As it say’s, I need comm’s for family adventures. What’s the collectives experience of what’s on the market. I want small, light, weatherproof, huge range, easy to use, long battery life, etc, etc – so shouldn’t be too hard eh?! 😉

Legal walkie talkies are pretty much a waste of time. Range is about a kilometre in ideal conditions, and even in woods (let alone forests) you be hard pressed to get better than 200m.

Mobiles are nearly always better

Of course a mobile is better. Until, of course you happen to find yourself somewhere there’s no coverage. And you don’t need to be in the middle of nowhere, either. Take Avebury, for example. There is no coverage at all for some distance around there, and, in any case, a kilometer is quite a distance in a wood, Savernake Forest near Marlborough isn’t that huge, but it’s still easy to lose kids there, and a walkie talkie is much more useful in that sort of environment, quite apart from not worrying about having to top-up several phones, and the kids using up their credit texting their friends. Maplins do a variety, so it might be worth checking them out, as well as amazon. The Motorola ones are supposed to be about the best, but try google for on-line reviews.

Doro WT87 seems to have the longest advertised range. I think the problem is that they’re all hampered by UK/EU legislation about transmitter power.

Get some of ebay. Lawfull limit in UK is half a watt. You can find them at 5 watt on ebay with a theoretical max range of 20 miles. I got some 4.5 watt Midland ones off there a few years back, and they’ve been good. They had a max range of 12 miles – but this is in perfect conditions, so even with these, you’ll rarely do better than 2 miles. As has been said, legal one’s are pretty much a waste of time – you’d do well to speak to your next door neighbour.

30 mile max even:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/MIDLAND-GXT950VP4-2-TWO-WAY-RADIOS-WALKIE-TALKIES-30-Mi_W0QQitemZ200312696718QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUK_ConsumerElectronics_SpecialistRadioEquipment_SM?hash=item200312696718&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=72%3A1690%7C66%3A2%7C65%3A12%7C39%3A1%7C240%3A1318

My understanding was that anything over 0.5 W had to have a licence. Also, anything that doesn’t work on the PMR 446 frequencies, will get you in trouble with the powers that be. You could end up transmitting over the frequencies of some importnat people if you’re not careful.

I use Motorola 5522 and they’ve been fine for what we get up to on the bikes. We also took them to Canada recently where we shouldn’t have been using them due to public frequncies not being the same overthere. However, the advantage of only having 0.5 W is that the range is short enough to not upset anyone else.

In this country, you’ll have to stick to the PMR 446 and the limited range unless you’re willing to pay for the frequency.

We just love unnecessary laws in the country. Who’s it gonna bother, who’s out with a wattage detector, how they gonna catch you?

You could be blocking the emergency services by using an illegal walkie talkie. Very clever indeed

It’s serious head up their arse types like you that makes me want to leave this country. Yeah, I’m a real menace to society with my Walkie Talkies – but for what it’s worth, I’m not sure they even use the same frequencies, cos I’ve never heard them.

Weird. I’ve just bought some. Bought these for my daughter as a birthday present. I’ve bought them mainly as a toy but if they work well enough when we’re camping etc (which they should) then all the better.

Tlkr T3

Steve – please do. Britain would be a better place

I got a set that is near useless in most conditions, as most legal ones are, with hindsight I’d get a powerful set that is illegal.

As if he is gonna be blocking emergency services without even hearing them.

Get a grip.

Just coz you feel inferior with your weedy sets that wont work at the end of the garden. 😛

Thanks for the invite Jeremy – if I can afford to, maybe one day I will. On the other hand, if all self righteous, we need the government to tell us what to do types like yourself left, and made room for some Spanish – who’s only concern is the joy of life – I wouldn’t need to.

We had a leaflet for a branch of Lidl that’s opening near us this week.
There are some in there for £10. Says range is 4km.
Might be worth a punt.

Erm I don’t want to spoil a good argument but of course you can actually get a licence for a more powerful walkie-talkie (up to 5 watts). Current fee seems to be £60 for three years (but Ofcom is in the process of simplifying the system so things could change).

Steve – good luck finding a country that doesn’t have licensing for handheld radios. Congo maybe?

I find the legal ones are perftly adaquate for mountain biking around the Peaks or the Alps.

What about the flip side view. Imagine you’d decided that the licence free limit output types were not for you so you’d played by the rules and done your research and paid a licence for a frequency just for your own use in a certain area and then someone who thinks the rules don’t really matter decides they’re just going to use whatever they fancy because hey’re special in some way and the rules don’t apply to them.

I don’t for one minute imagine you would be messing with emergency frequencies but what’s wrong with playing by the rules? There’s a huge demand for signal space so the powers that be have come up with a system where there are some frequencies you can use free with certain (power) restrictions and if you want more power (read range) then you need a licence so that can keep track of who is using what and where. That way, if someone needs interference frees comms, they can get them.

Imagine the mess if people treated traffic rules with the same disregard! Oh, hang on, they do, and they make a mess of perfectly usable systems where everyone else is inconvenienced because they’re “special”.

My only regret with this post is that I seem to be argeeing with TJ.

Back to the OP.

I’ve used cheap Motorola ones whilst skiing and they were great. However if some trees get in the way then the range drops to a couple of hundred yards. The Gadget Show did a test (the video is on their website) which compared analogue to digital, and the digital worked very well, but they weren’t cheap.

I bought some Motorola T5622 a few years ago. They work fine for us. But then again I don’t need something that has a 20 mile range.

I got some Binatone ones a couple of years back – Terrain 550 or some such. Not had the best opportunity to try them out for the holiday location I had oin mind when I bought them, but they were in a sale, and the time I did try ’em they seemed to be more than sufficient for what was required.
If I remember right, they claimed a range of 8km (on level ground with the wind behind you)

the professional set from maplin electronics have a range of 10km and are well made

It’s serious head up their arse types like you that makes me want to leave this country.

Its ‘Rules don’t apply to me’ types that make me glad I did.

Must revisit that ‘Things that annoy you’ thread

Jings, I only wanted some advise! Stirred up a right hornets nest. Oh, and I do believe in legalised freqs for higher power, up in my neck of the woods “bumping” into the various other legit VHF users i.e. my friendly mountain rescue gang with a rogue transciever would be a BAD thing…

Motorola XTN 446 is what I use, bit bulky but used with a ptt/fist mike it’s fine. The newer digital ones are even better. Get good reception, and use them for work too with a Bowman headset, transmit and receive clearly over my 18 acre woodland paintball site, even work in the underground bunker my airsoft site is in, with 12 foot thick chalk walls!

Much to the wife’s annoyance, I bought myself a set of Motorola TLKR-T3s last year. I wanted them for photography purposes after a few frustrating sessions – mates waiting further up the trail, me sat next to jump/berm/feature getting my camera settings right, mate flies past at high speed cursing my state of unreadiness..

Didn’t really use them in anger ’til last weekend in Balquhidder – there was the usual slow group, fast group thing going on and the range varied between a couple of hundred yards and a couple of clicks, terrain dependant.

As we were staying in chalets a few mins walk apart, they came in handy for abusing each other apres-ride too.

Cost was about £20 from some dodgy Sheffield mail order outfit. Absolutely spot on for areas of no phone coverage.

SteveTheBarbarian – Member

We just love unnecessary laws in the country. Who’s it gonna bother, who’s out with a wattage detector, how they gonna catch you?

I thought that until i discovered that frequencies outside the PMR446 band are used for all kinds of important services. Look it up on the web. I even found that certain heart pacemakers operate within the frequency range of some of the chinese radios available on ebay (400-470Mhz).

I’ve been using various PMR446s for skiing and biking for ten years now. They can give good range depending on conditions; line of sight 3 miles no problem. In a forest: as little as 50ft!

Higher output won’t make a proportionate difference in range, but it helps when there are lots of others sharing one channel. Get a radio that has CCTSS filtering or you will hear everyone else on each of the 8 channels. CCTSS gives you 38 audio filters, so unless your group’s sets are all on the same CCTSS channel, you won’t hear anything. CCTSS is designed to allow multiple groups to share a channel. These days in ski resorts you’ll find things get very crowded.

You can get Midland G7’s which have an additional 70 LPD channels that are legal in France and Italy (maybe other countries too, but not here in the UK). The UK versions have the LPD disabled, so if you are off to Europe, you have to mod. them by soldering/desoldering links. Takes about 10 mins a radio. You can also mod these radios for a 1w and 3w output on all channels instead of the 0.5w. The downside is that they are quite chunky, but i get round this with lapelle speaker/mics. http://www.thunderpole.co.uk/midland_g7.htm

GMRS and FRS are for the US and Canada only and operate on different frequencies. GMRS strictly speaking require a license because they are a higher output. I mention this coz ebay often lists these when you type in pmr446. PMR446 is illeagal in the US.

Motorola make good quality radios, as do Cobra. There are loads of makes out there. Entel are very good; http://www.zorg.org/radio/pmr446.php
I prefer drop in rechargeable sets so i don’t have to faff about with batteries. Most should be NIMH or LiIon these days, so no worries on battery life – 2 days between charges with reasonable use.

I must be the biggest PMR annorak on here!

I am the biggest PMR annorak on here!

I have just gone and bought a pair of binatone terrain650 radios from argos.They claim to be 10km.
This is the best set of these that ive had so far, so far my furthest contact on them has been roughly 8 miles from a hilltop.
Tesco sell some cheapy radios for about 14 quid claiming 3km. (2 miles)
For that sorta money i think they would be worth a go.
All of the 446 radios are limited to .5 of a watt (unlicenced) even though some claim to be of longer range.
Possibly fitted with a more eficient antenna.
Incidently even using 4 watts or more if you are amongs obstructions your range will be very limited.
Another thing using 4 watts out in the countryside is less dangerous than running half a watt next to an ambulance.