About Two Way Radio  
and Communicating  Two-Way Radio 101  -Fred Stock

Radio equipment is certainly available through our company, TaxiCabElectronics.Com (Fred Stock Electronics).

You first need to consider what coverage you will need and with what terrain you are dealing. Is your area very hilly with clients in valley locations that might be shielded from radio coverage? If you are located in a mountainous region this could make or break your system.

 Here is the basic course – two-way radio 101:  Radio systems come in several flavors:

1) The normal “conventional” radios you probably are thinking about – the mobile unit in the car and a base station at the office/house. These will work well if your area is fairly flat and open. If you had said Kansas, I could immediately give you a model number. The mobile units will run between $200 and $600 each in most cases.  

2) Repeater units are radios that work through a hilltop “repeater” or “relay” unit. It stands to reason that you can see hilltops and peaks from a long way off, but you cannot see the people in the valley on the other side of the mountain. You could put a guy at the top of the hill, holler a message up to him, and he could holler it to the people on the other side, - Relay!  Radio signals work about the same. So what you can do is contract with a local company providing “repeater” services – a powerful radio transmitter and receiver combination at the top of the appropriate hill (or hills) – that can relay messages from your cars through their service to your base or other cars. The mobile units will run about $400 to $750 each for most. Repeater systems usually make use of handheld radio equipment possible as well. The portable units are low power but they can reach the hill-top transceivers which them come on the air with a powerful signal and cover the region.  

3) The third option today is a multiple-based system like cellular, PCS or Nextel. These have numerous towers – you have seen them with the funny vertical bread-loaf shaped antennas pointing in a circular or triangular combination – these are hooked together by computer controls so that wherever your cars are located, they should be near one of the towers, and the system hands the call to the proper routing by radio-telephone. If your terrain is difficult to cover seamlessly, that may be your most practical answer. If that is the case, ask people that are using the systems there about coverage and holes in the system. Delivery people, service folks like plumbing companies and other transportation services may have the experience with those that will tell you what works and what does not in your area. The units run from a few dollars to several hundred depending upon local service companies and promotional deals. You are basically talking cellular telephone type services, here. Nextel or similar offerings may have combination phone and two way radio in one unit – depends upon your area and companies there. By the way, prices and system requirements vary greatly so these figures are only a general idea for your consideration.

Licensing is another consideration. A two-way radio system must be legally licensed through the federal government. Of course, if you’re buying that type system from us we can help with that. Fred Stock Electronics has  licensing people in Washington DC and licensed engineering people on staff if that were to become necessary. If you are working with a repeater system or the cellular type systems, the licenses are held by the companies providing the services and you need not be concerned with them at all. (We have F.C.C. personal licenses that were issued decades ago. It feels like the license number on the first one was probably in Roman numerals or Sanskrit. Anyway, we can help get all that plowed through.)

You are welcome to contact us (760-345-4347 or fred@taxicabelectronics.com for e-mail) with any other questions or ideas. I trust this gives you some idea about the two-way world. We also handle taxi meters, toplight signs, checker tape, and so forth – you can see it all at our master website, www.TaxiCabElectronics.com . Thanks! Blessings, Fred

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