Nor here. Strictly speaking programmable radio's are banned, but the UV-5R is still the go to just becasue you avoid that painful screwing around of trying to find frequencies that work between different manufacturers. As long as your aware of which bands are open use and which are restricted your Ok though. When I was living in the UK I had a Motorola XTNID and it was such a faff about trying to get it synched with my squad at milsim games, so if the OP is planning on playing a lot of event games I would encourage them to get the license, just makes life easy.