just a little heads up, current legislation requires the aerials to be fixed to the body of the radio to comply with the license free radio legislation (PMR radios).

I only point this out as i understand, if your caught with the PMR radio and a remote aerial, technically the authoritys could confiscate the whole shebang and if it's wired into the bikes power they could have your bike as well ?

regarding the distance most quality radios, will have aerials that will be good enough for the radio there on, you would be better spent trying to get an arrangement that has the aerial in a vertical position, this will vastily improve reception and usable distance,

My buddy and me regularly head out on the bikes with the 0.5 watt radios and get about on average 1mile range though this is very dependant on the terrian we're whizzing through, and we find the 1 mile to be plenty.

hth

Cheers Roddy - I had no plans to do anything drastic and I'm looking at a way of getting the sets vertical but not having much luck with getting a belt type attachment. A mile will be more than enough but we were only about a K with line of site and we were having problems with quality of transmission - I'm pretty sure it was the antenna position.

_________________
Better to Burn Out Than Fade Away

In the garage -

2001 X1
KTM390 Duke
Ducati 950 Monster +
CCM Spitfire Scrambler

Autocomm and intaride do a belt type pouch that keeps the radios upright, or look for suppliers to bike schools as they all use a pouch to keep the radio position correct,

you'll notice once you keep the aerials as close to vertical as you can the quality of the reception improve so improving the sound of the speech, it's also worth checking the squelch on the radios as if this is set too high it can reduce the quality of the reception as well, generally you'd want the squelch to cut out the signal when your at the maximum distance apart that you want.

in case you don't know what squelch is basically think of a gate if the signal is strong enough it will open the gate so you can then hear the signal if it's too weak the gate doesn't open so no sound, hence if the squelch is set too high even a strong signal can struggle to open the gate so reducing sound quality.