Hi all,

My father is busy equipping his vehicle for a few extended road trips
around Australia. Coverage of mobile phone services is spotty when
you get away from the major centres, and so I advised that having some
sort of backup communications would be a wise idea.

I myself am a licensed radio amateur, and if I go on the trips, I
bring my radios... so that satisfies that. However, I've recently
joined the workforce, thus in all probability won't be going on future
trips. He's expressed an interest in getting an amateur license, but
even if he doesn't ... having capability of using amateur bands in an
emergency is useful.

I was therefore wondering what radios are available on the market that
can do both amateur frequencies, and CB. Ideally looking for both HF
CB (~27MHz SSB/AM) and UHF CB (476..478MHz FM), but even HF only is
still useful. What we wish to avoid is having a plethora of antennae,
control heads and microphones for individual band-specific radios.

I've set up a pair of Wouxun KG-UVD1Ps to do this -- they have all 40
UHF CB simplex channels as memory channels, followed by UHF CB
repeaters 1-8 as channels 41 to 48... then 49: 146.500MHz FM, 50:
439.000MHz FM... and most Australian repeaters follow on in order of
frequency.

However, being handhelds, makes them awkward for mobile use -- a
mobile rig would be better, one which combined HF as well would be
ideal.

Queries:
(1) Does anyone know of rigs that can do this out-of-the-box (like the
Wouxun handhelds)?
(2) I've heard of the "freeband" mod that's available for some radios
such as the Yaesu FT-897... what other radios can this be done on, and
what are the pros/cons of doing this?

Regards,
Stuart Longland VK4MSL