This week the crew will be 30 miles east of Seattle to repave and perform maintenance on the bridge over the Snoqualmie River. The road will be closed and flaggers will need to talk regularly throughout the day for the duration of the project. The following week they will be 50+ miles south at the base of Mount Rainier repaving the switch backs on Highway 410. So, it goes, week after week, the crew moves around the Puget Sound to finish one project after another. The crew needs to talk to each other at the site to get the jobs done efficiently and safely. The conditions are tough and often times there is other radio traffic in the area. The crew needs a professional quality radio that can keep up with the day in and day out operations, privacy codes, and in some cases, advanced features like man down or emergency call. Those inexpensive bubble packed radios you find in retail stores aren’t made for this environment. They are family camping trip radios.
Icom’s V10MR is a professional grade radio. It’s waterproof (IP67 rating), military tough (MIL-STD-810 tested), with loud audio (1.5W). Drop it in the mud, rinse it off, and get back to work. The V10MR is a MURS radio, which means it is “licensed by rule,” which is FCC talk for you don’t need a license to operate. And, that is significant. Licensed by rule gives this construction crew, as well as other professionals like event coordinators, landscapers, or any operation with crews traveling routinely, the freedom to take their equipment and do their job without worrying about conforming to FCC rules and regulations.
That’s not to say the V10MR is not good for stationary operations too, like golf courses, waterparks, resorts, or sports complexes. The V10MR has 16 channels that can program the five MURS frequencies. Doesn’t that seem odd? Five frequencies across 16 channels, why? With those extra channels the radios can be programmed with different privacy codes so when you arrive at a site, if other radio traffic is using one of them, you can just switch to another. You’ll get 6 shots at finding one that works. Pretty good odds in most places.
The V10MR also has an easily replaceable, rechargeable, long lasting battery. No screwdriver required. No alkaline batteries to lug along until you need them and afterwards until they are recycled properly. This radio is a professional radio in every respect while staying within the bounds of the FCC MURS regulations.
