Date Posted:Tuesday, April 14, 13:18:53 Author:Hot Dog Subject: Re: Non UK - more powerful PMR kit In reply to:
diydave
's message, "Re: Non UK - more powerful PMR kit" on Monday, March 24, 7:55:47
To say that 5 Watt radios are no better that 500 mw radios is just not true. What most people do not realise is that short range communication at UHF frequencies is often by multiple reflection off of buildings hills etc.
I am a keen cyclist, often doing 50 mile rides around the country. For the last couple of years my friends and myself, who incidentally are radio hams have tried various types of radios to enable us to keep in contact if we are split up.
The obvious choice was 70 cm, but for various reasons, mainly the size and complicity of the equipment they were found to be unreliable and unsuitable.
We then tried Motorola T5512 446 PMR radios, which although they were physically suitable, they just did not have the power to communicate much more than line of site and we found that when we got split up we were also no longer in radio contact.
The answer to the problem came when we got Midland GXT700 GMRS radios from the USA which are 4 watt. We can now be sure of being in contact over a range of one mile on average terrain, but nothing is going to work if you have a big hill in between.
We did a side by side test cycling on a canal path and found that we soon lost contact on 500 mw 446 PMR while reception on 4 Watt GMRS was still good a couple of miles down the tow path. We have used these radios all over the country and never heard anything on any of the channels, we only use them for cycling about half a dozen times a year. Another good thing about them is that you do not suddenly get screaming kids come up on the channel.
My experience with these radios has lead me to belive that we need a system in this country like the USA, were some of the channels are 5 Watt.
