Wales trip 9th to 11th June

[SteveJB]

Looks like one of Bruce's where's my Landcruiser photos

 

[Rob Cowell]

Hope you've all learned how to say Bannau Brycheiniog

 

[stumog]

Result we have been granted permission by the Elan valley Trust. Trip is going to be good

 

[Gr8Yota]

Well done!

 

[stumog]

Getting close for this weekend the farmer called me in the week and said they have a music festival going on the Saturday night but will be done by 10pm.

Also can everyone try and have a cb working or bits to install the Saturday night. I will have got one by then also.....

 

[Gr8Yota]

Oh! Bet it’s not 10pm…

I have HAM and PMR (spare inits for the group) but no CB I’m afraid

 

[Shayne]

Mate of mine into his HAM radio says CB is like opting for black and white TV .

He likes to listen to shipping and he lives 3 miles from the coast , sure its just a cheap walkie talkie like thing he uses . I will talk to him later today .

 

[stumog]

Shayne I have uhf also and that is far superior to CB but like ham you need some form of licence.

 

[stumog]

Oh! Bet it’s not 10pm…

I have HAM and PMR (spare inits for the group) but no CB I’m afraid

Sarah maybe that you pass the pmrs on your group and we can have people with cb on mine but will depend

 

[Shayne]

Licence obtained instantly by putting your name and address into the correct OFCOM page . I have to do it as a legal requirement for the boat and a few months back during safety inspection one of the failed Admirals noticed my address was 10 years out of date , he was ever so pleased with himself that i spent 2 minutes on my laptop to edit in a new address

 

[Shayne]

Mate recommends Baofeng UV5R and stresses with data cable and disk so you can set channels on a computer so to remain legal without a licence . About 25 quid all in .

I probably missed half his babble because i can't get excited about this stuff but i like the idea of a handheld with 3 miles range that can live in a drawer at home when not needed .

 

[Towpack]

I've got a couple of Chinese made Wouxun's for 4m, V and UHF and they represent good VFM IMO compared to the usual Yaesu/Icom/Kenwood offerings. Many of the Chinese UHF radios will cover PMR straight out of the box although not strictly legal.

 

[Gr8Yota]

Mate recommends Baofeng UV5R and stresses with data cable and disk so you can set channels on a computer so to remain legal without a licence . About 25 quid all in .

I probably missed half his babble because i can't get excited about this stuff but i like the idea of a handheld with 3 miles range that can live in a drawer at home when not needed .

I have the same unit. My understanding of all these units is that whilst yes you can programme them to the PMR licence free channels they are too powerful to be legal to use, I think the max is 0.5W and most of the Baofeng type units are 3W (don’t quote me on those numbers). Even with a basic foundation license for Ham you are limited to power output.

 

[Shayne]

Quoting text from my mate

Set Baofengs to low power and then legal and licence free for ,PMR 446 .

half watt is legalpower for PMR in UK and when fully charged on low power these will fluctuate between point 5 and 6 .

Only two licence free options is whats described or CB .

Range is seriously reduced on low power though .

 

[stumog]

I was looking at this earlier and think I can programme my uhf to pmr so may have a play when a pmr is close by

 

[Towpack]

PMR was only ever intended as a cheap, licence free, channelised short range radio option for use by anyone. The cheap "walky talkies" you can buy for £20 use PMR. Only PMR specific equipment should be used so using higher power UHF radios with the power turned down is still not legal, in the same way that using wide banded HF equipment for CB use is also not allowed. Wide banding equipment isn't illegal in itself, my HF radios were wide banded when I bought them and some dealers even offer the service but using them to transmit "out of band" is. I guess the reality is that the chances of being caught are slim.

 

[SteveJB]

Looking like Friday night is going to be a who's who's who's on this channel radio tutorial on tuning radio and do I get one of those BungFun radios for a Bun Fight so now begs the question who is allergic to dairy

 

[Gr8Yota]

No one’s mentioned ‘Zello’ yet….

 

[SteveJB]

Gr8Yota thinking I will wait for an explanation on that cuz Don wannabe klassed az stoopidd even though I am

 

[stumog]

Shame trev isn't coming as he is the radio guru of the group...