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Need to get three walkie talkies to cover up to about 3km in open countryside. Will need to have headsets as well. Any recommendations? Am somewhat bewildered by the range and cost variation! I guess at that distance we need to get licensed ones?
Something PMR446 would do - look at Kenwood or Motorola
up to about 3km in open countryside
What do you mean by "open"?
PMR446 is limited by line of sight, will probably struggle at 3km.
Maplins have a pretty good range
IGMC....
I've got a set of Motorola TLKR T40s that will cover about that distance, but like gobuchul says, you're limited by line of sight. They're cheap and cheerful (and license free)
Thanks all, line of sight should be ok, for their current intended purpose (extended visual line of sight drone stuff FWIW) will only be 750m-1km apart. The 3km was a number plucked out of my head based on potential other uses going forward.
VHF/UHF generally is line of sight due to its nature.
Anyone any actual experience of who they would work for mountain biking in the UK.
Like when we lose one of the group in the ride round the woods and end up yelling / waiting / riding back along the trail looking for them.
How do they cope in trees, round corners and up/down the small bumps we ride our mountain bikes on.
How do they cope in trees, round corners and up/down the small bumps we ride our mountain bikes on.
Badly.
Trees will break up the signal.
Corners will block signal.
Go for an analogue system, you get more some interference, but with the digital you get either all or nothing. Better some garbled words than none at all.
I looked at this before Christmas and ended up buying some second hand Motorola TLKR80 off ebay. The 60 would do the job too though - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Motorola-Talker-Walkie-Talkie-Radio/dp/B00FXLHA3G
So basically a mobile phone in the UK is probably way better.
(or a bit of string between the fastest / slowest rider)
hanks all, line of sight should be ok, for their current intended purpose (extended visual line of sight drone stuff FWIW) will only be 750m-1km apart. The 3km was a number plucked out of my head based on potential other uses going forward.
use the drone as a relay.
Badly in the woods, better up the hills, not round corners.
Its probably best to assume that licence free (PMR 446) use is line of sight, up to about a mile or so, and anything better than that is a bonus. So for OP's drone application (what are you actually doing?) they might well be fine (line of sight straight up?).
Trees are likely to affect RF propagation (how much exactly is hard to say), but the effect is greater at higher frequencies (e.g. GPS signal gets lost in the woods quite easily). Your other consideration is the power of license free transmission (0.5 W isn't a lot to lose).
You could perhaps consider a directional antenna for better reception if you knew where your friend was likely to be - this is better suited to ferals than Trimix I think.
edit - they can type faster than me!
So for OP's drone application (what are you actually doing?
Drone based terrain mapping. Regulations say drone to be no more than 500m (visual line of sight) from pilot, but you can apply for an additional bit of your permission to use extended visual line of sight so if you had two observers a certain distance apart and in communication (hence walkie talkies) can fly a bigger area which is useful for larger sites
I bought something similar to what GFS recommended in that thread, I think it was the UV-5X which is weatherproof.
Work very well in the mountains, and even to adjacent valleys in the right conditions.
I recently got some Baofeng 6Rs for a sensible price from amazon.
Great bits of kit, come with a headset and can be programmed if needed later on.