I ended up with a tour of the radio room onboard. Nice! They gave a crap less once they made sure the radios were not monitoring or transmitting on the ships coms channels. Have fun!

[Jim1348]

.....BTW, the Motorola DTR radios (the ones with the SMA removable antenna) did work better than the Nextels with the direct connect). One note, the Nextels look like a cell phone and not like a radio, so will attract little to no attention, verses a two-way radio. I have never had a problem with the radios on a ship, except once on a Royal Carribbean ship. When the radios went thru the metal detector in the departure port the security pulled them and had them "inspected" by the radio officer of the ship.....

That is one of the other issues I was thinking about. Now that you mention it, on a previous cruise years ago I had a Kenwood transceiver with me. They, too, inspected it. I explained that it just worked on amateur radio frequencies and they were satisfied with my explanation. I have sort of even kicked around the idea of one (or more) of the Nextels with a fixed antenna. I know the i325s had a fixed antenna. I think a couple of others may have had fixed antennas, too, but then we are back to the point of them looking like radios rather than cell phones! I do recall reading that the i325 with the fixed antenna had better range, though.

EDIT: http://www.ebay.com/itm/i315-i325-i355- ... 3f1215c204 I see at Ebay they list:

i315-i325-i355-i365-i605-i615

However, I have a couple of i3i5s. They didn't come with the fixed antenna, but you can swap it out. Does anybody know what iDen units came with an OEM fixed antenna out of the box? I think maybe it was just: i325, i325IS, and i365IS, but I am still looking for verification. Also, does anybody happen to know how the i365IS would compare to the i325 or i325IS? Are they as rugged or more rugged than the i325s?

I guess there is the r765IS, too, but I suspect they still get a good price on these.

[Jim1348]

.....UHF 4 watt radios work better than anything else.....

I just thought I would do a follow up on this since we just returned from the cruise two days ago. The ship we were on was the Carnival Magic. At 4,500 passengers, it is certainly not the biggest at sea right now, but it is a decent size. I pulled the SIM cards from the GSM phones and told the family to use the Nextels on DirecTalk during the cruise. The Nextels worked okay most of the time, but I certainly did not have solid coverage all of the time. For example, there would be times where we would get the Out Of Range "bonk".

Although we don't have another cruise schedule right now, I suspect my wife and sons would be all set to do it again in another year. Which means I have time to plan for what I want to do next time for communications. I suppose I can do nothing and just get by with Nextels again next year, get some Motorola DTRs, or get straight UHF units. Both my wife and I are hams, but neighter of my sons are,a t least yet. My 16 year old has some interest and certainly could pass the Amateur radio exam. I suspect that by the time we would be ready to take another cruise he could be licensed, if I encourage him. It would be an interesting experiment to have a pair of dual or multi-band ham transceivers with dual displays to compare band performance. I suspect that 70 cm would beat 2 meters hands down. I don't know what is out there for ham 900 units. though.

I also will give more consideration to the point made about units not looking like radios. Even though it certainly doesn't matter to me, if it draws less attention from the ship's crew and makes the wife happier, then it is a good thing!

[motorola_otaku]

I guess there is the r765IS, too, but I suspect they still get a good price on these.

Cheapest I've seen one on the used market so far is $800. Since SouthernLINC isn't going anywhere any time soon there's still a market for them.

Some of the Caribbean islands use the 900 band for GSM cellular (as does all of Europe, the UK, Australia, and Japan) so check first before using DTR radios or DirectTalk.

[Tom in D.C.]

Jim 1348 wrote above:

"I don't know what is out there for ham 900 units. though."


Alinco has a new 220/900 mHz HT which is now in the ham stores.
A friend of mine has one and it seems to do what is expected of it.

Regards,

[scoops]

We went on a cruise in February and used Nextel direct talk with 4 units. They worked great. A couple of dead spots especially from front of the ship down through multiple decks . A lot smaller and convenient than carrying a portable radio.
Chris

[Jim1348]

I wonder how difficult it would be to increase the power to one watt? Or, for that matter, if the increase would even make a noticeable difference? I guess my other thought is to get some more with a fixed antenna. I think that might be better.

[N4DES]

We just got back from a Disney cruise and that had 2 phones per cabin they called Wave phones. It was free and utilized the on-board cell system and we were able to both call or text message anywhere on the ship. It was also utilized by the staff to alert us of things on board and when we left our 5 and 8 year old with the ship staff they texted us when they had enough and wanted to leave the play area.

I'm sure not all cruise ships have this, but it allowed me to leave the radios at home.

Mark

[545]

I've been on several Caribbean Cruise's, Panama Canal Cruise, and Alaska Cruise. My group has always taken along our handhelds, programmed for the GMRS half channels, which we are licensed for here in the US. I usually set up about 4 to 6 channels (using DPL) in case we get some interference or somebody actually has the same channel as us. No problems so far. In fact, you can purchase the bubble pack radios on most ships. Very expensive.

[KE7JFF]

Frequency wise, remember where the ship is registered too. FRS/GMRS isn't much an issue as the Bahamas where most cruise ships are registered, allows FRS/GMRS, but that might an issue for ham.

[Jim1348]

Jim 1348 wrote above:

"I don't know what is out there for ham 900 units. though."


Alinco has a new 220/900 mHz HT which is now in the ham stores.
A friend of mine has one and it seems to do what is expected of it.

Regards,

Thank you for the tip on the Alinco DJ-G29T. The website shows that it will do 2.5 watt on 900 mHz. I suspect that would work even better than the Motorola DTR550s in that case.

[N4KVE]

Thank you for the tip on the Alinco DJ-G29T. The website shows that it will do 2.5 watt on 900 mHz. I suspect that would work even better than the Motorola DTR550s in that case.

Since I use 900 every day, I am on the Yahoo 900 user's group. The people who have purchased the Alinco radio report that while the radio will put out 2.5 watts while plugged into a 13.8 power supply, you would be lucky to get 1.8 watts on battery power. 2 of those radios on 220 would probably work better. GARY N4KVE

[jmr061]

This is a topic that I discussed here two years ago, but we are going on another Caribbean cruise, so just in case anything has changed, here goes. My family and I will be going on a Caribbean cruise this March. What would people here suggest so that we can keep in touch while aboard ship? Also, both of us are licensed amateur radio operators.

Bumping this for Jim1348 as he started another topic on this. The new topic was removed.

Jason

[scoops]

Went on another cruise in Feb, 2012. We had 13 people in the group. We used 10 nextels on direct talk with about 95% coverage on the whole ship. Now that nextel is decommissioned , there's tons on ebay for cheap.

[Jim1348]

I am still giving though to the difference between:

Motorola DTR550 1 Watt Vs. Nextel Direct Talk .600 Watt

In the world of a cruise ship , how much further would 1 watt from a DTR communicate compared to .6 watt on Direct Talk?

[RFguy]

The antenna will make a difference. The DTR comes with a choice of a stubby (3" or so) or a whip (6" or so). What does the Nextel have?

[Jim1348]

A retractable antenna.