What Radio do you use

[Lightspeed]

This looks a very good radio.

Its new to me. If it uses the same menue system as its little brother the UV3R, it'll be a winner.

It'll cover Marine Band VHF, 2m Amateur Band, PMR446 band, and 70cm Amateur Bands.

Be VERY careful though. Don't just start using any old frequencies, this will bring you to the attention of the authorities mighty quickly, especially operating in sections opf the UHF band taht are reserved for military and london security applications. Likewise do not transmit on any of the Marine / Mountn rescue/ Air sea rescue frequencies on the VHF band. After a SHTF event of course anything goes, but for the time being be very careful.

For testing I'd suggest you restrict activity to PMR bands, and listening to the Amateur bands.

Great battery capacity means that it'll have excellent standby time.

Range: Of course variable depending on location. But in good conditions you'll be surprised. My first ever attempts at long distance on VHF vere made using a Chinese 5w hand held of very similar specifications....From the headland above Croyde in Norh Devon, I had a conversation with a guy up in the Brecon Beacons more than 60 miles away.

I'd recommend that you get a 12v power adaptor, BNC antenna adaptor and one of the little dualband mag mount antennas which are also sold on e-bay. These will allow you to keep the units charged in grid-down conditiond ( assuming you have 12v batteries and charging systems?) and the external antennas will help increase range.

FOR INFO: I recently purchased a similar 5w/1w Chinese radio. Mine's a Fedaixin FD880 it works well but programming and operating is excessively complex. If I'd known about this UV5R radio beforehand, I'd have purcased this unit in preference, hoping that the memories could be alpha tagged and that the operating and programming on this UV5R are the same as the UV3R. For non-amateurs, the UV3R programming allows the radios to be set up to be fully functional for future requirements, while remaining demonstrably "innocent" as scanning recevers if challenged by any curent day authorities.

Hope this helps? If you do buy a pair, can you let us know how you find them? Maybe you ca write a short review?