So I’m gonna share a story. In this story I’m a fucking idiot. But I hope that it serves as a warning to someone so they can learn from my dumb mistakes. So I was going out to see some mates the other day in a big state forest near Melbourne.
Decided to take my car (a mid sized AWD SUV) rather than the wife’s small FWD sedan. This proved to be a very good choice. Mind you, my car may be awd but its for like a slightly damp soccer field carpark, not what I accidentally forced it into.
I set google maps on car play and off I go.
Traveling into the park with basically no phone coverage everything going fine till suddenly get told to turn off a decent gravel path onto a side road. No warnings or anything, and again maps said go this way. So I did. It looked OK to start with, but by the time I realized I was was in trouble it was too late.
The road degraded to a goat track and I start sliding down it with no chance of turning around and no phone data to be able to reroute anyway. Maps said I was 10 minutes from meet up point so I decided to push on not really having a choice.
Soon enough i come to a patch of very wet deep tyre tracks. so long as I stick to the high ground I’ll be fine. You can see where this is going, cant you? Yep. She slid straight off the highground into foot deep giant puddles of mud and immediately got bogged.
Chucked the car in mud mode, managed to reverse 2 feet before I couldn’t go any further, put the car back in drive and took off at speed but just got stuck in the same spot again and this time couldn’t reverse.
Now I didn’t panic. That probably saved me. It woulda been easy to accidentally dig her in. My hear beat about 170bpm, but I got out and as calmly as I could assessed the situation. No phone coverage. I walked ahead a bit to make sure I was ok to proceed assuming I could even get out of this mess. I could. Even better there was a downed tree. I grab some branches and stick them under the wheels as best I can. it took about 15-20 minutes. With a dashboard full of warning lights I jump back in and take off slowly, feel it grab some traction in my best Jeremy Clarkson impression scream “SPEED AND POWER” and fucking launch the SUV out of there.
Slowly I proceed to the meet point passing a proper 4x4 who looked at me with shock and horror on his face. A poor little SUV so far out of its depth it wasn’t even funny and an idiot who almost got himself in serious trouble.
I meet at the meeting point and my friends laugh. They approached from another direction and has 0 issues on a smooth gravel road. They all used Google Maps too, it just sent them in a different way for some reason.
So. What did I learn and why am i telling this story? a few key points:
- If your going bush, even on GOOD roads make sure someone knows where you are
- If you start to get into trouble: Reverse. Even if you have to reverse 500m! Dont commit to the fuck up assuming it’ll get better.
- Google maps has no concerns about sending you down tracks that even a dirtbike would struggle with 0 warning.
TLDR: I’ve become one of those “I was just following the GPS” people.
Phone coverage is pitiful in most rural areas, and the death of 3G is only going to make it worse.
UHF CB radios are cheap, lightweight and (as long as you don’t use them while driving legal for anyone to (responsibly) use in Australia.
My number one recommendation for safety feature for any vehicle going into regional areas is a UHF. (Second recommendation is rated recovery points, but these are not really applicable unless you plan on off-roading).
Recovery tracks, ropes, winches can be bought in by whoever is coming to rescue you, but without a UHF, you won’t be able to tell them you need rescuing.
I have a couple of cheapo radios, but the range is so poor that i dont really trust them as a viable comms method, especially in mountanous areas.
What radios do you use? I have 2 baofengs BF-F8+++, and a Radtel RT-470.
The baofeng runs at 8Watt, which is higher than the legal power rating in Australia.
https://baofengtech.com/product/bf-f8hp/
The RadTel is even more illegal at 10W.
https://www.radtels.com/products/radtel-rt-470-6-bands-amateur-ham-two-way-radio-station-256ch-10w-air-band-walkie-talkie-noaa-lcd-color-police-scanner-aviation
The power output of the transmitter is not what gets you range, it is the choice of antenna to match the terrain.
They both allow dropping the tramsmit power below 4w, but who knows what they level actually transmit at. If i were using them for anything more than listening to air-traffic control and the occasional road trip i would be a lot more concerned.
My point about the power was that all else being equal, more power is more range. And given the illegal radios way out power yours, but still dont get decent range is a good indication of how bad their antennas are.
Almost every radio reviewer tests line-of-sight range, which is almost always pretty good, so it ends up being meaningless.
My car is a proper 4WD (albeit small) so I have an Australian-made GME XRS-330C installed with an antenna permanently mounted on the roof.
I have an inexpensive GME TX677 in my glove-box for emergencies and an even more inexpensive TX667 in my centre console as a loaner for anyone I am driving with (for their passenger to use, of course).
I plan on upgrading to an XRS-660 as my portable, but it is at the bottom of my Wishlist.
During the chip shortage, I purchased an XRS-330CP as temporary solution. I loan that to family members on touring holidays so we can use the XRS/GPS feature to keep track of each other.
Speaking of which, the GME XRS app has great maps too!
The dedicated car radio + antenna probably helps a lot. The radios i have are many times more powerful than your radios, but when we have tried to use them hiking, they just dont cut it. They are also half the price of your inexpensive radio, so you get what you pay for :D
Yeah, we have some of the no-name UHF radios in the kids toybox.
We don’t put batteries in them, in case the kids hear something on the airwaves that isn’t suitable for young children.
We have one high-end Chinese UHF in the garage in a box. It was purchased because it could be reprogrammed to pickup all 80 UHF channels instead of just the 40 that were available for public use. It has never been used.