https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B6PQZ2PM/ref=syn_sd_onsite_mobileweb_0?ie=UTF8&;psc=1
My family found ourselves at an apple orchard yesterday, with no cell phone service and we couldn't find each other.
I know I should go full ham, but all I really need right now is some way to communicate with each other within a mile or two, maybe three while hiking or traveling between two vehicles in the mountains.
Would the above walkie talkies suffice?
What I want to do is charge the things up, set the proper frequency among the three, and just start talking and listening to each other.

Sure, just use the preprogrammed freqs till you become a ham, and the other people you want to talk to do as well.

Those are standard FRS radios, actually legitimately FCC certified and ready to go.

They're a bit under 2W out (required for FRS certification) so I wouldn't count on more
than 1-1.5 miles of range, it really depends on terrain and surroundings.

Other than the range, your application is pretty much exactly what this class of radios
are intended for. Keep in mind with FRS that channels 8-14 are at reduced power (0.5W)
so you'll probably want to use channels other than those if you're going for max range.

If you spend $30 on a GMRS license, you can legally use 5W radios on the same channels,
but honestly that doesn't buy you a whole lot when you're using handhelds and I would
advise sticking with these.

Thanks, I feel like these will help me get my foot in the door. They certainly would have been helpful yesterday.

Looking at reviews, one stated a .9 mile range. Is there anything comparable in price and ease of use with a range of up to 3 miles?
Again, these will be used in hikes and communication between two vehicles going through the mountains.

Without getting overly technical, UHF radios are line-of-sight. If that exists even lower power radios than these
can work for a hundred miles, if it doesn't -- like if you have a mountain ridge between the two radios, even
very high power (say, 50W for GMRS) won't help. The review mentioned the range in a developed urban
area with houses, etc which is going to limit it somewhat. In the country it's probably going to be a bit better,
as long as you don't have a bunch of dirt and rock between radios.

Handheld radios are also compromised by having small antennas -- and if they were bigger they wouldn't be hand held.

The short answer is for handheld radios, you could go up to more powerful 5W units, but it wouldn't substantially impact
range if terrain is the primary factor. My house sits on a mountain ridge, and 5W radios literally can't talk to each other
from the back "yard" to the front due to the millions of tons of granite sitting between them, however a 0.5W radio can
talk to another one 7 miles away in the right direction due to line of sight.

I'd suggest trying these or similar FRS radios first to get a feel how they work. Spending a lot more probably isn't going
to buy that much more range. If you did want to go with GMRS at 5W, you could try something like These Tenway units
for not a lot more money, but again, the range problem really isn't something that's solve with a more expensive/more
powerful handheld, it's solved with better antennas and mobile radios and that's not what your usage model is -- so the
radios you're looking at are going to be close to as good as you can do (again, 5W GMRS will probably do a little better,
but not tons.)

ETA: Baofeng does have some cheaper options btw. Those are 2W (same as FRS)
GMRS radios that technically need a license but operate the same as FRS. At $10 a radio it's hard to go very wrong.

Thank you brother. Likely the ones that I noted in my first post on more than enough for my needs, especially in the near future. I agree that it makes sense for me to get used to those and then can I see where my needs go from there.

After doing more research I found myself going down a rabbit hole of confusion and delight. I ended up getting the 3 pk baofeng f22a for a total of under $40.

Those should be fine. I think the other models had a better antennas, but I doubt it will make a whole lot of difference.

There are cheap programming cables if you want to set up DCS code on the radio (this filters out interfering traffic and
keeps the radios quiet unless someone with the same code transmits.) Baofeng offers the programming software for
free on their site, but the radios will be usable out of the box. Reading the reviews it sounds like you can do a channel
lock from the keyboard which is a nice feature that lets you set and forget without worrying that someone will accidentally
bump the channel buttons.

Cool. I can see my wife and me communicating while one is in the house and the other's with the children in the yard, or even going under the house to look for leaks and such. I'm hoping these have a usable vox feature for monitoring our kids too. I was going to ask for a set for Christmas, but we're going on a mountain trip in a couple of weeks, nothing overly adventurous, but it will at least give me an opportunity to test them to see if they'll be useful into the future.
I'll admit, I almost got some baofeng uv5rs, but realized they were more complicated than my needs were right now.

Smart move.

99% of the time what people really need is a solid radio that just works on a single channel and that can't have its settings
changed by accident. If you look at the radios the big guys like Motorola make for this class of application (DLR series being a
good example) the primary controls are just power and volume and push to talk so you can't mess anything up.

3 miles is a tough row to hoe for handheld radios regardless of brand or type. The physics of radio signal propagation. It's going to depend entirely on terrain. Mountaintop to mountaintop you could get 50 miles. If the mountain is in between, 1/2 mile will be tough.

Even with a little elevation being in tractor cabs, 3 miles is stretching it on our UHF farm radios. Sketchy at best, and that's over flat farm terrain.

You can nudge things a little, a 5 watt radio will give you 10% (maybe), VHF instead of UHF might give you a little help (or be worse, it depends), a larger antenna helps a little. If you play every trick in the book you might get 1.3 or .4 miles instead of 1 mile in a particular environment, but a different brand of radio or whatever is not magically going to change 1 mile into 5 or 10. The only way to make longer distances reliably is with infrastructure - a repeater. Licensed GMRS can use repeaters and even set up their own, but that starts to get more complicated.

"Full Ham" isn't the solution to family communications unless your whole family is willing to get licensed in the Amateur service. FRS/GMRS services like the radios you linked are the place for that use. You're not making a bad choice, and they're not expensive even if you decide to go a different direction at some point.

If you are interested in learning more and building a skillset of radio communications knowledge, the amateur service is a great place to do that.

I'm thinking about picking up a baofeng just to tinker. I will study for the license and such, but primarily would like access to weather and emergency correspondence. Which would you suggest? I'm thinking about one of the newer uv5 variants.

I would like to dabble, but I rarely have much time to focus on any one thing (married, 2 little girls, etc.).

If you want to dabble and listen to stuff, I wouldn't buy any model of Baofeng, I'd suggest a little SDR receiver dongle for a computer which can do a whole lot more than any baofeng. (You could buy a baofeng too I guess )

The RTL-SDR blog V3 is a good option and inexpensive... the V4 is (much) better at HF, but requires their custom driver so is more complex to get set up.
https://www.rtl-sdr.com/buy-rtl-sdr-dvb-t-dongles/

There are other options from Nooelec, AirSpy, SDRplay, etc, most of which are somewhat more expensive. It's a rabbit hole. Everything in amateur radio is a rabbit hole.

Actually, you don't even need a radio to listen to HF, there are internet-connected "Web SDR" systems that let you listen from a web browser on a computer. There are a bunch of them all around the world, this one is pretty good in the US:
http://www.sdrutah.org/

I'm not a huge fan of that radio, but for tinkering and learning how to program one it's fine and they're under $20,
I'd just get the UV-5R.

My advice for ham stuff is to get a mobile radio over a handheld, and a HF or shack-in-a-box radio over a mobile,
it's more money but handhelds are usually a waste unless you have an application that they're suited for.

Handhelds are meant for very, very local communications, if you're lucky there's an active repeater in the area, but
you'd still be better off with a mobile radio for working with a repeater. A mobile radio will work for tens of miles, and
a HF radio will work for hundreds to thousands.

Thank y'all for being patient, I truly appreciate your input. I probably just need to step back for a minute, enjoy my walkie talkies that should be in tomorrow, and see if it ignites any interest at all.

If I get a Ft65r, will I stop asking y'all questions?

An FT65 is a radio that is specific to amateur radio, it will not interoperate with your family radios. I would not get one unless you're an amateur licensee.

Got it. I mean, I got what you're saying.
The walkies came in today, finally got around to checking them a few minutes ago. I can confirm that they work out to my mailbox. The real test will be in a week and a half.
Unfortunately, they came with no manual and I haven't found a PDF yet.
I can at least turn them on, use the light, and adjust volume. I'm blind to anything else.

PDF of FR-22 user manual from FCC site.

(eta to change URL to FCC's copy of manual)

Thanks!
I have to ask, how did you find it? I searched Baofeng F22A and came up busted so I contacted Baofeng who said contact the distributor from Amazon. I did that and waiting. I didn't think they'd get back to be over the weekend.

I found it on a random chinese site first, and noticed the FCC documentation at the end didn't say F22A, it said F22,
so I just went to the FCC equipment site and searched Baofeng F22 and boom, there it was.

Damn, I'm not worthy.

I have to come clean. I couldn't help myself.
I bought a Baofeng UV-17 pro gps.
Should be in by the end of the month.
I'm already working on my technician's.

Tech is a piece of cake!   A 12 year old can study and get a tech license.   We have young operators in our club under 16 with licenses from tech and general and at least one extra class.

Well then, shouldn't take me more than three or four tries.
Been on hamstudy.org and using Ham Radio Crash Course on YouTube. Holy crap there are a lot of questions. I still haven't gone through them all.

Those would be ok fine.