Two-way radion legality question

Lemming

Hey guys,

I'm new to this forum and not very informed on radios. I've a question regarding possible legality hiccups on a two-way radio I've ordered and is indeed about 4-6 weeks overdue now. In my attempts to track it down I'm trying to cover as many bases as possible to figure out what happened to it.

I've ordered one of these, and it's a UHF radio, rated for 15km range (apparently)

here are the technical specs:

Frequency range 400.000-469.900MHz
Programmable Channel Capacity 16
Channel spacing 25KHz/12.5KHz
Power supply 7.5V/DC
Dimension 58cm (W) * 125cm (H) * 38cm (D)
Weight (Net) 200g without battery and antenna
400g with battery and antenna

Transmitter
Carrier output power 5W
Modulation 8KµF3E
Spurious and harmonics ?-65 dB
FM noise (300-3000Hz) <-35 dB
Audio distortion (300-3000Hz) <5%
Frequency stability ±2.5ppm
Max frequency deviation ±5KHz/±2.5KHz

Receiver
Sensitivity (12 dB SINAD) 0.30µV
Operating bandwidth ±7KHz
Adjacent channel selectivity ?65 dB/58 dB
Intermodulation rejection ?60 dB
Spurious response rejection ?60 dB
Audio power output 500mW
Audio distortion ?5%
Frequency stability ±2.5ppm

Does anyone know if the above triggers alarm-bells with irish radio licensing?

bminish

Lemming wrote:

Hey guys,

Does anyone know if the above triggers alarm-bells with irish radio licensing?

No that radio is not legal here, except for use by Licensed amateur radio operators in the 70Cm band.
In addition I see no information On CE approvals so I assume it does not have CE approval

It is not legal for PMR446 (license exempt use)

.brendan

Lemming

F-*-C-K

So what happens when something like this lands in customs? Don't they have to notify you before they do anything with it?

Incidentally, what is the PMR446 exemption?

bminish

Lemming wrote:

F-*-C-K

So what happens when something like this lands in customs?

They will probably just let it though, possibly with duty to be collected first. How much did you pay ?
Did you not consider looking in Argos or the like first?

Incidentally, what is the PMR446 exemption?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PMR446

I have seen pairs of PMR446 sets for as little as 30 Euro.

.brendan

Lemming

bminish wrote:

They will probably just let it though, possibly with duty to be collected first. How much did you pay ?
Did you not consider looking in Argos or the like first?

Well, the radio was part of a bundle that included a throat-mic. I got the radio because it wouldn't have compatibility issues (the throat-mic is what I specifically require) and appears to have a really good range and is fairly robust (which I need for the purpose at hand)

Total of the entire bundle including posting from Canada was €250 (and that was cheap considering how much other places are charging for both the throat mic and/or radio)

Lemming

Hmmm, reading through the wiki entry for PMR446, the radio I listed can operate on that spectrum, so wouldn't this radio only run into legal issues if I deviate from the 446 frequency band?

watty

nope.
I have a THREE legal radios that I have a licence for, all can transmit on PMR446, all are illegal for PMR446.

I have 3 Radios that I have licence (1 is same as above) and all can do UK or Ireland CB. All are illegal for CB in either country.

So I have 4 real CBs and 2 real PMR446s

Licence exempt equipment must be type approved and with CE or CE! mark.

You can get a throat mic for about 10 to 20 Euro for many of the PMRs.

The radio is not legal except for "licenced Wireless Experimenter" and even then only 430MHz to 440MHz. Not for the 446MHz even if power, aerial, modulation and channel was adhered to.


Quote
However with PMR446 most of these variables are fixed at manufacturing to comply with the PMR446 specifications.

Also max power the PMR446 approved radio can have is 0.5W, not 5W

The Blarney Radio rally is this Month. You could sell it there. Though I doubt you would get more than €120

See http://www.wsplc.com/acatalog/Handheld_transceivers.html for typical prices of Amateur radio handhelds.

They are rather expensive for PMR446
http://www.wsplc.com/acatalog/Oregon_Scientific.html

WS do throatmic combos for €30 to €60. They are cheaper on eBay.

Maplin do a wide range of cheap single jack to double jack adaptors with will work with most PMRs with a single socket for Mic/Ear and headset kits with either two ping Motorola or two flying 3.5mm jacks.
They also do PMR446 and various headsets.

A PMR rather than PMR446 (as on WSplc site) is Public Mobile Radio (needs a Licence) such as Taxies or Security Guards. The PMR446 is Personal Mobile Radio


If you haven't got it, hope you don't and that they will refund you.

Lemming

watty wrote:

You can get a throat mic for about 10 to 20 Euro for many of the PMRs.

Not this throat mic .... trust me on that. As I said, it needs to not fall apart in a breeze. it also possibly needs to survive large amounts of water and general unfriendly environment & physical abuse, again hence my ordering what I ordered. But the throat mic isn't in question here since it's just a throat mic. It's the radio.

Also max power the PMR446 approved radio can have is 0.5W, not 5W

I'll hazard a guess that the power dictates range? Or does it also have other implications? And generally speaking, can power output be controlled by the user? or does it involve cracking open a radio and messing abou twith electrics?

If you haven't got it, hope you don't and that they will refund you.

Well therein lies the problem. i don't have it. Customs don't have it, An Post don't want to know if it's their problem or not.

watty

The UK is even more bizarre.
In the UK it is illegal to listen to PMR446 frequencies with an Amateur Radio or Scanner. You may only listen legally with an approved PMR446, and then you are supposed to only listen to the prearranged other contacts, rather than evesdrop on conversations of strangers.

watty

On most consumer FM radio you can't change the power even internally unless the radio is designed to have different power settings.

Yes, 5W would give about 3 times the range in the countryside. About twice the range in built up area.

You can't do anything to make the radio legal.

Lemming

watty wrote:

On most consumer FM radio you can't change the power even internally unless the radio is designed to have different power settings.

Yes, 5W would give about 3 times the range in the countryside. About twice the range in built up area.

You can't do anything to make the radio legal.

Balls. Cheers watty. Out of curiosity, unless I did something incredibly dumb like try to listen to emergency channels or some such, would I land in deep crap with this (I don't have it so this is entirely hypothetical) ?

watty

In practice if you never transmitted how would anyone know?

In practice if you could adjust it to 0.5W and only use it on the PMR446 channels by memory program no-one would know it was illegal unless they stopped you and examined it.

FM RF Power Amplifiers on most cheaper radios (and many expensive ones) are designed for a particular power and are usually class C. As you lower the power the distortion increases and at some point the output switches off. If you try an increase power the transistors may burn out or the distortion increase. The Class C bias (or nearly lack of bias) for FM is designed for a particular power level.

This is why an FM only or CW only transmitter is nearly impossible to modify for SSB or AM. OTOH an SSB capable TX can do any mode, which is why SSB compatible amplifiers are called "linears". Since CW or FM runs at a fixed carrier level it does not need a Linear Amplifier (Class C or Non-Linear saves a lot of power, less hot transistors, so cheaper).

Listening to Emergency channels can be problematic even on a legal scanner, but not normally a big issue if you tell NO-ONE what you might accidently hear.

It's of the nature of licence free type approvals that even an exact copy of the specs and even a copy of the electronics still results in the radio being illegal.

It can only become legal by submission for test and meeting the standard and then having type approval for that model.

Having something that has no type approval or modified and then operating it or modifiying it to meet a spec is uniquely limited to The "wireless experimenter licence". Even RTE can't make or modify their own Transmitter equipment. It must be supplied by a manufacturer that has ETSI or Comreg approval.