Walkie-talkies for object communication at the fire service

What types of walkie-talkies are there?

For the use of walkie-talkies in object communication at the fire service, you generally have 3 different choices of types of walkie-talkies. This is purely about the technology that is used for the transfer of speech and data.

TETRA radios
TETRA is also the technique used for the C2000 network. If you use these walkie-talkies in TMO mode, they can also be connected to the C2000 network. However, you can also program them in DMO mode so that mutual communication is possible. The speech quality is very high, but the devices are generally slightly more expensive and more extensive. They have a display and many keys.
DMR walkie-talkies
These two-way radios cannot communicate on C2000 and can only communicate with each other. The speech quality is slightly less than with TETRA, but has been improving in recent years. The devices are made to be used in environments where people work with gloves and have large buttons for operation. There are models with display and models without display. The walkie-talkies have an emergency button and say, for example, which channel they are on.
Analog radios
Analog radios are no longer made, but the devices that support DMR (above) also work in analog mode. The speech quality is natural and easily recognizable. The big disadvantage is that communication can be overheard and you cannot see in the display, for example, who is speaking.

What should I pay attention to?

Before purchasing walkie-talkies, it is important to investigate which technology you are used to. It is important to request a demo set from us and to test it with the different walkie-talkies.

In practice, we see that the combination of walkie-talkies, shoulder microphone and earpiece is unique and provides its own audio experience in the different setups. It is important to test this.

Most shoulder microphones have a Nexus connection. This is generic and almost all suppliers of earphones work with the Nexus connection. If there is a replacement process in the pipeline, it is not necessary to immediately replace the helmet ears. If it uses the Nexus connection, this will also work.

What kind of helmet ears are there?

In most cases we use Savox helmet ears for communication. There are the following types of earphones:

skull microphone
Short boom microphone
Ear Microphone
Long boom microphone

Some regions choose to only use the shoulder microphone and not use earphones. When using the earphones, it is important to ask the helmet supplier for an assembly statement. Do you already have earphones and are you going to buy new helmets? Then state in the tender that you must be able to place the different ears in the helmet. In some cases, the helmet supplier limits this to their own earphones only.

What is our advice?

As end users, we believe we should keep it simple. Provided the sound quality meets your requirements, we are therefore in favor of DMR walkie-talkies. This is for the following reasons: