Bigjed
2013-02-05 10:13:59 UTC
Hello,
Due to the very low power, if you live in the countryside, you can forget about monitoring PMR446 users. Around towns (or in the middle of them), there's hope as many professionnal use these, no licence fees for frequency usage, constructions workers for instance between the guy in a crane, and colleagues at earth level. There's little leisure activity also, montain stuff and so, and parents with children around. There are some forums of PMR446 users to get 'appointments' for a radio contact, as UHF is quite different
from lower freqs, it's an interesting playground.
Fred / France.
Interesting Fred,and very true.I live on the edge of a small (POP 20,000 ) market town and although I own a pair of PMR446 handhelds,AND having had the freqs entered into my 780,I have heard NOTHING!I've only had success once when I copied a guy in Belfast,which is about 25 miles from me.He had announced on a radio forum that he was going to be there.The only thing is,he was on quite a high hill and so was I,and it was a brief copy.I probably wouldn't have heard him had I been lower down..While I was on the hilltop I heard some stuff but mainly kids playing cops and robbers.I'll keep listening though.Due to the very low power, if you live in the countryside, you can forget about monitoring PMR446 users. Around towns (or in the middle of them), there's hope as many professionnal use these, no licence fees for frequency usage, constructions workers for instance between the guy in a crane, and colleagues at earth level. There's little leisure activity also, montain stuff and so, and parents with children around. There are some forums of PMR446 users to get 'appointments' for a radio contact, as UHF is quite different
from lower freqs, it's an interesting playground.
Fred / France.
Gerry,Norn Iron.