Cheap Radio

Although I have quite a few handheld radios I could not resist this pair of Baofeng 888s  UHF radios.
Costing £19.00 (around 21 Euros or 24 US Dollars at today's rates) for TWO. A radio for £9.50 can't be bad can it?? Simple sets, 16 channels, no display, all must be programmed via PC.
This pair arrived with frequencies programmed in at 462Mhz and around, working back to back. I wonder how many get used on that frequency. Anyway safely programmed for the 70cms band the radios seem to access my local repeater ok.

The BF888S

The charger has a USB connector, quite a neat idea I think.

All programming of channels has to be done via PC, there is no way of doing it from the radio. There is specific software from Baofeng from this, screenshot below or you can use CHIRP

Bingo!!

Whenever I am in the car, as a matter of habit I tun on my mobile VHF/UHF rig and let it scan the bands. I have various frequencies programmed into the rig- repeaters 2metre and 70cms frequencies, some marine band frequencies and so on.
One of the frequencies in the rigs memories is 433.050- this is a repeater frequency, fiorgive me but I cannot remember which repeater, but I can occasionally hear it when in the Cardiff area, about 20 miles away from where I live.
Yesterday as I was just about to arrive home I heard a VERY strong signal on 433.050. Initially I thought that there must be a very good lift on 70cms, but hang on this didn't sound like an amateur radio repeater.
"Two and Two 22"  "on its own number 8", and then "please leave your empty glasses at the bar" and then a sudden cry of "House!!"  Now it can be no coincidence that at the time I was driving past the local social club, it was around 4pm and my guess is that there was an afternoon game of bingo going on. But why was this appearing on 433.050? Are they using some sort of wireless microphone system?
A mischievous person could I suppose sit outside with a 70cms handheld and add some confusion into the bingo game. I had heard of  unlicensed Low Power devices being allowed within the 70cms band but I didn't think that would include wireless PA systems. I'm just glad I don't live near this club as I should think 20 watts of UHF would probably wipe their system out.