Help me choose VHF radios

[Rower1]

My rowing club wants to put a VHF handheld radio in each rowing shell so the coxswain can communicate with our safety boat on our open water rows. The coxs mostly are not familiar with the radios and won't use them often. The distances won't be far, couple of miles at the most, but if we respond to an emergency we might need good range. The radios will be put into their chargers in the boat house at the end of each day's row.

Please help me select radios. This is what I think we need:
--Very simple to operate
--Able to keep the working channel ready, and 16 secondarily available
--dual watch...is that keeping two channels open, 16 & a working channel...that's what we want.
--floating and waterproof
--durable, reliable, not too pricey
--(what did I leave out?)

Are there any suggestions? Recommendations? We have a West Marine store here, and there are always the usual mail order suspects.
Thanks

 

[alldodge]

Welcome
Simple ones like the Uniden Atlantis 155 at about $70

 

[Rower1]

Thanks for the suggestion. That model won't work, it has only a car plug 12v charging cable. I'll keep looking for one that is similar but has the usual 120 volt AC charger. I'll need 3 radios.

 

[alldodge]

@dingbat is the guy with the knowledge

 

[Alumarine]

There's the Standard Horizon HX210 Floating 6 Watt Handheld VHF.
As alldodge mentioned, dingbat is the guy.

 

[dingbat]

Distance could be the issue.
VHF is line of sight communications. For the most part, if you can’t see the other party you can’t talk to them.

A high gain antenna (9db) would improve distance, but the pitch and roll of a small craft would be problematic because of the narrow beam width of the signal.



Depending on the distances, satellite phones may be a better solution