These inexpensive Baofeng VHF and UHF handheld radios work with repeaters and radio to radio and mine is already 3 years old with extensive use and they can easily communicate for well over a mile through the dense swampy woods here. The newer models have 8 watt output and come with a hand mic and ear piece if you want. They work very very well with crazy long battery life and are super reliable. I acknowledge that the Yaesu and Icom radios are better but these work so well nobody I know buys anything else.
They can be had on Amazon for ridiculously low prices. Yes... They're made in China but almost all electronics are these days anyway. I got mine with an extra high capacity battery but even the regular battery lasts a couple of days with moderate talking so I've never had to switch batteries other than to just keep them charged up and moderately used to make sure they're still good.
You're supposed to have a ham license to use them but if you stay off the marine, government and private ham channels and out of the cities the chances of anyone caring are pretty slim. Just don't park on one frequency and talk all the time. Channel hop and if someone asks you to use another frequency always honor their request.
At 8 watts out of a handheld you're VERY unlikely to ever step on anyone's toes or get in trouble especially out in the wilderness where your cell phones don't work. If you start using car or home mounted radios with more wattage then you really should consider getting a ham technician's license or face being tracked down and the fines, from what I've heard are pretty hefty. The range extends a huge amount when you start using car or tower mounted antennas with 25w and up radios.
You should also download the frequency listings to know what frequencies to absolutely NEVER transmit on. I'm no expert on this so someone else please chime in on what frequencies would be best for this. One of my friends set up my radio and a lot of my friends radios and we just push to talk when we need them when we're out hunting. We also don't cause a lot of radio chatter and they're primarily used when cell phones will not work well or when we want to talk to the hunting or fishing group as a whole.
They're primarily used on a licensed repeater and rarely on other frequencies but sometimes we need to channel hop when we're out of the repeater's range.
