Hand held UHF vs Vehicle mounted UHF

Godzilla_killer · Newbie

Hand held UHF vs Vehicle mounted UHF

Ivan 01 · Guru

Welcome mate.

I set up a vehicle mounted GME UHF with a quality antenna which was correctly tuned for the job but instead of paying a fortune for the GME hand helds which are great quality I bought a set of cheapie hand helds for personal use. The kit I got was from Supa Chinese Auto for under $50.00 from memory.

I was actually going through a box of bits in the shed and the radios were still there and they both still worked so even the batteries were still ok.
I was amazed that they still worked.

I bought the handhelds for manoevering guidance but my dear wife passed away not long after I set this up so they did not get much use.
I have promised them to my grand boys for them to use if hiking.

-- Edited by Ivan 01 on Monday 12th of December 2022 11:01:25 AM

Possum3 · Guru

Welcome to GN's GK, Get both, in car range from $200 to $2,000 plus fitting. TJM currently selling in vehicle Uniden package (radio remote mountable, hand control mic, bonnet bracket, suitable arial) $395.

Hand helds range from $69 pair to $1,000 - These are helpful when; wife goes one way, you go another, advising partner when reversing, one fishing one shopping, playing with grandkids, etc.

Get a checklist of essentials vs nice to have at Caravan Council of Australia

-- Edited by Possum3 on Monday 12th of December 2022 12:06:29 PM

Godzilla_killer · Newbie

Thanks for the reply,

Im going to go into a 4WD shop and ask the question as well to see what they say. I am one of those people who research the hell out of something before I buy. blankstare

Mike Harding · Guru

It's not the right forum, "Technical" would be appropriate but as you're new we'll forgive you :)

I think you may be well satisfied by a pair of the cheapest Australian approved UHF hand-held CBs you can find and a magnetic roof mounted antenna per vehicle.

Where do you prospect, generally that is, although I'd not be adverse to a GPS reference to your last find :) I'm usually in Victoria.

Edit:

Unless you have money to burn do not seek advice on radio equipment from a 4WD shop, internet forums will give you far, far better advice.

-- Edited by Mike Harding on Monday 12th of December 2022 02:13:43 PM

Cuppa · Guru

What Mike Harding says about getting advice from 4wd shops is true. Almost inevitably the advice will be to buy what they sell.

In contradiction to those who have found cheap UHF's acceptable, I have not. I have only ever owned 5 different UHF's, 3 well known brands & one very cheap. Only two of them were worth having.

The no brand 0.5w hand helds given to us by the forestry company operating their log trucks on the road where we lived were useless. They were supposed to keep us safe by knowing if trucks were coming up or down the narrow dirt road when we were out driving. . They would have been fine for getting reversing directions from behind & that was about it

A pair of 40 channel 5w GME hand helds have been ultra reliable for years since picking them up for a song at a garage sale. But with 40 channel all but obsolete they are now only used to talk to each other. There are volume issues in using them to communicate with others who have 80 Channel units

The 5w GME dash mounted unit we had in our bus 'just worked' - it was clear & easy to understand unlike many

In our current vehicle we initally had a Uniden unit, a well known nam but the biggest piece of junk you can imagine. Digfficult to use with the manual squelch control concentrically mounted with the volume control. Dumb idea! When it was possible to hear others the sound quality was so poor more often than not it was impossible to understand what was being said. Often however there was jst too much 'noise' to be useable. We tried everything but never improved it. When it's LCD screen suddenly died at two years old, rendering the unit completely unuseable it was a blessing.

We then replaced it with a quality item - an Icom IC450 which is everything the Uniden wasn't & is the sort of one-off purchase which is a 'lifetime purchase'. So glad we did. Since then we have spent a fair bit of time on outback stations & found that the most common brand of UHF's, for both dash mount & hand held's has been ICOM. Japanese quality in rugged packages which handle the daily work use *(& keep doing it).

Like many well known brands of all sorts of goods, many over the years reduce quality to keep price down but continue to trade on previously earned reputations. If it's cheap it's cheap for a reason , at least that's my experience with UHF's.

In the car I do prefer dash mounted to handheld. I think they are a bit safer than scrabbling around to find the handheld, & you don't need to keep replacing/recharging batteries. Hand helds can be very useful though, just depends upon the use at the time.