uhf hand held?

i saw this on ebay and was wondering if anyone has any info on them and if there are any good

thanks
LEMON ZEST 5W UHF CB 'OMDI' CB RADIO FULL RANGE - eBay CB Radios, CB Radio, Radio Equipment, Electronics. (end time 04-Aug-10 20:46:23 AEST)

HA love the name, just the name I'd go looking for in consumer electronics.

Can't remember the price of them but Aido did a review on a set of DSE hand helds a few months back which would probably be something I'd look into before a zesty lemon of a unit.

Sorry they were Uniden radios from DSE

http://www.navara.asia/product-reviews/3205-uniden-uh037sx-2-a.html

Link in the thread doesn't seem to work anymore so the below link is what I found on the DSE website. $49 bucks. Sure they might not go the suggested 15ks the other ones do but it all depends what you need them for and the 15ks would be under ideal conditions anyway. If you're just going car to car communications you don't need 15ks distance anyway

http://www.dse.com.au/cgi-bin/dse.storefront/4c57681101023f4e2740c0a87e0105ef/Product/View/D2084

Buy one and write up a review for us. Someone has to be the guinea pig.

Yeah we've got a set of handhelds virtually the same as those Unidens. Won't get anymore than 1km out of them, but for car to car while out on the tracks, just fine. (Or for while the kids go walkabout at camp etc)

Personally I think any UHF radio is useless for anything other than convoy operations. Spending big $ on a wanker aerial so you can get 22km range instead of 15km means nothing when you're 800km from help and only have a day's water with you.

If you're going way off road, get a satellite phone and GPS that provides actual current coordinates. If you're travelling with others, then just about ANY of those UHF radios will do the trick. There's no need to spend thousands of dollars on them.

Repeaters are pretty useful.

Not only are repeaters useful and can give you ranges well over 20ks (we can get nearly 300 on our local under ideal conditions) but UHF and AM CB's have more uses than just convoy operations.

Everything has limitations, Sat phones don't always have reception, mobile phones are worse, GPS's can loose signal and lie and UHF's aren't normally used to talk to someone on the other side of the country but they are still an invaluable tool for safety.

We use CB's alot around here to make sure we know where the log trucks are, we aren't in convoy with them or working with them but when your heading up a winding bush road the last thing you want is the suprise of a fully loaded log truck who needs 80% of the road to corner pushing you off the road. It gets even worse when those roads are dirt, one lane wide and 20 ks long, you want the warning so you can pull over safely and let the trucks go. Sat phones and GPS's wont go far to warning you of an approaching truck in situations like that.

Everything has its use and for the cost of a UHF radio (even if it has to be a handheld) anyone traveling further than the city outskirts would be a fool not to have one as a part of their total kit.

Granted, but spending a month's pay on a radio thinking that it'll let you call for help when you're stranded out near Wilcannia because you think Navman knows best isn't going to work either.

Don't those repeater services cost money? Or is that some other service available in the outback?

Horses for courses, I say, and when you only need a pony to talk to the car behind you, paying for a champion thoroughbred is just crazy. Go and buy the Dick Smith ones for $50 and enjoy.

Repeaters are free to use, once upon a time licenses paid for repeater up keep but with licenses going out they are just there and will work if they are getting maintained.

Talking to ponies is an odd way to get your message to someone and I'm not sure I want to visualise how its done but I'd still prefer and recommend to anyone that a decent UHF to be part of any safety kit.

I'd spend money on a decent car unit and do the job right for the areas I was intending to travel before looking at buying a hand held because while hand helds are useful for some applications base units are usually more powerful. My handheld still lives in the back of the ute for when the car unit isn't handy and is overkill for most applications because it will range 10ks (20+ks if you believe the manual) which means when driving on the road in the tractor I can make sure I avoid those log trucks, because they no more want a bail of hay in their radiator than I want 30 tonnes of logs in my face.

you can get handheld radios hooked with the external aerial of your car and get good range and have the benefit of using the handheld outside as well especially those 5 watt units the range is pretty good

Sure they cost more than the fleabay 'lemon' radios,

but my Uniden and GME 1/2, 1 and 5 watt handheld units I would'nt be without.

Handy on the bikes as well, using the VOX headsets.

I got a 5w GME handheld with my TX4400 as a bonus pack, it's great.

For $50-$100 though I would say give them a crack. You may find the battery is poor quality?

Jason said:

You may find the battery is poor quality?

Click to expand...

This is an increasing problem with all small rechargeable batteries these days even the name brand ones. We've got about 60 different brands of rechargeable batteries from AAA up to 9V that we used to use for a number of portable devices and the quality of them these days compared to what they used to be is so low.

We don't rely on store brought chargers, (for several years we've been pretty lucratively building and selling solar and 240V smart battery chargers to people) and we have spent countless hours monitoring batteries on charge. It used to be that buying leading brands like Energizer and Duracell got you a half decent battery but quality really seems to have faded over the last few years.

For the 27 cents each we paid for the last batch of cheap imported AA non-rechargeable batteries it's getting to the point where paying a up to $5 a piece of a rechargeable battery then the time and effort to charge them just isn't worth it. Plus the non-rechargeable are the full 1.5v not 1.2 which things like cameras and radios like. It's lucky most of the chargers we build people are for boats, tractors and other such aux batteries or we'd be going out of business.