I Want to Buy a Long-Range Walkie Talkie, What Should I Look out For?

Long-range walkie-talkies (which we’ll abbreviate here to LRWT, for short) come in many different shapes and sizes. They also typically boast a wide variety of extra features, such as LCD screens, weather warnings and emergency buttons. It is up to you to decide which of these extra features are worth spending out on.

Shopping for an LRWT is essentially the same deal as shopping for any other kind of walkie-talkie or two-way radio. Of course, you should ignore any claims that the radio can communicate across distances of 30, or even 25, miles, such claims are always to be considered fallacious (as we’ve discussed elsewhere this month). In addition, it is worth investing in a radio that has a ‘privacy’ function if you are planning to use it at a crowded event, or indeed in any place that is likely to play host to a lot of signal traffic.

Remember also that VHF and UHF radios are completely incompatible. DO NOT attempt to buy a VHF radio to go with a UHF radio (or vice versa), just trust us on this.

It also pays to be aware of licensing requirements. Many radios will need to be used with a license, which you can attain relatively easily (and often surprisingly cheaply). It does, however, absolutely need to be done. Of course, an LRWT that is listed as PMR446 (or has a power output of less than 0.5 watts) requires no license.

Other questions you could ask yourself are:

What type of batteries does your prospective LRWT use? Are they AA, AAA or rechargeable (we recommend the latter)?

Is the radio water/shock proof? Does it need to be?

Another consideration is ease of use. In order to be truly effective, a walkie-talkie needs to be easy to use. There is a school of thought which suggests that, the more buttons there are to press and functions there are to master, the less effective the user will be in a crisis. If you can get extra functions that do not otherwise impede the simplicity of layout and use, then you’re probably onto a winner, but otherwise, we reckon simplicity is key.

The most important thing to keep in mind, however, is what you want the radio for. Do not, under any circumstances, lose sight of the task at hand. If you are looking for a professional piece of equipment, many of these decisions must be made with your staff in mind. However, if you’re just looking to have a bit of a laugh, then you needn’t be as picky as we’ve suggested. 

What is Ham Radio & How Does it Work

Ham radio (so called because its operators were originally derided as being ‘hammy’ in the 19^th century, when the technology first emerged) is a term that applies to any form of amateur radio broadcasting.

There are designated radio frequency spectra available solely for public use. Uses range from recreation to communication and the non-commercial exchange of ideas. ‘Hams’ take advantage of these frequencies in order to transmit any number of things

Strictly speaking, there should not be any money involved in amateur radio (hence the term ‘amateur’). Although the majority of Ham radio practitioners are actually extremely knowledgeable about radio technology (don’t let the ‘ham’ part fool you), they are not considered professionals because they do not profit from their endeavours. Conversely, commercial broadcasting involves (a lot of) money: royalties are paid, producers and performers are paid and the whole thing is ultimately a commercial exercise.

Hams use a large amount of frequency bands from all across the radio spectrum, but the majority of frequencies are to be found just above the AM band.

A lot of hams, however, use VHF FM, operating hand-held transceivers that send on one frequency and receive on another. Local radio clubs set up FM Repeaters (which borrow space from other broadcast devices such as towers and, in doing so, amplify the radio signal’s strength hundreds of times over), so that hams can communicate with each other wirelessly over a distance of hundreds of miles.

As an example of what hams get up to, here’s an excerpt from Gary Brown, of ‘How Stuff Works.com’

Although a ham radio does broadcast in all directions, hams generally do not use their radios in a broadcast kind of way as a disk jockey would at a radio station. In normal AM or FM radio, one disk jockey transmits and thousands of people listen. Hams, on the other hand, conduct two-way conversations, often with another ham or with a group of hams in an informal roundtable. The roundtable of hams may be in the same town, county, state, country or continent or may consist of a mix of countries, depending on the frequency and the time of the day. Hams also participate in networks, often called nets, at predetermined times and frequencies to exchange third-party messages. In the case of disasters, hams exchange health and welfare information with other hams.

To become a ham, I recommend that you join a club. You’ll need an amateur radio license, of course, but this won’t break the bank, I’m sure. 

What is the curly tube that FBI Agents wear in their ears

You’d consider that the U.S. FBI (being the United states FBI and everything) would have access to an earpiece a little cooler that just the conventional ‘curly cable’ job, wouldn’t you?

If forced, I’ve to state that I usually imagine a little old fella, like Desmond Llewelyn in the Bond films, (and even a younger example like Ben Whishaw from ‘Skyfall’) making all the devices himself after which explaining them to the agents before they go out and protector the President’s life.

This is simply not the case. They use the models they use as they work and they work well. Fundamentally, wired models continue to be more dependable than their wireless counterparts. With wireless, you tend to get more interference, as well as having to contend with more restricted bandwidth. Essentially, you will need reliable tech when you’re within the field. Lives are at stake in a number of cases.

This straightforward, trusted earpiece might be relied upon to do the job, every time.

Another benefit that wired earpieces have over wireless ones (in this instance, at the least) may be the fact that a wired set needn't carry an additional battery. Wireless earphones would require charging and, as a consequence, would have a somewhat limited operational capability. It just causes a lot more headaches for individuals who, let us face it, previously possess a good bit on their plates to start with.

According to ‘AskJeeves.com’

“The ear piece and mic that the secret service uses is called a Throat Mic. The Throat Mic has clarity that is unsurpassed, great sound quality, and allows for discreet interaction. It also has an acoustic air tube that makes it comfortable when worn for long periods of time”.

The ‘curly earpiece’ tech is really rather common and has been utilized by a number of individuals and organisations beyond the secret service. You can even purchase a wireless version, but don’t expect the FBI to be interested!

I might argue another point, but this is just a pet theory with very little research to back it up. Psychologically speaking, when you see a secret service agent, you recognize them as such without observing them in any form of uniform (beyond a dinner suit, sun glasses and an earpiece), the earpiece, then, is really a subtle reminder to, the civilian, that not merely is this not a regular person in a suit, but also that the area where you now end up is being closely monitored.

With one remark to his/her earpiece, the agent in question can probably call down all the other agents in the immediate area, as well as police, fire brigade and anybody else he/she believes is essential. That subtle reminder is probably a very potent crime deterrent. No guns need to be displayed, no helmets or flak jackets worn and yet y’know that this individual has eyes all over the place and will, probably, really ruin your month. As I said, it’s merely a assumption, but It looks like it makes sense.

Gupta: Cell phones, brain tumors and a wired earpiece

You’ve probably stumbled upon this looking for information about radio accessory’s, hopefully this will help you answer some of those questions, if not please click on one of the relevant links within the article

By Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Chief Medical Correspondent

Just about every time I use a cell phone, I plug in my wired earpiece first. Having discussed the use of earpieces on several news shows, people expect to see me using one. If I am walking around the CNN studios, my colleagues often comment on it. In airports, people will stop me in the rare cases I forget to use the earpiece, and remind me about it. Perhaps, they are intrigued because I am a neurosurgeon who openly shows some concern about cell phones.

Truth is, it is a pretty easy thing to do – using an earpiece. Furthermore, my neck doesn’t hurt after being on the phone for a long conference call, and given that many of those calls take place in a car, an earpiece becomes a requirement. Still, though, I don’t want to dodge the obvious question: Do cell phones cause brain cancer?

It may be too early to say for sure. The latency period or time between exposure and recognition of a tumor is around 20 years, sometimes longer. And, cell phone use in the U.S. has been popular for only around 15 years. Back in 1996, there were 34 million cell phone users. Today there are 9-10 times as many. Keeping that in mind, it is worth taking a more detailed look at the results of Interphone, a multinational study designed to try to answer this question.

The headline from this study was there was little or no evidence to show an association between cell phones and cancer. Though, if you went to the appendix of the study, which interestingly was available only online, you found something unsettling. The data showed people who used a cell phone 10 years or more doubled the risk of developing a glioma, a type of brain tumor. And, across the board – most of the studies that have shown an increased risk are from Scandinavia, a place where cell phones have been popular since the early 1990s. For these reasons, the whole issue of latency could become increasingly important.

Cell phones use non-ionizing radiation, which is very different from the ionizing radiation of X-rays, which everyone agrees are harmful. Non-ionizing radiation won’t strip electrons or bust up DNA. It’s more like very low power microwaves. Short term, these microwaves are likely harmless, but long term could be a different story. Anyway, who likes the idea of a microwave, even a low-powered one, next to their head all day?

And, what about kids? I have three of them, aged 5, 4 and 2. Fact is, they are more likely to lead to my early demise than cell phones. But, as hard as it is to believe sometimes, they actually have thinner skulls than adults, and will probably be using cell phones longer than I ever will.

The first person to encourage me to regularly wear an ear piece was Dr. Keith Black. He also is a neurosurgeon, and makes a living removing – you guessed it – brain tumors. Keith has long believed there is a link, and for some time, his was a lonely voice in this discussion. Nowadays, he has loud and prominent voices accompanying him. Ronald Herberman, director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, sent a memo warning staffers to limit their cell phone use. One of the possible consequences, he says, is an increased risk of brain cancer. The city of San Francisco is trying to pass an ordinance requiring radiation warning labels on all cell phones. The European Environmental Agency has said cell phones could be as big a public health risk as smoking, asbestos and leaded gasoline. Even the makers of cell phones suggest you don’t place a device against your head, but rather advocate holding it 5/8 to a full inch away.

Many will roll their eyes at this, scoffing at the precautionary principle on display here. Fair enough. Still, I like my wired earpiece, and I don’t have to turn my life upside down to use it. I also text and email a lot more, because my kids rarely allow me to have a phone conversation. Speaking of kids, you will probably see mine using earpieces too, when my wife and I decide they are old enough to use one, which isn’t in the foreseeable future.

Rediscovery of Knee Ligament Validates 19th Century Paper

Doctors have discovered that an important knee ligament, first described in an 1879 paper, before being subsequently ignored for well over a century, is actually a very real and important body part.

Anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) tears are a common problem for many athletes. They are notoriously difficult to repair and the recovery is a tough and painful process that can take up to a year. Following treatment, however, many patients still complain of aches and pains and it is not at all uncommon for the joints to fail the necessary pivot-shift tests (performed so the doctors can check the success of their surgeries). Repeat injuries are also inexplicably common.

Last month, it was announced that a team of Flemish doctors appears to have finally solved this persistently vexing riddle and, in so doing, they validated a discovery made over a century ago.

Paul Segond, a 19^th century French surgeon who is known for greatly aiding the development of Obstetrics and Gynaecology (as well as describing the Segond fracture), wrote of the ligament as a “pearly, fibrous band” in 1879. Segond posited that it was an additional ligament, but anatomists did not consider the initial discovery to be accurate.

After reading Segond’s paper and deciding that there may be something to it after all, the team of knee surgeons and an anatomist began investigating the possibility that Segond’s mystery ligament was, in fact, a very real part of the Human body.

The team examined the knees of 41 cadavers, finding that 40 of them actually contained Segond’s ligament, just as he’d described it a hundred years earlier.

With this (re)discovery now published and proven, the ligament has been named as the anterolateral ligament (ALL).

The anterolateral ligament joins the other joint structures in the knee considered most important by doctors and anatomists, such as the lateral femoral epicondyle (LFE), lateral collateral ligament (LCL), Gerdy’s tubercle (GT), popliteus tendon (PT), popliteofibular ligament (PFL), and, of course, the aforementioned anterior cruciate ligament (ACL).

Surgeons are already considering ways in which to repair ALL tears and damage, with the hopes of improving the quality of life for anyone who suffers any ligament damage to the knees. This rediscovery is likely to become a very significant one in the field of sports and athletics, across both amateur and professional playing fields.

SOURCES
http://www.scientificamerican.com/gallery_directory.cfm?photo_id=7737D2E0-994F-A7AD-8721A14249EB4E02

Just what would happen if I ignored the safety advice and used a radio or a phone on an airplane?

(Asked by Rory from County Kildare, Ireland)

Before all you regular readers point out that Margot from Brighton asked me a very similar question last month, let me just say that I’m answering this one simply because of the way Rory chose to phrase his question.

In life, we are constantly bombarded by instructions, orders and indefinable ‘rules’ (some of which are written down and legally enforced, while others still are unwritten and socially enforced). I’m sure I’m not the only one who, like Rory from Kildare, wonders what would happen if some of those rules were to be broken.

Being on an airplane is one of those serious occasions when the people around you enact a greatly heightened degree of safety awareness. Frequent fliers among you will no doubt be able to recite a standard safety speech without too much difficulty. As the cabin crew stone-facedly prepare us for the fact that, in the event of a crash, there really isn’t much we can do to save ourselves, they always make a fuss about radios, phones and related equipment, don’t they?

But why is this? Surely something as innocent as a transistor radio or a cellphone can’t hurt a great big aeroplane, and if they can, why are we allowed to have them with us on the flight?

In truth, that is absolutely the case, your radio/phone can’t really damage the plane in any serious way, (death by text message is not going to be a real issue for you) but amazingly, our handheld devices can cause a few problems.

Y’see, a radio receiver houses something called a ‘local oscillator’, which can act as an internal transmitter. This is usually a small signal that helps to clear up the incoming signal for the listener. However, although these oscillators are usually shielded, it honestly doesn’t take much for the signal to escape and play havoc with aircraft navigation technology. In the vast majority of occasions, this simply will not happen, but is it really worth chancing a freak accident?

Mobiles, however, are a slightly different story. They aren’t really dangerous to aircraft technology at all. It is theoretically possible, but so is being burgled by highly trained chimps in ninja outfits…

Essentially, the problem between mobile phones and planes is a logistic/economic one. The phone will search for signal at 30,000 feet and, in doing so, can chance upon hundreds of potential signals at once. This becomes almost impossible for the phone companies to figure out, making it simply a pain in the backside for the companies concerned.

Since there is also a risk (however marginal) to the safety of the passengers and crew, the ban will likely remain in place until someone figures out a way to charge premium rates from high above the Atlantic ocean, then the ads will talk about how they always put the customer first, no matter what.

Ultimately, however, it just isn’t worth the risk, Rory. So now you know and, as I was reliably informed throughout my childhood, knowing is half the battle.

Out of Africa: Earliest Human Footprints Found in UK

The earliest evidence of Human footprints (outside of Africa, where most experts believe modern Humans first appeared) has been discovered in the United Kingdom.

The prints, believed to be some 800,000 years old, were identified on the shores of Happisburgh, a small village situated on the Norfolk coastline. The footprints represent a major prehistoric find, as they are direct evidence of the earliest known Humans in Northern Europe.

Dr. Nick Ashton, of The British Museum, said of the footprints that “(They are) one of the most important discoveries, if not the most important discovery that has been made on [Britain"s] shores,”

The hollow, foot-shaped markings were discovered during a low tide last year, when unusually rough seas exposed an area of sandy beach.

Sadly, the footprints were washed away fairly quickly, but they were visible long enough to be properly recorded, photographed and studied. Dr. Aston and his team worked hard to document the monumental discovery, even as heavy rainfall filled the tracks, “The rain was filling the hollows as quickly as we could empty them,” he told a BBC reporter.

Fortunately, the team was able to obtain a 3D scan of the prints. This scan revealed that the footprints likely belonged to a group consisting of an adult male and a few children. This has led some experts to speculate that the prints are those left by a prehistoric family group. The scan was so accurate, that the adult’s shoe size was determined to have been a comfortable 8.

Dr. Isabelle De Groote of Liverpool John Moore’s University was the first to confirm that the hollows were Human footprints. She told BBC that, “They appear to have been made by one adult male who was about 5ft 9in (175cm) tall and the shortest was about 3ft. The other larger footprints could come from young adult males or have been left by females. The glimpse of the past that we are seeing is that we have a family group moving together across the landscape.”

The family, however, were not modern Humans. Experts believe that they would have likely belonged to a group called Homo Antecessor. Remains of this extinct Human species (or possibly subspecies) have been found throughout Europe, most notably in Spain. They are thought to be among the continent’s earliest Human inhabitants.

It is generally accepted that Homo Antecessor was either a relative of Homo Heidelbergensis (an early Human considered most likely to be the direct ancestor of both modern Humans and Neanderthals), or else the same species. In either instance, h. Heidelbergensis is known to have lived in Britain about 500,000 years ago, which is about 300,000 years after changing temperatures are thought to have wiped out Britain’s Homo Antecessor population.

Homo Heidelbergensis is said to have evolved into Homo Neanderthalensis (Neanderthal Man), who lived, alongside our own Homo Sapien ancestors, until about 40,000 years ago, when the receding ice (and possibly competition for food) signaled the end for our last surviving sister species.

Interestingly, in 2010, Dr. Aston and his team discovered stone tools of a kind known to have been used by h. Antecessor in Happisburgh. It is a discovery that neatly compliments that of the footprints. This find, and other supporting material, effectively confirms the presence of early Humans in Britain about one million years ago.

According to Dr. Aston, the find will rewrite our understanding of British and European prehistory. To put that into perspective a little, the Happisburgh footprints are the only such find of this age to have ever been seen outside of Africa. Even then, there are only three specimens that are considered to be older across the African continent.

800, 000 years ago the earliest Britons left a lasting mark on the landscape. In so doing, they inadvertently sent us a message from the past about who they were and how they might have lived.

SOURCES:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-26025763

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_antecessor

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_heidelbergensis