I’m on holiday in North Devon and am almost at sea level but although I have a good view in most directions I have heard nothing on 2/70 and had zero replies to my CQ calls. When out and about locally on holiday I generally carry a PMR 446 walkie talkie as some the places I go have zero phone signal and it just means when I’m off on walkies my wife can call me ( She is unable to walk very far due to a motorcycle crash) I was on one such walk today only about a mile away and she gave me a call to say she was ready to go out, after I finished the conversation a voice came up calling me I answered and it a guy about 8 miles across the bay ( open water) we had a short conversation and he told me he and a few friends use 446 when fishing as they can be a distance away from each other. The other more amazing bit is I am constantly hearing Irish stations on channel 16 who seem to be using it like CB radio I have tried calling as some times they are very strong but suspect they may be using CTCSS and I have no method of programming the radio which is set with no tones.At Least With that and the Marine VHF band I have something to listen too !
Or a modded radio 
You could well be right, in the Birmingham/Black country area there are regular nets with people using expmr equipment and homebrew external antennas. That said if you listen to CB radio in the same area there are people who fully admit on air to running 100 to 300 watts ! The worst bit is they are normally only talking over short distances where legal power would be plenty enough.
Plenty?
I bought a pair of PMR446 radios about 25 years ago from my company (Motorola) who made them (employees got them a bit discounted) for use on family outings. My experience on the whole was disappointing. The problem is not so much the 500mW power on UHF but rather the compromise stubby antennas. Your other parties are apt not to be conveniently across the other side of large bodies of water.
Maybe the modern digital ones have better range but if my experience of 2m FM vs 2m C4FM is anything to go by, I doubt it.
[Ofcom: UK174 - 446.0-446.1 MHz - Ofcom for PMR 446. By agreement with the MoD. ERC Decision (98)25]
As the MoD agreed to free up the 16 fixed channels with a 12.5 kHz spacing between each channel, I doubt any MoD users are using either these channels or the inter-channel frequencies. IMO, PMR446 could have been defined to be a bit more generous on the max power (say 2-5W) and better built-in antennas (but still not external antennas) with negligible risk of interference to the primary user further along the band. That would have make these license-free walkie talkies more useful and might have avoided illegal modifications or use of other non-PMR radios on these frequencies.
I’ve always wondered if some PMR446 radios have a higher ERP than others or if they are all created equal.
500mW is the limit, but that could mean some are only putting out 100 mW ERP if they have a mediocre PA and terrible antenna.
I don’t think I’ve seen any which look like they have a 1/4 wave (or better) antenna which could give better reception and longer battery life for the same ERP.
He was talking about 27MHz, not PMR446.
500mW ERP is the limit
On the second sentence, for sure. But on the first sentence he hadn’t mentioned CB radio so I took it he was still talking about PMR446.
Either way, my point holds, some people are apparently circumventing the restrictions by using modified or non-PMR radios on PMR446 frequencies.
I brought an expmr radio radio recently for use on 2 meters it was programmed to my specs on 2 meters doing 25 watts ( I have since reduced it to 5 watts ) the same guy clearly stating his callsign was also selling UHF commercial radios running 25 watts on the 16 pmr446 channels. I also knew a foundation licence holder ( as I remember at the time they were limited to 10 watts ) running 100 watts,the reality is no one polices anything ( not just radio wise) so just do as you fancy.
People break the law all the time.
That’s a truism. My point (again) is that fewer people would feel inclined to get around the power / antenna restrictions had PMR446 radios been more practical.
They’re “impractical” for a reason.
PMR446 is indeed very restrictive (no external antennas, and the stock ones are mostly negative gain “stubby loads” indeed) In VK and ZL, they knew how to get this right, with their 477 MHz CB band where external antennas are allowed and max legal power is 5W. This allows one to put up a decent antenna on a vehicle which even has some gain (colinears are used here that can give you over 10dBi if made properly). Despite the occasional foul language which one can find on any CB band, we found it very useful during our trip down under!
73,
Wouter Jan PE4WJ
And your reason is…?
Conspiracy theories aside, you might have a point. I think the ‘avoid interference to the primary user’ reason is probably a smokescreen but useful to state as few could argue against that if it were true.
I suspect - but have no evidence to support - that the Department of Trade and Industry in what was then a largely pre-mobile-phone/pre-WWW age, wanted to allay the fears of telephone and comms companies that PMR446 would be no threat to their commercial investments.
,
There are a plethora of mobile radio options available. PMR446 was designed from the start to be a limited service that did not compete with classic UHR PMR and DMR trunked services. It was designed to be better (500mW ERP) than the 10mW 433LPD voice units that were in “our” band.
If you needed more than PMR446 offered FOR FREE USE then you went to the other systems and got your wallet out. No conspiracy theories, just simple and effective management of a limited spectrum.
Second contact on PMR446 channel 16 from Westward Ho ! I was down on the rocks taking photos of the old pier legs and called hello multiple times to alert my wife I was on the way back, another ladies voice came back and it was a lady that was monitoring 16 as her husband was working on his boat in Water Mouth. Not a great distance but it is the other side of a land mass 14 ish miles away.
So, 500mW with fixed antenna works well. Why is 70cm ham band underused? We can use 5W with high effiency antenna
UHF signals (e.g. 70cm and PMR446) are more susceptible to reflection and diffraction than even VHF ones (e.g. 2m) due to their shorter wavelengths, leading frequently to multipath propagation. It’s possible that your radio contact was the result of many reflections between higher ground on the overland path AND/OR via a curving route over the sea along the coast.
I have a very similar situation at home where my V2000 collinear on the chimney is high enough to receive the GB3LD 2m repeater to the south of my QTH on a direct path despite high ground in between and on a longer coastal / estuary path (my QTH overlooks a wide river estuary). The resulting multipath interference makes the repeater virtually unlistenable. Ironically, I can work into the repeater in my house at ground level on a 5W 2m HT albeit the repeater signal is noisy but there’s no multipath interference.
Another propagation mode that is more likely in this hot, dry weather is some tropospheric ducting. I’ve had this using my 2m FM HT (and RH770 antenna) from a modest summit in Cumbria (but with an excellent VHF take-off) and had two amateurs near Brighton worked me with 5/9 signals. They sounded like they were next door.
My point is, large bodies of water and hills (like we have in G/LD and in north Devon) can often lead to radio contacts on 2m and 70cm that you would have thought impossible based on the direct path alone.
I had been told on here to try 70cms tonight as there was a contest on FM in the UK. .I heard a grand total of Zero stations with the exception of an Irish Simplex repeater which I couldn’t work out the CTCSS tone for. Just before I came down the hill I decided to make a last attempt but on 2 meters I then a had a conversation with 5/9+ reports from a station 50 miles away whilst using only 1 watt from a handy. I had been using a 1/4 wave ground plane on 70 cm and 4 watts.