Transmission1

You can pick up 446 radios marketed for kids for a couple of quid on Ebay, I have a few and they're often surprisingly good quality.
I was wondering if anyone has tried modifying them for other frequencies ? This is something I intend to look into maybe as a cheap monitor for the local repeater. Has anyone tried this ?

PMR per se can't be modded.

I appreciate modding the radio will no longer make it PMR licence free and I'm not really interested in transmitting. They're so cheap that they could make handy channel monitors for a few quid

Alucard wrote: ↑03 Sep 2021, 20:58 You can pick up 446 radios marketed for kids for a couple of quid on Ebay, I have a few and they're often surprisingly good quality.
I was wondering if anyone has tried modifying them for other frequencies ? This is something I intend to look into maybe as a cheap monitor for the local repeater. Has anyone tried this ?

A few years ago my son in law got hold of a pair of PMR446 radios and asked the same question, I was surprised after some research that the radios could be set to other frequencies by a number of solder links, the alternate bands were legally used in other parts of the world - one of the alternates covered part of the UK 70Cms repeater allocation !

Mike

Metradio wrote: ↑03 Sep 2021, 21:35 A few years ago my son in law got hold of a pair of PMR446 radios and asked the same question, I was surprised after some research that the radios could be set to other frequencies by a number of solder links, the alternate bands were legally used in other parts of the world - one of the alternates covered part of the UK 70Cms repeater allocation !
Mike

Thanks Mike, encouraging news -definitely something to explore further !

I think now it’s just programming. I’d bet that in the factory they plug them in and program in
UK US or other countries allocations. Getting the software would be the thing. Our system, is a bit offset so radios starting a 00 get a bit out of step too. Some 446 channels wont exactly fit some radios.

Why not just get a Baofeng? Cheap to buy, already has lots of frequencies which you can program, can be used with external antennas and is just as legal as a modified PMR

This is an old one, but is all I can remember at the moment so don't go all Victor Meldrew on me guys

The Binatone Action 950 PMR446 radios which I believe are no longer made but you can pick them up on ebay regularly.

They are an 8 channel radio but there is a secret channel 9 available, to access channel 9, hold both up and down buttons and switch on.

The display will say CH9 in the top left hand corner, this will give you channel 9 which is actually 447.005 Mhz


When in channel 9 mode the radio is actually transmitting and receiving on 447.005 Mhz and not what it says on the display.

I have checked this out with another radio and it does work - incredible eh?

Mudslinger wrote: ↑04 Sep 2021, 12:27 Why not just get a Baofeng?...

I've got 2 but I also have a load of 446 radios

Mikel wrote: ↑04 Sep 2021, 18:25 This is an old one, but is all I can remember at the moment so don't go all Victor Meldrew on me guys ...

I've heard that a few radios do that, I don't think any of mine do. Some of them display interesting stuff when turning on and holding various buttons but I haven't investigated any further.

I've got a couple of Wintec (aka Vector VT-44 military ! ) radios which apparently sold for around 150 quid each when they came out. Great radios, sensitive receive compared to all my others. Anyway read on a Russian radio hacking site they could be converted to 255 channel 420-470 Mhz by a combination of soldering pads and holding buttons while turning on. Might be rubbish dunno but messing about with radios is the most fun part of the hobby for me

The little Midland G7 446 radio was the best you can snip the link and make it 4w and also up it to 69ch i still have 4 of them brilliant sets.
But yes it goes on to the amatuer band so if you do anything but listen make sure you have a licence.

Bogget

The WLN C1 is a fixed antenna 16 channel radio that can be programmed with CHIRP. They are about 2w power. I've got a couple of them. I programmed one to hit the local repeaters and made the other one do PMR. They're about ten quid each and use those little Nokia style phone batteries. Great little bits of kit with nice sound quality and enhanced PMR performance being as they're over powered. But from what I can tall there almost nobody anywhere ever on any of the 16 PMR channels anyway so they would make neat little radios for camping, poaching and four wheeling.

Ive modded a few cheapo 446 sets but by far the best ive done is the 16ch Motorola T82 extreme.. bunged on a SMA socket from a busted bf888... went hilltopping at Holme Moss and it was unreal the stuff it eas pulling in n decoding the ctcss..
yup its only .5W but its front end is surprisingly good considering it was hooked up to a 7ft Maldol dual band antenna 20ft in the air... pity it wont drive my Henry amp though as a few more Watts would be nice.

Metradio wrote: ↑03 Sep 2021, 21:35 A few years ago my son in law got hold of a pair of PMR446 radios and asked the same question, I was surprised after some research that the radios could be set to other frequencies by a number of solder links, the alternate bands were legally used in other parts of the world - one of the alternates covered part of the UK 70Cms repeater allocation !

Mike

70cm is an LPD allocation, as long as the power is (I think) 10mW you can go there, legally, without a licence. There is at least one PMR/LPD dual bander which, according to Ofcom, is legit. It includes repeater inputs and outputs, a bit crazy but that's the deal!

If you want to reprogram those cheap sets that share a chassis with wideband units but have half the components absent you'll need to find the JTAG pinouts, and more often than not it's not an unpopulated JTAG connector slot, they could be dotted all over the place. Plus you'll need to hope it's not a one time flash chip as you'll need to read the firmware, recompile and reflash it. With a project like that the fun is the journey rather than the destination as if you start with a crappy radio, you'll end up with a crappy radio on a different frequency.