You callin' me a liar Roscoe?
Well stop by!
The repeater is K6POU, the one on the top of Mount Diablo in the bay area-145.330. It is almost exactly 90 air miles from my house in Sacramento.
The conditions are just about perfect-line of sight but still, it's 90 miles. Really this is not difficult at all. On the mobile radios with better antennas, it's full quieting into the repeater on 10 watts. With the Beofang it's scratchy, not surprising.
People get all hung up on power settings and the like when really the issue is antenna quality. If you have particularly good conditions, it doesn't take a lot of power. My best 5 Watt 2m simplex contact was from the Henry Mountains in Utah talking to a friend in Mexican Hat-he was 120 miles away.
I'm not saying these are great radios, they are OK radios at a great price. I have 2 of them and use them as loaners.
So what you're saying is "results not typical". You need clear line of sight and a low noise floor (VHF nowadays is pretty noisy) and I've heard of some contacts like that (not quite 90 miles), in the high desert, with nothing in between but a valley. Those really are the perfect conditions but most of the country doesn't have those conditions and many new hams don't care to find out what the fine print is and why that may work when they're outdoors on top of a mountain in the desert but not when they're driving around suburbia in their Faraday cage on wheels.
In the case of many new hams, they buy these radios because like the op, they can't afford to do any better but they'd be $30 or $40 closer to getting "better" had they not blown it on something they will get very little day-to-day use out of. And making wild claims of 90 and 125 mile contacts doesn't help do anything but put unrealistic expectations in the mind of new hams. You posts kinda read like a bubblepack of FRS radios promising "33 mile range!"
Why? Because like the OP of this thread, they want to "try it out" before spending any more money than they have to. That's like trying out offroading with a Chevy Aveo, a stock one at that, then getting stuck 2 seconds after turning off the pavement. The money spent on that car could have gone towards the right equipment and unfortunately the new hams don't learn why a Chevy Aveo is not a good choice for offroading, their expectations about Chevy Aveos were set so unrealistically high because someone in the Bonneville Salt Flats said they drove for a hundred miles offroad with one, and when they try to do that somewhere with mud and get stuck, they just give up.
I am not exaggerating when I say that there has been about a half dozen in just the past year who get those, I am their first contact or the second contact, they all say they don't want to install mobiles in their car or at home. They think it's going to work like a cell phone and get portable in building and in vehicle coverage wherever they go. That is just not realistic. And like they always do, they don't want to put any effort into it and that's the last anyone ever hears from them.
Really?
I have tried, this week, to talk to a guy across the bay, about 9 miles. I could literally see the building he was in and he had a rooftop antenna. Almost zero signal reception. I heard one syllable, kinda.
This is with the Diamond antenna on 2m.
There is a high noise floor on VHF, it's a crappy band for use in urban areas and the vhf antennas on portables are highly inefficient. Try again, this time on 440 and let us know if you get a different result.
The price point of the UV5 series have led to about a dozen ham licenses in our local club. We are gradually shifting away from that CB nonsense. They are fantastic for the trail, and the 2 I own have no trouble getting out to repeaters, sometimes local, sometimes not so local. I never changed the antenna.
I have a decent 2m mobile setup in my truck, but I don't go anywhere without these little HTs. Great for spotters on the trail, or just sitting around back at camp chatting with the guys still in the woods.
The only time I had tx/rx issues was when I was way down in a valley trying to get out to repeater. My Kenwood has the power and a well set up antenna to reach out and touch someone in that situation.
I can honestly say that everyone in our group loves these things. They are durable and have great battery life. IMO there is no downside to owning at least one.
Yeah but it's sort of a double-edged sword.
The ChiCom radios may be affordable but when people have unrealistic expectations about what they will be able to do with them such as drive around in their car with one and still put a usable signal into a repeater...which is what this very thread is about, a lot of them are unsuccessful at making contacts and they hang it up and often do not bother changing anything to try to get a different result.
Why? Because like the OP of this thread, they want to "try it out" before spending any more money than they have to. That's like trying out offroading with a Chevy Aveo, a stock one at that, then getting stuck 2 seconds after turning off the pavement. The money spent on that car could have gone towards the right equipment and unfortunately the new hams don't learn why a Chevy Aveo is not a good choice for offroading, their expectations about Chevy Aveos were set so unrealistically high because someone in the Bonneville Salt Flats said they drove for a hundred miles offroad with one, and when they try to do that somewhere with mud and get stuck, they just give up.
I am not exaggerating when I say that there has been about a half dozen in just the past year who get those, I am their first contact or the second contact, they all say they don't want to install mobiles in their car or at home. They think it's going to work like a cell phone and get portable in building and in vehicle coverage wherever they go. That is just not realistic. And like they always do, they don't want to put any effort into it and that's the last anyone ever hears from them.
The other problem with the proliferation of Baofengs is we are seeing an unbelievable amount of unauthorized transmissions, jamming, malicious interference and the like. You can tell they're using the baofengs with those stupid noise makers they do.
And it's not just on the ham bands. We've had them go into LMR and do that crap, especially with mall security.
I'm not trying to broadbrush every baofeng owner as a lid or jammer. I'm just pointing out the downside, not that it's really relevant to the discussion at hand.
To balance it out, I have heard the uvb82 is a huge improvement in quality.
A dualband portable is a great tool to have when hiking. I always like to have a vhf portable just in case and also like to cross band using the a mobile in the truck and usually set that up to transmit on a vhf repeater. That requires a uhf radio. Having both in the same unit saves weight.
. They transmit and can't hit 
