A concern for anyone who is on the road for more than a day or two is finding a way to stay in touch with people we love or being able to get help in case of emergencies. Those who are full-timing, of course, find this even more important.

There are two main methods to stay in touch - a cell phone and a CB radio. Each of these has its own advantages. and each is used in different situations. "Either is better than nothing," reminds one of our members, "but having both greatly increases the probability that you can get help when needed." If you have to choose only one, however, perhaps these advantages and disadvantages will help you decide.

A major advantage of a CB radio is the ability to keep up with road and weather conditions. Many members keep theirs on channel 19 if they are unsure of road or weather conditions ahead, or if they are bored and the trucker's conversations are interesting, Of course this does mean you have to listen to a lot of irrelevant material. One member solves this problem by saying "We may leave the CB on, at fairly low volume, in case someone wants to contact us (to tell we have a flat tire on the trailer, or whatever)." It does interfere with conversations or listening to music (or as one member put it, "It is difficult to listen to NPR News and Big Duke Good Buddy at the same time," but that may be only a minor irritation.

Other members like the ability to communicate with other members of their party. If several rigs are together or if you have a car being driven behind your RV, using the CB is a good way to pass along problems or announce upcoming exits. If everyone selects a channel that is not widely in use, you can even use the radio for casual conversation (remembering, of course, that everything you say can be heard by anyone who is monitoring that channel.

Another member uses his CB to help park. "For us, the major use of the CB is for communications between the driver and the navigator while backing the rig into a difficult campsite or backing the rig out of a driveway onto a busy street, or similar situations where the driver's visibility is limited. We have a permanently installed CB in the truck and a small inexpensive hand-held CB to be used by the person outside."

What about obtaining help in case of a road emergency? At one point, CBs were the only method, but with the advent of cell phones, it is less useful today. As one member said, "You have to be conditioned and well practiced to consider the CB useful for day to day driving. The guy who only picks it up once every 5 years and tries to get some info will be frustrated. You gotta be able to hold your mouth just right, use the lingo correctly (read bad English) and show the right aura of respect on Ch. 19. This takes practice. You don't want to come across as a professor asking the class where the nearest Wal-Mart is. Any type of demanding tone or false urgency is easily detected and ignored. On the other hand, a nice female voice will get the attention of any trucker within miles!"

Of course if you are in a "dead cell" area, your CB would then be your only way of getting help. We broke down on one of our first trips and had no reception. We used the CB to get a trucker to stop. He was kind enough to drive me to the next exit where I called for help and then took me back to the rig. Since my 93-year-old mother-in-law was with us, I sure would have hated to walk!

The problem, of course, is that not everyone on the road has a CB, and even those that do may not have them turned on or on the channel you are using. Thus even if you don't need a cell phone to stay in touch with your family, having one, at least for emergencies, is good insurance. The good news is that you don't even need to subscribe for a cell service in order to use a cell phone for emergency service. As one member wrote, "I guess everyone knows that any cell phone can be used to dial 911 without paying a monthly charge to a provider. That bears repeating -- I've been surprised at how few people are aware of it. In my part of the world used cell phones litter the tables at yard sales and flea markets because nobody seems to realize that they are still usable in emergencies -- so they go for pennies on the dollar. As a matter of fact, yesterday I bought a complete (working) Motorola cell phone outfit, including battery and charger, for $11! Anybody who doesn't already have a cell phone ought to pick up one of these used bargains just for emergency use."

In many areas, in fact, you can also make other calls if you have a credit card. An operator will come on the line to take your credit information and make the connection. It is expensive -- I paid over $3.00 a minute for a two minute call -- but if you need to call your emergency road service or touch base with home, the ability to make contract would make the cost unimportant.

In fact, some folks even use two phones, a pocket phone they keep in service for daily needs and the more powerful bag phones as an emergency back up. It costs nothing to keep the bag phone in the closet and they are powered with a 12-volt connection, so you don't need to keep a battery charged.

If you want to stay in daily contact with folks back home, of course, you will need a cell phone and a service provider. Which type of phone is best and which provider to use is outside the scope of this FAQ, but this comment may give you some ideas to get you started: "We have a cell phone for emergencies. I keep it plugged in and on when we are traveling. That way if someone needs to get ahold of us, they can just call. The cell phone is a digital/analog one. That way I can use it wherever we are. I wanted this type for that reason alone. The digital is only good in digital areas. And that means any metro area. I want to be able to use it out in the wilds of Nevada, Arizona or Texas. I have only used it once for a road service call. The rest of my calls have been someone looking for me."

Another member uses his phone much more often. "The cell phone has made it possible for us to stay in contact with our families. They can call us when they want. We can call them from almost anywhere. If I had to choose between the two [CB or cell phone], I'd keep the cell phone for sure."

One way to save a little money is to have an 800 answering service (or use your own answering machine if you are not full-timing). When you come into a campground, use a pay phone to check your messages. The cell phone need only be used when a pay phone is not convenient (or when you are in an area that is covered by your service plan so that the call is included in your "free" minutes).

What about those hand-held family radios? Their range and limited channels make them useless for emergency calls, but some folks do use them to communicate between driver and assistant when backing up (or between rigs when caravanning). Even there, however, a CB will prove much more useful and little more expensive. "We also have a pair of FM head phone radios we bought at Radio Shack to help with parking and hooking up," wrote one member. "Besides being pretty unreliable, we soon discovered they shared a frequency with those baby monitors people place in their kids' rooms. Several times we couldn't get a word in edgewise because diapers were being changed somewhere. We're getting good enough at backing and parking and hooking up now that we don't think we need an FRS radio."

If you really think a hand-held family radio will work for you, however, you can eliminate at least part of these problems by getting a more expensive model. As one member points out, "True FRS (Family Radio Service) radios are not guaranteed against interference, but they use a frequency band that is reserved for family two-way communication--no toy cars, kiddie walkie talkies, telephones or baby monitors. Thus you are much less likely to experience the kind of problem described here with FRS walkie talkies." To ensure you are getting the type that has fewer problems, be sure not to get a 49MHz device, for this frequency is shared by many other types of equipment.

One last possibility: a Ham radio. One of our folks writes, "It is not true that only CB will work. For those willing to spend the little time it takes to get a Ham license, 2m FM is an excellent option with no per/minute cost. Not only can you maintain clear and reliable communication with other Hams, but if (as we did last year) you run out of fuel in the desert, most areas of the country will have repeaters that can be heard by Hams hundreds of miles away. Most Hams are helpful, courteous and more than willing to make phone calls for you. In fact some repeaters have phone patches so you can talk directly from your vehicle.

Like cell phones, 2m radios are not useful when out of range of a repeater or another receiver on your frequency, but coverage is roughly equivalent to cell phone coverage and often better in remote areas.

There you have it: Instead of choosing between the two methods of communication, realize that each has its advantages. To find out traffic conditions (when you are stuck in a three-hour traffic jam, for example), to get directions to the next gas station (or to find out where a full-service garage is located), or to request emergency help in the middle of the mountains where a cell phone cannot penetrate, only a CB will work. But to play it safe, have a cell phone handy (even if only a yard-sale model for 911 calls) for times when no one picks up your CB call. In this case, you really can have your cake and eat it, too!