How to: Choose the Right Off-Road Comms System

These days, you can get in touch with someone in a variety of ways. Text messages, Facetime, emails, and direct messages, just to name a few. These are all well and good when you’re in a populated area, but they just can’t hack it when you’re out in the wilderness. Mountains and trees block reception, and some areas are too remote and unpopulated to justify the cost of installing and maintaining cell towers. What’s more, it gets difficult to hear others when the engine is at full blast, tearing through the desert or climbing up steep inclines.

The solution? Off-road communications! These are devices and systems that use radio frequencies to cut through the clutter and re-establish communication between different vehicles, or offer the driver and passengers the ability to talk to each other. Here at Off Road Warehouse, we proudly carry brands like Rugged Radios and PCI to offer customers excellent choices to outfit their vehicles with reliable communications technology.

Many customers choose to get both the intercom and radio setup in their vehicle. Pictured above are PCI and Rugged Radios setups in UTVs .

Let’s explore the ways you can keep in touch with your friends and family while out on the trail, starting with in-vehicle intercom systems. Figuring out which kit you need can get a little tricky, but we’re here to help.

Both PCI and Rugged Radios manufacture kits for normal 4x4s as well as UTVs. For UTVs, you’ll find PCI’s and Rugged Radios’ UTV-specific kits with their own mounting brackets. Both offer stereo versions of these kits, along with kits that offer Bluetooth connectivity to play music or make phone calls (in areas with service, that is). There are some decision points you’ll have to consider, however.

Currie offers products for Ford, GM, Jeep, and Ram vehicles. What’s more, race vehicles can also benefit from Currie’s custom-made services, offering unique axle housings for one-off designs that not only withstand the stresses of racing, but also come with upgrades like high-end brakes and plumbing.

• Intercom only, or radio as well?
• For intercoms, do you simply need 2-way, or more?
• How are you hooking up your voice and audio? That is, are you using helmet-mounted kits, or standalone headsets?

Intercom-only kits are ideal for customers that only want to be able to communicate with their passengers. UTV intercom kits are very common and popular, and as such, both PCI and Rugged Radios make kits expressly for this purpose. For discerning customers that want more, both companies offer radio add-ons that increase the versatility, letting users talk vehicle to vehicle as well as in-vehicle.

Should you decide you’d also like a radio, you’ll have to consider whether you’d like a GMRS radio or FRS radio . GMRS stands for General Mobile Radio Service and uses repeater stations throughout the country to transmit far and wide. These require a business license and a call sign to use, since the frequencies and channels they use can overlap with federal ones. FRS are a step lower, since they operate on a lower wattage than GMRS (2 watts versus up to 50 watts) and a lower frequency range as well. However, their range is not as far-reaching as GMRS.

Put simply, FRS is fine for small groups traveling together across open terrain (e.g. deserts, dry lakes, small sand dune parks, etc.), while GMRS is more useful for harsh terrain (e.g. rock crawling, overlanding, racing teams, etc.). Rugged Radios calls FRS “Business Band” in its marketing terminology.

Now that we’ve covered the basics of communications equipment, you may still have lingering questions about installation, proper usage, and upgrades to consider. We make it our business to guide you toward the best possible option, and yes, we do offer installation services on these systems! We invite you to visit us today to explore more and decide what’s right for you and your vehicle.