Need some advice

[Steve]

The 5's are complex, and not very intuitive. On the other hand, you can program your own channels to simplify things. They are very versatile, for example I wanted to use mine for short range comms around the farm without intruding into Ham frequencies, but with some privacy. So I turned the transmit power down, set them to narrow band, and set up my own TX and RX channels in different places between the standardized PMR446 licence free channels. This is not strictly legal, but it means that other PMR446 users are unlikely to hear my transmissions and I am still within a public "space" so unlikely to attract attention.