Fourth in a series
So you’ve picked out the radios you want to rent for your annual arts and crafts fair, but you’re not done yet. You still have to decide on the two-way radio accessories: batteries and chargers, earpieces and headsets, speaker microphones, and perhaps even surveillance kits for your security crew.
Every radio brand makes a host of accessories for specific radios. Typically, if you can rent the radio you can rent its accessories, but don’t assume. Make sure the model you’re renting has the accessories you need. Also, ask BearCom about after-market accessories that might do a specific task a little differently from the brand-name models.
BearCom has a handy web tool to find all the accessories available for a specific radio model. You start with the type of wireless product you need to rent, then click on the brand and the individual model, and click “Go.” That takes you to a product page for the radio model that includes links to all of its available accessories. There’s also a reverse lookup that allows you to find all the radios that work with a specific accessory.
To get an idea of the key issues with accessories, it’s best to start with a real-world example, so let’s do a walk-through on the extras for the Motorola CP200, a mainstay of radio fleets around the world.
Batteries
The CP200 comes with a battery, of course, but it’s always a good idea to have extras because it takes hours to recharge a battery. The CP200’s accessory batteries come in two formats:
- NiMH (nickel metal hydride), which is less expensive, but also has less power and more complexities when charging.
- Li-Ion (Lithium ion), which costs a bit more than the NiMH version, but provides a lot more power, performance and flexibility when recharging.