Any and all resources would be much appreciated

Say you had your HAM license.... you could most likely find repeaters in your area that you can absolutely jump on and talk to people, if you're friends have the license you can talk pretty good distances.

Even with a baofeng

If you're all in the woods doing innawoods stuff, you can just use those FRS channels, as most likely there won't be others within the few miles range that they work anyway.

Privacy and civilian radios isn't really a thing

Best advice study for the license you’ll learn a lot of good shit along the way

Yeah

So is the signal grid based? Or for example in the middle of nowhere can the radios be used stand alone to communicate to one another?

And if you're already into electronics and electrical stuff it's a breeze

I'm into it, just have no idea about this area lol

Stand alone, or "simplex" is radio to radio

Repeaters are what you would call grid based.

You talk to a repeater in your range, and it rebroadcasts the signal much stronger out to others... but they still have to be in range of that repeater as well

Then there's DMR, but that uses the internet, so if that's down it's useless anyway

Okay, and in simplex, would you just match frequencies or is it a different functionality on the radio?

Yeah, just match frequencies

Theres MUCH more to all this

But I'm trying to keep it super simple, YouTube really is your friend here.

Yeah I'm gonna have to do some digging for sure

I'll look shit up, but appreciate the help!

Look for “Ham Radio Crash Course” on YT lots of good advice

Basically it's like this.... if you want an expensive hobby, get into hams.

If you just want emergency comms if things break down, just learn the basic FRS/GMRS/weather band programming and keep your batteries charged.

Also our little radios can reach out a little farther with a bigger antenna he reviews a 42 1/2 inch and antenna on there that’s pretty cheap

Yeah, but a few miles over flat ground is it

And that's pushing it

In an emergency I’m sure you give your left nut for a little bit of extra distance if it’s what you need

With 10 watts and the best antennas money can buy and the most I've gotten out in the desert was 8 miles

Where I live in open farm land with houses you're lucky to get 3 miles

Now that's with hand helds... a 40 watt mobile or base will obviously get you a little more

But 10-15 miles is really it with simplex.

I eventually wanna get one in the car but idk how to wire it

Most plug into the lighter

In what respect? I deal with adaptive equipment in vehicles, may be able to help

so im seeing a ton of mixed answers here. Are UV-5R's trash or what?

They are cheap Chinese radios

let me rephrase that. Are they worth getting if you have nothing?

Yes

The answer is hardly no to that question lol

They can just break easily... in operating conditions they all work the same at the same power levels.

If you have nothing else, they work for emergency comms and talking on the fly. For single channel plain text.

Whats your opinion of BF-F8HP