Product review
BAOFENG UV-5RE Dual Band Amateur Radio
Frequency Range: 136-174 / 400-480MHz. Dual-Band Display, Dual Freq. Display, Dual-Standby
• Output Power: 4 /1Watts.
• FM Radio 65.0MHz-108.0MHz

This is a handy little radio. It is convenient to carry in a shirt pocket or on your belt. The stock antenna is good enough for most applications, however there is a better one available for longer range use and you can of course connect the radio to an external antenna for vehicle or base use. It only took a few minutes to get the radio up and running straight from the box. After the initial test I did go ahead and charge it overnight. The standby time was great, almost 36 hours. There is a nice feature with on this handy radio that allows you to listen to FM broadcast content just like your vehicle radio and monitor the selected operational frequency too. You can walk around listening to the local music station and when someone calls you it will interrupt the music automatically. Same thing when you transmit. Besides the enjoyment factor this provides it also ensures that the volume does not get turned down inadvertently. Another feature that comes in very useful is that it can be set to scan all the frequencies on whichever band it is set to.

In casual use the radio sounds good and during one test we were impressed with the range. One radio with the stock antenna was inside of the office, the other radio also with a stock antenna was inside of a vehicle parked 3 miles away. On low power [one watt] the transmissions were clear and strong. Of course this was not clear line of sight as there were buildings and trees between us. This was between 2 Baofeng radios. We tested a set of stock FRS/GMRS radios and did get decent communications for up to 0.25 [1/4] miles [not the advertised 20 to 38 miles]. When put to a similar test with 1 Baofeng radio and a stock FRS/GRMS radio we got about one mile of spotty communication. [the problem was the cruddy antenna on the FRS/GRMS radio]

Overall the BAOFENG radio is a great buy and well worth the money. I would buy it over any brand of the FRS/GMRS walkie talkies any day and for not much more money. During an emergency the Baofeng is a great radio to have.
You are of course responsible for checking your local laws before transmitting. There are NO restrictions to listening to any frequency that you can hear.

To find out more information and to order a set go to http://www.preparesurvivethrive.us/baofeng-uv/

Update 2016 – 09- 20

Update on the range performance of this radio. I made direct contact with a station that was between 250 miles and 700 miles away from me. I was transmitting on 4 watts [high] power and we could hear each other well with a bit of static at the extreme ranges. How is this possible from a hand held radio in the 2 meter band you ask?…. ;] The international space station is about 250 miles straight up with line of sight out to around 700 miles and your window of opportunity is only about 15 minutes to talk, along with a bazillion others trying to talk with them too.