Starting to have some fun, but haven't made any contacts yet:
I bought a pair of Uniden PRO401HHs. In my NYC apartment, with the stock antennas, I've picked up some clear traffic (01:00 - 03:00 UTC) on channels 6, 38, and 31. Nobody was giving up their 20 or any clue as to where they were. I made some calls out to test the equipment, but the 4 watts wasn't enough to penetrate all the sources of city interference and nobody answered me.
I bought a pair of 42.5 inch ABBREE Tactical Antennas and will taking the setup to a rural area next week. I'm going to try and make contacts at various times during the day. I'm also going to see how far these can talk to each other.
What do you guys think? How far away will the units be able to talk to each other and what's the longest distance contact I can get? I'm hoping and assuming that I'll get much more distance than the shorter waves of FM FRS. I once did an experiment up in the mountains and couldn't get more than 1.3 miles of clear reception between a base receiver and a cheap bubble pack FRS, even though I was travelling in a straight line without obstructions. Recently in the country with a more powerful 5 watt setup, I couldn't get more than .75 of a mile (between two units) on either FRS or 151.82 MURS.
Don't bother with Channel 6. Those guys are running HUGE amounts of power, and the chances of talking to them, especially with a 4w radio, are zero.
You will likely get a few miles out of those handhelds. Don't expect a lot.