We have the radio because it radically simplifies our ability to communicate with all the support people. A big advantage of the radio, as opposed to using a cell phone, is that one person talks and everybody hears it, whereas on a cell phone, one person talks and one person hears it. They’re well labeled.
Although cell coverage is a lot better up here than it used to be, there are still a lot of places where cell phones don’t work very well. Mobile relay radios work very well for us. They provide good service both for long-term operations and also if you need them for a special event such as this. This is a 5-day event: 335 miles in 5 days on bicycles. We had 27 riders this year and it was very, very helpful to have two-way radios. We had very good coverage, even in a couple of places that surprised me. They provided the radios for us and a talk group for us to use. Safety and communication are very, very vital for an event like this because if somebody gets hurt or gets lost, we have to go find them. Having a bunch of people out looking makes it a lot easier from a safety standpoint. The more you can communicate with people, the better. Over the course of the ride, we have riders spread out as much as 30 or 40 miles, with support people scattered along the same 30 or 40 miles. We had about 10 people along the course who were driving or parked somewhere almost all the time. Very often, somebody will ask a question and they’ll ask one person, and then somebody else is able to answer: “No, I saw that rider at this location.” That’s something you can’t do over a cell phone. When you have an issue, being able to communicate with everybody on your team simplifies things and greatly increases safety because you can communicate and everybody knows what’s going on, as opposed to just one or two people. There is no radio system that has absolutely 100% perfect coverage—welcome to reality. These have worked quite well and they met our expectations and needs. The full relay system worked very well for us and I recommend them.
