Airsoft International – July 2018

OPEN COMMS MIC CHECK ONE TWO ONE TWO - MIC CHECK ONE TWO ONE TWO

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COMMUNICATION IS THE KEY TO SUCCESS AND WHEN APPROACHING BIG GAMES, QUESTIONS OFTEN ARISE ABOUT

TEAM RADIOS. WHAT ONES TO USE, HOW TO USE THEM AND IF THEY WILL ALL WORK WITH EACH OTHER. WE OFTEN

GET BOMBARDED WITH THESE QUESTIONS (USUALLY ON A DAILY BASIS!) SO HERE’S OUR BRIEF GUIDE ON THE

EASIEST RADIO STANDARD TO USE LEGALLY IN THE UK, THE PMR446 SYSTEM.

The old adage of “buy nice or buy twice”

was never truer than with radios and the

main issue is that unless you can rely

on your radio set up to do it’s job 100%

of the time, you are essentially carrying

around dead weight. A good comms

system should allow you to reach your

teammates and gain a tactical advantage.

If you have to fumble around, stop what

you are doingand fiddle with your handset

the whole concept goes up in smoke. Let’s

take a look at what a solid and dependable

radio system should comprise of.

THE RADIO

If you are going to invest in one piece of

radio equipment it makes sense to start

at the radio itself. Contrary to popular

belief, you don’t really need any more

than a radio handset. Built into all radio

is a speaker, a mic, a PTT button and the

ability to switch channels. Sure, these

won’t be the most streamlined and easy to

access functions but as long as the battery

has charge in it, they'll happily work.

Basically you can pop the radio in a

pouch and listen out for transmissions

from your teammates. Everyone around

you will be able to hear them, including

the enemy if you are close enough, but

this is a radio at its most basic. Running

a radio like this has benefits though. It’s

light, it’s simple and comfortable since

you don’t have anything jammed in your ears or

wrapped around your neck.

There are a huge amount of radios to choose

from, each with features and benefits and

generally, the more you spend, the more

features you will get, often though, with

more features, you will get more complexity.

For airsoft use in general, without a doubt

the easiest radios to get will be PMR446 or

Personal Mobile Radio, 446MHz radios. This

isn’t a brand, this is a category of radios that

uses a certain operating frequency (446MHZ)

that is open for private business or personal

use without licensing. PMR446 radios operate

on a standardised 8-channel system that

is preprogrammed into most handsets, the

channels and frequencies are as follows:

CHANNEL FREQUENCY (MHZ)

1 446.00625

2 446.01875

3 446.03125

4 446.04375

5 446.05625

6 446.06875

7 446.08125

8 446.09375

It makes sense then, that

two radios set to frequency

446.04375MHz (Channel 4)

will talk with each other.

CTCSS AND SUB-CHANNELS

8 channels within the PMR446 range seems

like a fine idea until you imagine that 120

people are all trying to use them at one game,

not just that, but the radio system is also open

to anyone else within the range of your radios.

If you have just 8 channels through which to

communicate you’ll soon find that they will

all be taken up by continuous chatter and any

real communication will get lost. This is where

CTCSS or what is sometimes confusingly called

“sub-channels”, comes in. Thanks to CTCSS

we are able to divide each of those 8 channels

down in to up to 50 “sub-channels”. The name

suggests that the “sub-channels” are more

specific frequencies but they are not.

All of these sub-channels will still be sent

out on, for example, frequency 446.04375

(Channel 4), but the Continuous Tone Coded

Squelch System will allow users to only hear

the transmissions they are interested in.

CTCSS works by prefixing each transmission

with a sub-audible low frequency tone that

the receiving radio will recognise. If the

radio is set to receive transmissions with the

correct “tone code” it will open it’s speaker

and play back the transmission. If the CTCSS

frequency does not match the one that the

radio is set to receive, it may still indicate

that a transmission is being received, but it

will not be played back and will stay muted.

If your radio is set to a certain channel, for

example channel 4, but with no sub-channel

it may receive and play back all broadcasts on

RADIO CHECK!

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