[runjake]

Only N=2 but mine have worked great for the 2 meter and FRS/GMRS bands, which is what one is probably going to use while in the back country.

Definitely don't try 27 MHZ, or perhaps outside of the above bands at all.

Are these Yaesu, Motorola, or Icom quality? No, but they're $25.

[transcriptase]

Yeah I have 4 that are great 2m/70cm, which is what the included antennas are optimized for. Even better with a cheap Nagoya antenna and non-stock firmware.

Unfortunately people don’t realize that even if you install a firmware that allows down to 11m, even connected to a $1200 base antenna the power output will be in the milliwatt range while throwing off on harmonics.

There’s also the case of hardware inconsistency and fakes. When I hook up 4 of the included antennas to my VNA there’s pretty big variance, and I recently tested a fake Nagoya that was clearly tuned for air band and not 70cm/2m as advertised.