Am after some of these so can keep in touch with kids on the beach (after an absolute nightmare last week when I was convinced they had drowned... hysterical woman in the sea not a good look ) . Have been looking on the net but a bit confused... any recommendations.for reliable ones.. would ideally like ones that 'ring' and vibrate when you call them. Also where could I get good waterproof pouches for them to go round neck/arm etc? Cheers for any help.. Sarah x
We bought a four pack of cobras from maplin, not cheap but quite good for line of sight communication , don't believe
the quoted ranges by the way , it doesn't seem to take much to reduce that.
Set a loud call tone and you can normally hear where your kids are !!!!
Quote: Originally posted by DaveH24 on 28/7/2008
We bought a four pack of cobras from maplin, not cheap but quite good for line of sight communication , don't believe the quoted ranges by the way , it doesn't seem to take much to reduce that.
Set a loud call tone and you can normally hear where your kids are !!!!
Dave
Thats a good simple idea dave ...cheers for that M8...
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Lord Scratcher and Lady Jayne
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You tried your best
and failed MISERABLY.
The lesson is : NEVER TRY .
Thanks for all your suggestions and help.. have gone for some from argos on the end (had to use nectar points as cat a bit poorly and have to keep some cash in case of big bills).. hope they will be ok, checked out some reviews and they looked ok... will be charging them up tomorrow and trying out..also ordered a waterproof pouch for the kids' one apparently they can use the radio inside it. Less stress for me hopefully!
i got some from halfords in the end of season sale a couple of years ago, kids had a great time withthem, although they dont use them that much now as they have upgraded to mobiles, and we keep forgetting to put them on charge
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We have now had a chance to try them out and they seem to work fine. OH went up to the Parky (reference that only saw75 will get!) and it worked from there to the house. If we go away on Saturday the kids are really excited about using them.
Just paid £6.50 +£3p.p. on e-bay for a set of 3 Binatone MR 250 walkie talkies ,used but in good conditon.Ideal for when we take the grandchildren camping....
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I know this is an old post, but I have been looking into getting a couple of handheld portable radios, for use at camp and for when out on the bikes etc.
I used to be into CB radio back in the day late 70’s and things have changed a lot since then.
CB it would seem still exists, although is not in much use.
But what I have come across is PMR446 (Private Mobile Radio) legal in the U.K. and no licence required, you can buy a decent radio for as little as £20 and most come with a lithium rechargeable battery which will give a good run time, more than enough for a days usage.
But what interests me is that these new radio’s can use CTCSS which in layman’s terms means only people in your group can contact you, I won’t explain how it works but it does.
Back in the days of CB, you would often get nutters butting in on your conversation and making a nuisance of themselves, which to be fair was fine as CB radio was for all to share and I guess still is.
With CTCSS you get none of that, so that only the other person or persons you know can have a conversation with you.
OK like with CB radio, any man and his dog can listen to your conversations, but there is no way they can join in, it pretty much turns other two way radio’s radios into receiver’s only as far as your conversation goes, and if they attempt to transmit on your channel, you don’t get to here them.
Of course you can get devices to overcome CTCSS but they have to be used very close to the transmitting radio, maybe less than a meter to reveal the CTCSS code, but it’s not the sort of kit a casual PMR446 user would have with them in any case.
Just thought that I would share this, especially as some on this post, mentioned they were getting Walkie Talkies for there kids, CTCSS adds a little bit of safety.
Another option now is to use a walkie-talkie app on your smartphone. http://Zello.com works on iPhone and Android, across WiFi. Haven’t tried it, nor found a particular need for it, if you have the phones and want the PTT capability, it might save carrying yet another box of tricks.
CTCSS (continuous tone coded squelch system) is a way of trying to get more users on to the PMR446 band which only has 16 channels and is applicable to analogue radios only.
PMR446 or Licence Free radios are limited to a transmit power of 0.5watt which considerably limits range. It also severely limits the chance of the radio interfering with any other users in the vicinity and so OFCOM allow it to be in general use without any involvement from them, In town centres and densely populated areas there will be great demand for the 16 available channels.
Analogue PMR which uses CTCSS is now old hat. Digital License free PMR uses DCS codes and co-exists on the same frequencies but Digital radios are completely oblivious to any analogue traffic on the channel so you stand a much better chance of getting good communications using these unregulated available to all types of radio. If an analogue radio is receiving a signal and a digital radio transmits at the same time the Analogue radio user will hear severe interference. If the digital radio is receiving a signal from another digital radio and an analogue user transmits on the same channel the digital radio user will be very unlikely to notice.
Best advice I could give anyone (as a radio engineer of 35 years experience for what it is worth) is stick to Motorola, Hytera or Icom - there are other makes but generally of far inferior quality - you don’t have much leeway with license free so to maximise your chances of good comms go for Digital PMR446 and use a good quality radio.
You will get comms with the cheapo other makes of radio and also on good old analogue but you will get less annoying ‘channel busy’ signals if you use Digital PMR446 and a good radio.
CB radio in this country is FM and portable radios are available on the 27Mhz CB band - for local comms they are effectively ground wave only so line of sight or basically the horizon plus a bit - however they are allowed 4Watts of transmit power (8 times that of PMR446) that doesn’t mean that you will get 8 times the range though. So far as I am aware popularity of CB has dropped off over the years so it may well be that there is less congestion of users on the 40 channels available. Down side is the hand held units are generally much larger than PMR446 equipment and there is no CTCSS or DMR so channels are ‘clear’ if you’re using it and another user comes on you will all hear each other. If you can find a clear channel then happy days.
Hope some of that info is helpful. Any queries I’ll try to help if I can.
I doubt that would work for me morepints as we don’t have smart phones, also we’re we intend using the Walkie Talkies there is no mobile signal or access to the interweb.
Been looking at the Floureon FC200 totally compliment with all the PMR446 regs, and £18 for a pair, although my head has been turned by the £20 Baofeng UV5R slightly naughty like riding an ebike with a dongle, but if programmed with just the sixteen PMR446 channels I can’t foresee an issue, loads of folk mostly off roaders using the Baofeng for years, with no reported run inns with Ofcom etc.
Just started researching PMR446 and never even new of it’s existence until today, so very much still work in progress.
I even came across another brand that included a form of scrambling that gives totally privacy, more so than CTCSS.
Baofong transmit at more than the 0.5 watts allowed. The other thing a radio must do to comply with the PMR446 regs is have a non detachable antenna. According to their advert the Baofong has a detachable antenna. You’d be in trouble if OFCOM happened to catch you using one.
Digital is already ‘scrambled’ as you put it. Add to that the choice of DCS code and you should have relative privacy. There is no encrypted frequency allocation or algorithm available for use by the general public in the UK
All CTCSS does is transmit a fixed frequency tone which opens up the receiver of another radio programmed with that same tone on the same channel. Once the receiver is open any other transmission on that channel will be heard. Without the correct tone the receiver doesn’t open up so you hear nothing. If you try to transmit and the channel is occupied by another user you haven’t heard yet when you push the transmit button your radio will emit a ‘channel busy’ tone and not transmit.
If its a digital radio then it sends a dcs code to open up the receiver so DCS is basically just the equivalent of CTCSS for digital radios.
I would point out though that if you programme the radio to use CS or carrier squelch it will open up the receiver whether there is a tone present or not, digital or analogue so this system doesn’t prevent your conversation being overheard its just designed to let more users use the same channels because the chances of 2 groups of users wanting to talk at exactly the same time is quite low. Radio conversations tend to be short in duration so thats how 16 channels can provide comms for quite a lot of users. Of course in cities this isn’t always the case and so users will opt for PMR using a Simple Site license or a UK General license both have frequency allocations in the UHF band. Simple site 459 MHz and Uk Gen 449Mhz both cost a licence fee of £75 for 5 years allow higher power (up to 4 watts) and therefore greater range. Both are available as either analogue or digital channels. But even these can be congested. However they are available throughout the UK they are handset to handset.
If you a plan on using these in France I’d also check that the French licence free channels are the same as the ones used in the UK or you could run into problems with the French authorities.
Check out the OFCOM website for more information and guidance
One more quick point - range for PMR446 is basically line of sight - anything more is a bonus and can’t be relied on. Both Simple Site limited to 2 watts and UK Gen limited to 4 watts will give up to the horizon type distance provided there is nothing large or metallic in the way. So how well they will work will depend on local topography.
Zello app is fantastic, no range limits as it uses mobile phone data VOIP. You can repeat the last message if you didn't hear it and if you both talk at the same time it plays you the incoming message after you've finished transmitting. It's also free 😍
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Topic: two way radios
) . Have been looking on the net but a bit confused... any recommendations.for reliable ones.. would ideally like ones that 'ring' and vibrate when you call them. Also where could I get good waterproof pouches for them to go round neck/arm etc? Cheers for any help.. Sarah x
via mobile 01/2/2021 at 1:31am
