Bushcraft comms/radio

[Barkbat]

Any recommendations for walkie talkie type radios that work well in the woodland and countryside?

To be used by kids and adults for keeping in contact with base during wide ranging games.

I've been looking at some of the Motorola ones and there's quite a few different ones on offer. Whilst i have an amateur license, the persons using the other set don't so it would need to be license free. Has anyone on here used anything that might fit the bill for me?

Andy

 

[The Lord Poncho]

Baofeng BF 888 would be a good start (2w output, very simple to use, relatively rugged, good battery life, and around £12 - £15 each), but wouldn't fit with your 'licence free' requirement if you have a strict personal code on that. To be honest, there have been a few threads on here in recent times on the subject, so searching the forum under 'radio' may hopefully throw some up.

Baofeng UV5r, Puxing 777 etc are other choices, but again are above the uk licence free (PMR446) requirement for having only 0.5w output, although you can set them to work on the PMR channels. So if you are in the countryside, especially in woodland, even with around 4W output you will only get a mile or two, and be very unlikely to congest the licence free channels for other users (the reason for the 0.5 w limitation).

PMR 446 (i.e. UHF, 446mhz) is the standard stuff sold in e.g. argos for the likes of what you need it for. As you have an amateur licence, you will already know that handheld CBs aren't really suitable due to the huge antenna length required to hit 1/4 wave (and anything like efficient performance).

I know of at least one Scout event that uses a load of radios on PMR 446 channels, coupled with a more powerful base station radio running from mains power with an external antenna.

 

[JPL]

Get a Simple UK business radio licence. Available from Ofcom at only £75 for five years (£15 per year). This licence allows you 5W on quite a few VHF frequencies and a few UHF frequencies. Nominally, you share these frequencies with other users. In practice, I find that outside large urban areas, there is very little other traffic.
As an amateur, you'll have no problems programming a sensible selection of frequencies into radios of your choice. The Baofeng range, and their clones, are excellent starter radios and backup sets. They are so cheap that the risk of losing one won't give you a nervous twitch.
Depending on terrain, UHF or VHF may give you better mileage. But, as his lordship points out, trees seem to soak up radiowaves like a sponge, especially in the green season.
If you have the budget, by all means go for Motorola, Icom or some of the other top brands. The extra power (most are 5W) will help. And don't dismiss refurbished business radios, which are dropping in price as many professional users are going digital.

 

[Barkbat]

Cheers for the info ;-)

These radios would be used in scouting events as well as personal messing around in the woods. Given me things to think about ;-)

 

[Barkbat]

Just messaged you, not spoken in a long time, under a different name ;-)

Cheers for the kit ideas, i've not really considered the Baofeng kit, mainly because of radio snobbery, but if you think they're worth considering i'll have a look

 

[rorymax]

Another vote for Baofeng.

 

[forestwalker]

I've used cheapo "wlkie-talkes" bought Claes Olson (IIRC) a few years ago, and they work surprisingly well (we use four of them when running courses) and cost on the order of UKP 10 each.

For quality stuff I would get the hunter style radios that are quite common here (moose hunting is a team effort, so we use smallish walkie talkie style radios). Generally quite rugged, showerproof, rechargeable batteries, better antennas, etc than the cheap stuff. But they cost at least UKP100 and up. Something similar to https://www.amazon.co.uk/Icom-IC-F2...7?ie=UTF8&qid=1466046837&sr=8-7&keywords=icom but with a real (say 50 cm) antenna.

No idea about UK rules