[aprssig] Radio Pirates

[Richard Sharp, KQ4KX]

Yes it does.  I live near Orlando and have 446.0 in my scan list and have
indeed heard users of PMR446 equipment.  What clued me in was the FRS like
courtesy tone that those type of radios have.  They are fortunately short
range though.

I've never travelled internationally, I wonder if radios like these are
listed somewhere to the passengers as one of the items "not" to bring.  I
suspect customs must not check for these things - unless maybe they caught
something else first and they're simply racking up the offenses for that
passenger?

Richard

-----Original Message-----
From: Jim (List) [mailto:jim.list at stuckinthemud.org] 
Sent: Sunday, January 15, 2012 3:27 AM
To: 'TAPR APRS Mailing List'
Subject: Re: [aprssig] Radio Pirates

An undesired effect of seemingly "licensed" equipment is use in other
countries where people don't understand about licensing and band usage.

I'm in the UK and, as the US FRS system became popular, people started
bringing handhelds into the UK on holiday. The EU have and equivalent system
on different frequencies around 446MHz - Google "PMR446", 462/467MHz are in
the general pool of site-specific licensed allocations.

Problem was, one of the FRS frequencies was used by Heathrow (London)
airport for their fire service repeater and they often got interference from
passengers using the radios around the terminal buildings. The repeater had
to move frequency.

I'm sure the same happens the other way around, so there are likely to be EU
visitors operating in the US 70cm band!

Jim, G1HUL