I recently order two BaoFeng UV-5R Dual Band Two Way radios online. They definitely don’t do a good job explaining things in the manual! There’s plenty of info online, including videos, but everyone is talking over my head, and most aren’t getting to the point I want. I’d like to use two of these bad boys to communicate with each other. So far I can get that to work, but I feel like I’m missing some things. Like what are good frequencies to use? Are the top number and bottom number supposed to be the same? What are the differences between those numbers? How can I get the most distance out of these things in a city? Can anyone help me in layman’s terms? I want to get the most power out of my product. Right now I can barely use them past 3 blocks on High TXP.
I should also add that I do plan to get my FCC license to operate over 5w. I just want to make sure I can find something that can do what I want first, which is to communicate through city space over enough distance to matter. If I can’t get these things to do that on their own my next question would be about how to supplement power, like with a repeater. Or maybe I just bite the bullet and go with something more powerful and more expensive, but then my question is how are they more powerful? How will I know I’ll get more bang for my buck before buying?