Radios - important? Cheaper options?

We just have a pit board, which in our case is simply a big piece of foam board with our car number spraypainted on one side. I went the fancy route and made a stencil before painting it so the numbers look halfway okay.

We've never found a need to communicate anything to a driver beyond "come in now" via the pit board and even that has averaged about one instance for every three or four races. Our drivers sometimes warn us that they're preparing to come in by holding up a hand with raised fingers for a countdown (four laps to go, three laps...) as they drive past an agreed location, but even that isn't a big deal. Usually our drivers stay out for a prearranged duration (which makes it vital for the car to have a highly visible clock and/or timer) or, if someone comes in early, the underlying issues almost never would have been significantly easier or faster to resolve had we been talking in advance.

Keep in mind all this is from someone who fields one of the slowest cars in the entire series, but I'm pretty sure the absence of radios is not to blame for that.

Motorolla 350/352 radios are darn good. just need a kit to hook it up in the car and good to go.  Just have to have it such that it has clear antenna shot out of the car. I modified mine where I can have external antenna connected to it. Works great overall. Not as expensive as it sounds. I think I ended up in $300 price range to make it all work.
This is like an investment. So going cheapest will end up coming back. Might as well just get correct stuff and be done with it.

You can go as insane as you want with radios. At the end of the day you don't need them, but they're nice to have. Some teams chat away constantly on the radio. My team is mostly quiet. We radio to setup pit stops, and warn of major incidents and not much else.

The easiest way to get radios is to buy a pair of midlands and their motorcycle helmet kit. They work out of the box. They don't cover the entirety of every track, and you'll have a lot of competition for channels. But they work. And if you wait to do all your radioing back and forth for when the car is in sight of say pit lane, you'll be ok.

From there the cost only goes up. Rugged radios sells kits through the Lemons store. Troy (nerdie racing) has been doing radio stuff a long time and can help you out. Please don't consider the grey market radios such as the Baofengs unless you fully understand how to program them, what channels you can and can't be on, and the legal implications of using them without a license. Races have been stopped because of teams inadvertently using an emergency channel for their race coms. It's not a good time for anyone.

We've used a couple different crappy radios. It's worth trying but get something with an earpiece. We mainly used it to tell the driver to come in for a black flag, or tell the crew you're coming in for a black flag.

One alternative I've seen that worked well was a team had something tied to a short rope they could throw out the passenger window to tell the crew they were coming in on the next lap. Can't remember if it was a rag or stuffed animal, but it worked for them.

If you're racing to win I believe you need well-functioning radios.  If you're racing and want to chat for fun, you need adequate radios.  If you are otherwise unconcerned with knowing anything from the pit/paddock and listening to a team mate while in the car is a huge annoyance then radios are a HUGE waste of money that could be better spent on beer.

No radio out there can hit the range it advertises, because all those ranges are in fact for ideal conditions on open water. The motorolas are not better in that respect. I've used almost every bubble pack gmrs radio out there on various group drives, and I always came back to the midlands because their sound quality was better and their range seemed slightly better than the motorolas.

Adding a volume booster is possible and cheap.

Mediocre radios are fine if you work within their constraints. We used midlands for years to great success. We learned what sections of track they could cover and what sections they couldn't and then made sure the car was in those areas before trying to talk. Worked great. Yes the midland connectors were fragile. I replaced those eventually.

Troy's helmet kits are only $25 each.  All his stuff is top notch and he has great customer service.  I've been running his equipment for 7 years and only had one problem and he helped me fix that one at the track earlier this year.  Here's a link to his website...

Nerdie Racing

if you don't know exactly what you're doing, and exactly what will work, just buy a setup pre-made for racing.

We tried to save a few bucks, and ended up cycling through quite an assortment of radios and connection hardware trying to make something work like we wanted it to.   Probably would have been cheaper to just buy a pre-packaged set.    Of course, the good side of making up something yourself, means you can get exactly what you want (assuming it works)

Our setup is that everybody brings a pair of in-ear earbuds, or something else that is comfortable under a helmet.   We have a bunch of cheap head-worn microphones  http://www.parts-express.com/pyle-pmem1 … --248-4474    We stick the cords out under our helmets, and we attach 2 connectors to the car right above the headrest on the outboard side of the seat.    PTT is on the steering wheel, and volume is on the radio itself (a properly licensed Kenwood TK3202)    Works great.   Well, after we worked out all the kinks (which took quite a while)    Earbuds work as earplugs for those loud cars.   Sound quality is pretty good in both directions.