3 ms·

You can definitely do that for the 2 and .75 meter bands. $30 off of Amazon for a BaoFeng. HF and the bottom half of VHF is where you start needing more (expe

by jcims 6y ago

You can definitely do that for the 2 and .75 meter bands. $30 off of Amazon for a BaoFeng. HF and the bottom half of VHF is where you start needing more (expensive) equipment and the antenna setup begins to really dominate performance. The other problem is that you'll go through all of the expense for a turnkey radio, get on the bands and all you hear people talking about is their radio setup.

woofcat 6y ago
>You can definitely do that for the 2 and .75 meter bands. $30 off of Amazon for a BaoFeng. I'm welcome to being corrected, however my understanding is that I'd need a full license to legally broadcast on those bands.
- widforss 6y ago
  Over here at least (Sweden), there are around 10 channels that are allocated to hunting radio and PMR, which you can use without a license.
- jcims 6y ago
  Ah, sorry! I misunderstood what you meant. You are correct. You're likely aware that you can get CB/MURS/FRS type radios without a license, but that wouldn't help that much. It would be nice to have a small slice of each ham band that would be available to non-licensed folks, but the hardware would be tricky, you'd have high physical capability (and cost) but it would have to be locked down to basically a 'slice selector', speaker and microphone...basically what you get with FRS radios. Neat idea though!
  - woofcat 6y ago
    Yeah, I just think it would be nice to have a "non-custom equipment" license. Allow me to buy the BaoFeng equipment with a license based on radio etiquette, laws, etc. And avoid all the test questions about amplifiers, and antenna configuration, etc. The other month in Canada we had a huge outage of 3-4 cellular service providers and home internet issues due to a MPLS failure. Being work from home due to COVID I had no idea how to determine if this was a local level event, or a larger event. I turned on my trusty AM/FM/LW/SW radio. However in the fashion of today's radio landscape they're all multicast of national programming etc. Nothing about a huge outage. Had I a license there are a few HAM guys I know 60 minutes down the road and it would have been a decent check to see the severity of the outage.
  - retrac 6y ago
    MURS/FRS radios don't require a license in Canada, actually.
    - jcims 6y ago
      Sure but do people hang out on them to chat?

by jcims 6y ago

woofcat 6y ago

>You can definitely do that for the 2 and .75 meter bands. $30 off of Amazon for a BaoFeng. I'm welcome to being corrected, however my understanding is that I'd need a full license to legally broadcast on those bands.

widforss 6y ago
Over here at least (Sweden), there are around 10 channels that are allocated to hunting radio and PMR, which you can use without a license.
jcims 6y ago
Ah, sorry! I misunderstood what you meant. You are correct. You're likely aware that you can get CB/MURS/FRS type radios without a license, but that wouldn't help that much. It would be nice to have a small slice of each ham band that would be available to non-licensed folks, but the hardware would be tricky, you'd have high physical capability (and cost) but it would have to be locked down to basically a 'slice selector', speaker and microphone...basically what you get with FRS radios. Neat idea though!
- woofcat 6y ago
  Yeah, I just think it would be nice to have a "non-custom equipment" license. Allow me to buy the BaoFeng equipment with a license based on radio etiquette, laws, etc. And avoid all the test questions about amplifiers, and antenna configuration, etc. The other month in Canada we had a huge outage of 3-4 cellular service providers and home internet issues due to a MPLS failure. Being work from home due to COVID I had no idea how to determine if this was a local level event, or a larger event. I turned on my trusty AM/FM/LW/SW radio. However in the fashion of today's radio landscape they're all multicast of national programming etc. Nothing about a huge outage. Had I a license there are a few HAM guys I know 60 minutes down the road and it would have been a decent check to see the severity of the outage.
- retrac 6y ago
  MURS/FRS radios don't require a license in Canada, actually.
  - jcims 6y ago
    Sure but do people hang out on them to chat?