In europe, this reequncy is free to transit and recieve on.
I recieved one from a friend who accidently ordered too many and sets, and i started playing with it.
They are advertised as having a 3 mile range, but in practive, especially when you are high up the range is much greater (world record for an unmodified radio is 300 miles)
Whats great is the number of random people you can contact, there are always people talking, (there is a function called squelch used to stop people wyou dont want to hear annoying you..
for example, the local tesco uses channel 3, but since i dont know there squelch frquency, although i can hear them, i canot talk to them. but very often people want to talk to someone random, and leave squench turned off.
usually, if i spend 5 minutes scanning, and sending out the occasional rining tone, i can usually find someone to talk to. not for conversation, its more of a challenge to see how far you can have a conversation.
recently, i built a directional aerial... (one of my friends is just out of range of an unmodified radio)
and i managed to contact a man testing a toy walkie talkie he bought for his sons birthday over 5 miles away.
and on one occasion someone in a park over 30 miles away.
They are called PMR466 radio's and are available for as little as £20 for 2, or cheaper used on ebay.
if like me you enjoy taking things apart, and burning yourself with soldering irons, have a look at these toys, they are basically CB radeo for the 21st century.
(ohhh, and they are usefull for other things, (and unlike mobule phones, in the UK it is legal to use a PMR446 radio whilst driving)
