Walkie-talkie advice, please.

[Weetabix]

I think the way forward for my needs might be to get a unit like the Baofeng I mentioned above, and use it at low TX power in the PMR446 allocated band...

Make sure it will transmit on those frequencies. If it won't, you can mail it to me.

[Highspeed]

I did have two ex British Army Racal VHF sets which had frequency hopping and encryption built in ( they were 'demilled' before release to the surplus market, but with the aid of the tech manual I found out that the demilling just consisted of breaking one circuit board track and removing a resistor, so it was easy to fix )

Unfortunately I sold them before emigrating to a guy in Germany. I didn't know why he wanted secure comms and I didn't ask

[Denis]

I think the way forward for my needs might be to get a unit like the Baofeng I mentioned above, and use it at low TX power in the PMR446 allocated band...

Make sure it will transmit on those frequencies. If it won't, you can mail it to me.

According to the specs I can find, it should. If not, I'll sell it to some other sucker

[Denis]

... the demilling just consisted of ...

I have heard of old "demilling" of rifles that consisted of pouring a soft lead slug into the chamber. Sounds about as useful.