Hand held radio (walkie talkie) - use in Italy

[zebedee]

Am intending to take some walkie-talkies on my snowboarding holiday in the Italian alps. Is there anywhere that anyone knows of that says what frequencies you can/can't use, or is it just a case of finding one that when you use it you don't get people shouting back at you in Italian!

cheers

[timmy30]

zebedee said:

Am intending to take some walkie-talkies on my snowboarding holiday in the Italian alps. Is there anywhere that anyone knows of that says what frequencies you can/can't use, or is it just a case of finding one that when you use it you don't get people shouting back at you in Italian! cheers

We took a couple of these skiing at xmas in NW Italy, worked fine no problems. If you get someone on your freq just switch bands.

[zebedee]

did you have any problem with reception? We tried ours at the weekend in cannock chase (mountain biking in 2 different groups on 2 different routes) and they were very good, despite all the trees - though we might not have been very far apart - impossible to tell! At one point we were definitely about a mile apart though, and where we are going, all the runs are on the same side of the mountain (though there are hollows and little valleys obviously) so hopefully the 2 mile range should be enough. Read in the Metro this morning that the average mobile phone bill for a week's skiing (just calls to friends to arrange meeting up) is about £70, so we have saved £20 already and walkie talkies are much more fun and obviously you can use them year after year - shouldn't go on about them too much though, otherwise it will be impossible to find a free band in a ski resort before too long!

[Trooper2]

"PMR446" is a European Union standard for radios approved for use in the UK and the European Union. They have 8 channels, and a maximum range of around 2 miles in open country. No PMR446 radio can have more than 500mW of transmission power, so all makes and models effectively have the same maximum range.



According to this website:
www.walkie-talkie-radio.co.uk/walkie-talkie-international-issues.htm

[zebedee]

Good stuff, mine are Cobras, so we should be fine in Italy, just as long as we don't use the emergency service / pisteurs frequency we should be OK

[anonymous-user]

Had some Gooodmans ones that never worked well, think one was duff, but have been using a pair of Motorolas on the annual Stelvio run for a couple of years with no problems. They work fine up in the mountains and equally well when trying to keep together through towns.

[timmy30]

zebedee said:

Good stuff, mine are Cobras, so we should be fine in Italy, just as long as we don't use the emergency service / pisteurs frequency we should be OK

Had no problems at all with reception.

[KITT]

timmy30 said:

Had no problems at all with reception.

Same here. I was stunned by the range my Cobras we had whilst skiing in Chamonix last week. I was standing at the top of Le Tours and a mate was back in the appartment in Chamonix Sud, and we could still talk to each other (that's nearly 10 miles!)