PMR446 and UK CB — licence-free listening

Licence-free does not mean unregulated. It means Ofcom has set a box — power, antenna, channels, and equipment type — and if you stay in the box you do not need an amateur callsign. Cross Reference UK lists these allocations because they are the radios people already own: site walkie-talkies, 27 MHz FM CB in a van, a blister-pack handheld in a festival car park.

PMR446 analogue, in practice

PMR446 lives around 446.0–446.2 MHz. The classic analogue service is 16 channels at 12.5 kHz spacing, NFM, with a low ERP limit and an integral antenna. That last point is the one everyone tries to dodge. A legal PMR446 handheld is not a 70 cm amateur radio with the same crystals. If you unscrew the stub and fit a magmount, you have left the licence-free regime.

Channel 1 is 446.00625 MHz; they step up from there. CTCSS/DCS is common on cheap sets so families do not hear the warehouse next door. From a listener’s point of view you will hear short, local bursts — builders, event stewards, dog walkers — not a nationwide net. Range is optical-ish: a kilometre in town if you are lucky, more from a hill, almost nothing from a steel-framed office.

Digital PMR446 (dPMR / DMR446 style products) occupies the same neighbourhood with different channelisation. If a submission does not say analogue or digital, we treat it as analogue 12.5 kHz unless we know otherwise.

UK CB FM

UK CB on 27 MHz FM is the older sibling: 40 channels in the UK allocation (27.60125–27.99125 MHz for the common FM set), with channel 19 the traditional calling/mobile spot. AM/SSB CB is a different culture and a different mess of radios. We care about the FM channels people still use on the motorway and on farms.

27 MHz goes further than 446 MHz when skip and noise allow, and dies in electrical hash when they do not. A CB listing without a place is almost useless; skip can drop Spanish stations into Yorkshire on a whim. Log where you were as well as the channel.

What we will not do with these bands

We will not turn PMR446 into a directory of named businesses. A warehouse using channel 8 with tone 67 is still a private conversation. List the allocation (channel, frequency, mode). Do not list “B&Q on the ring road, Saturday shift.” That is the same privacy line we draw everywhere else.

Programming a dual-band amateur HT on 446

Many amateur handhelds can receive 446 MHz. Transmitting there with a removable antenna and amateur power is not “clever dual use.” It is out of allocation. If you want to talk PMR, use a PMR set. If you want to talk amateur, use amateur frequencies and a licence.

Receive-only on 446 with an HT is reasonable for checking whether your kids’ blister-pack radios work. Keep the volume down in public; nobody needs your scanner repeating a steward’s channel on the bus.

Aerial myths

• A “high gain” 446 whip on a licensed-for-integral radio is a problem, not an upgrade.
• CB does allow a proper vehicle antenna. That is why a van on ch 19 works and a handheld in the glovebox does not.
• More power is not an option on PMR446. If you cannot hear them, they are too far away or behind a building. Move.

How this site lists them

The PMR446 pack and UK CB pack are channel references plus any local notes members have added. They are not activity monitors. If channel 19 is quiet from your QTH, try at commute time, or accept that CB in 2026 is not 1983.

For the wider picture, read lawful hobby listening and the bandplan. For a radio that does both amateur and 446 receive, start with amateur calling — you will learn more in an hour on 145.500 than in a week of empty PMR channels.