CHEAP/GOOD PMR 446 RADIOS WANTED,ANY THOUGHTS PLEASE

[WARLOCK]

ME and 4 or 5 mates go out in our 4+4 moters and would like to keep in contact with each other for safty ,we are never far apart say 1 to 2 miles anyone recomend any cheap but good radios if they excist ???
warlock ---26TM 134 ---Mr George from Wisbech cambs

[Farty]

I go green landing and shooting, and pmr handies ain't up to it. Either get some cheap cbs, or do what our club did and get a VHF PMR licence.

[Admiral]

Depends on if you wish to be strictly legal or not.

[thelad]

Cheap Chinese 5w VHF handies and a £75 3 Year job from Ofcom.

[kr0ne]

If you're in your motors, probably the single best improvement you can make is an external antenna...

PMR446 radios don't have antenna sockets, so you would need to consider a proper PMR handheld instead, used legally with a license or otherwise. There are a ton of "micro magmount" antennas available cheaply though and around 446MHz they are very unobtrusive.

Something like this: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/2m-70cm-Micro ... 2Reui4hznA

Really does make all the difference with vehicle to vehicle comms.

[zippy]

if your inside a vehicle then its like being in a faraday cage, signals struggle to get out, that's why a car is one of the safest places to be in a thunder storm.

[radiosification]

I think CB would be far better suited to this job. You can get sets for very cheap these days, and magnetic antennas that you can easily remove.

[paulears]

Many poplar 4x4s have aluminium bodies - magmounts might not be that handy? External aerials are the solution. 27/166/455 - all fine over these distances. Dinky aerials, inside vehicles with low power - not going to work reliably.

[Mudslinger]

I tried an external PMR antenna on the roof of my car with my Baofeng (It was about 18" long with a small magmount) and it performed pretty much the same as the longer Nagoya rubber duck used inside the car.

My reason for this is that the coax on many of these PMR magmounts is pretty rubbish, and it cancelled out any gain from the antenna.

[108EH002]

I have used a UV5R plus handset and a NR770S antenna on a triple mag on the motor,and got a lot further than 1-2 miles,mind the adapter for the connection between the handset and antenna but.

[NiCdeth]

Many poplar 4x4s have aluminium bodies -...

You can say landrover, it's OK...I think.

A dodgy mobile PMR446 with external antenna will have exactly the same RF performance as simple light UHF, they are only 3MHz away from each other. Personally I would go down the simple light route, as thelad said. You can then decide on which band you want (low/high VHF or UHF or all of them) and you can run any antenna you like. Also, the build quality of some of the business band gear is on a totally new level to CB, in many cases.

*edit weird formatting

[LeakyFeeder]

I often go greenlaning in my Landy... Tried alsorts of radio combinations (cb, vhf,uhf, 446)0 but eventually we settled on fixed UHF sets in the motors with 5/8 thru body stud mounts...and we all now have as our PR, bumfengs 888 sorted by me...
Range is great from the vehicle sets n once we demount then simply use the £10 bumfengs...

From.the top of Holme Moss on my Bumfeng i can get Leeds n just about York....

[albrecht]

The Midland G7 is a very good legal set. There is also an antenna kit for it if you want a larger antenna.

[MW6ZAN]

Ok if you want to keep things legal the binatone 1100 twin pack works well has dsc and ctcss encode decode 0.5 watts up the rubber duck antenna radios are well built dont feel cheap and work very well argos carry them and price wise think they are under 50 pounds for the twin pack i have used them and worked aok for what they were intended for but they are only the 8 ch pmr freq. 73 -•-