Cobra Microtalk Two-Way Radio

I just purchased a Cobra microtalk two-way radio model LI 6000 WX

Originally I was just looking for a simple walkie talkie that my wife and I could use, there have been a couple of times recently that she was not able to find me the last time she claims that she looked 25 minutes in Wal-Mart and the time before 20 minutes in Target.

Both times I got in a lot of trouble for not being found in a timely manor. At Target she had an employee make an announcement over the PA system that I needed to come to the customer service area.

That’s when I decided I was going to try out one of the two-way radios and see if that would help us out when we were shopping.

I found an ad for a Motorola two-way radio for $69.99 that has an advertised range of 12 miles, but I ended up going to Frys and I found a Cobra for $49 and it has an advertised range of 17 miles.

So I figured that 17 was better than 12 and 50 dollars was a better price that 70 dollars so I decided to buy the Cobra radio instead.

After getting the radio home and looking through all the buttons and reading the owners manual for a while I realized that I had a lot of questions about this thing.

The manual has 30 pages of really small print, I have trouble reading it even with my reading glasses on.  Hopefully your eyes are younger than mine are, or you have some good 3x reading glasses handy.

Found someone complaining about the power output with this Cobra LI 6000 WX model

It looks like the FCC allows a Maximum power of 0.5 Watts.

Here is Some FCC Data on the Cobra microtalk two-way radio:

FCC ID: BBOLI6000

FRS Power Output: 0.06 Watt ERP GMRS Power Output: 0.372 Watt ERP.

Both Power output numbers are FAR below legal limits on power output. So you can plainly see these radios are certainly not powerful.

FSR = Family Radio Service.

This is a low power FM service with 14 channels that operates at approximately 462 MHz.

GMRS
• General Mobile Radio Service.
• This is a higher powered FM service with 8 duplex or 16 simplex channels that operates at similar frequencies to FRS.
• Maximum power of 50 Watts.  Can have separate antenna.
• Advanced sets can be used with relay/repeater stations to give greatly increased range.
• For personal use only, not for business use.  FCC license required.

CB
• Citizens Band radio.
• This is an AM service with 40 channels that operates at approximately 27 MHz.

MURS
• Multi-Use Radio Service.
• This is the newest of the four services, and is an FM service with five channels operating at approximately 153 MHz.
• Maximum power of 2 Watts.  Can have separate antenna.
• Most expensive type of radios (currently) but will probably come down in price as becomes more popular.
• For business and personal use.  No license required.

Privacy Codes
A partial solution to the annoyance of lots of other people talking on the same channel is the use of so-called privacy codes - known as CTCSS or DCS (Continuous Tone Coded Squelch System or Digital Coded Squelch, if you must know!). This enables you to tell your radio receiver only to listen to particular transmissions, and to ignore all others. There are 38 different CTCSS codes and 83 different DCS codes available for each radio channel, making it easy for you to assign a code to the people you want to talk with that probably no-one else will be using at the same time.

Although these codes are sometimes referred to as 'privacy' codes, they are NOT privacy codes. They don't stop anyone else from listening in on your conversation. They only stop you from listening in on other people's conversations! If someone else is on the same channel, but without activating their CTCSS/DCS feature, they can still hear everyone's conversations, no matter what type of coding they are using.

There is also a potential problem with these codes - you might not realize that someone else is using the channel before trying to use the channel yourself.
If you have GMRS radios, you need to give your official call sign every 15 minutes or so,
CTCSS (Continuous Tone Coded Squelch System)

More about this radio

• Cobra microtalk review
  My thoughts after using the Cobra two way radio for a couple of weeks.
  
  
• Cobra microtalk LI 6000 WX
  Cobra microtalk my first test run using these two way radios, they worked pretty good.
  
  
• microtalk Cobra two way radio
  Cobra microtalk features and specifications
  
  
• FCC license Cobra 6000 WX