CB and other comms

I fired up the Yaesu FT270 yesterday and heard two OMs on the local 2M repeater speaking English and not computer speak!

Lambert wrote:

Soeley wrote: I have THIS comes with the car kit.

Soooo. If that has a car kit I could use my burner through the car then?

Sorry you've lost me. You want use an unregistered mobile phone?

No I have a cb signal booster for my now very dead old fixed car cb. Looking at the pictures of the car kit you linked it has a screw type coaxial connector for an external aerial so it could be run through my signal booster?

Linear Amplifiers!! Lambert, you're an old Pirate!! Go get a Ham Licence!

Lambert wrote: These uv5r sound interesting but being ham do they need a license even if they are on pmr446? My knowledge of this is currently somewhere around 1992 when I was last reasonably involved. I had a share of a pmr round the nc500 a couple of years ago and it wasn't awful.

You don't need a licence to own or receive on any (Ham) radio set. You only need a licence to transmit on certain frequencies and output levels. So you can legally buy and use these within reason.

The PMR446 frequencies are free to use without a licence. So if you configure the handset to those channels you would be fine (quite easy to do, but does rely on you being sensible).

Technically PMR446 is restricted to 0.5mW of output. These handsets can operate at 4.0 or 1.0mW via a setting or I have heard of people modifying them also. You also aren't meant to be able to remove the aerial on a PMR446 set. However I have asked in several places what the real world difference between 0.5 and 1.0mW would be and I'm yet to get an actual answer. While it might be a 100% gain, I believe it is a bit like going from 20p to 40p for a bag of crisps. Effectively hardly any real difference. I do not believe you would double the range with double the output. Just have slightly better performance.

I would hope that as long as you are irresponsible, it should be no problem. Just as I'm sure lots of people might do speeds of 75mph on dual carriage ways, despite there being a 70mph speed limit.

Midland do offer a fully certified car based PMR446 set. Which is what I'm thinking of putting in my Jimny. Only issue is, as the aerial can't be detached, it will make routing and fitting difficult, for no real reason other than a poorly thought out regulation.

www.thunderpole.co.uk/licence-free-busin...ios/midland-gb1.html

GeorgeC wrote: Linear Amplifiers!! Lambert, you're an old Pirate!! Go get a Ham Licence!

it's only 4w which was good on my ancient 1w midland. Having been reading the information provided on the Alan 42rs it seems to do 4w anyway so my burner would be redundant.