Radios -UHF - so many choices?........

General Discussion
1

All,

I’m looking for a good hand held radio for my work as a Close protection officer and surveillance team. Radios have always been and issue in the uk (where I live) for the traffic and obstacles in the urban areas. We use UHF frequencies for urban (400-470 mhz) and we have a few VHF radios for country side driving / vehicle following surveillance.

It’s time for new radios and i’m looking for some advice on what radios would suit my needs as follows:

  1. Must be UHF - I’m going to stick with just UHF now, it’s better for Urban and we can use it for rural journeys as the vehicles aren’t to far appart.

  2. Must have a long battery life for both RX and TX transmissions. Sometimes we can be dropped off and on foot for 8 hours, without a pit stop / battery change.

  3. as small as possible (to be hidden covertly on the person) and stubby antenna option also.

  4. good make with available accessories. ( ie covert earpeice with mic) (head sets for a control vehicle) throat mics also, radio holder etc.

  5. not sure about digital or standard hand helds would listen to the pros and cons - price will dictate

  6. heres some that I was looking at Motorola GP340/360/380

but will listen to all sugestions such as Icom, Kenwood, motorola etc etc

We have a motorola mobile unit for the car which operates on 403-470 mhz UHF, this will be staying as it works fine with our covert vehicle antenna so it’s just the hand helds for our upgrades.

Any help or sugestions will be great.

thanks
Billy

2

I have worked with both Motorola, Kenwood, and Vertex Standard radios for a couple years and all are good brands. Motorola seems to prevail especially when looking at upper tier radios such as the GP340, GP360, and GP380, which correspond to the U.S. versions HT750, HT1250 ltd, HT1250 full keypad. The amount of features, durability, and accessories by Motorola can’t be beat IMHO - IF you can afford to pay the Motorola price.

I don’t have much experience with the European models but I can make a suggestion: since you mentioned portability and size, consider the GP344 and GP366R. They are very compact and have almost all the same features as the radios you mentioned.

Experience:
HT1250 (GP360) use with my Fire Dept as duty radio. I carry HT750 (GP340) as a daily user.
EX600 XLS (GP388) is in use by one of my customers in a large condo complex for cleaning/maintenance staff.

Good luck Billy!

3

thanks for the input (didn’t know motorola had different model numbers for the same radio. lol) |I’ll have a look at that suggested radio for on the person, I haven’t seen or heard of that model before.

Thanks for the help

Billy