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As some of you are aware, the Midland MXT400 radio is not a "great" performer on simplex and has some compatibility issues with legacy radios, as it is not wide-band capable on the frequencies approved for wide-band. With this modest downfall, in my opinion, the second generation radio is still a really nice performer. I have had conversations with people on repeaters 50 miles away from me while mobile (Bunker Hill Rd & Rt 51, Gerradstown, WV to Warrenton VA). I own three MXT400 radios and one of them developed an overheating problem. After using the radio for 15-20 minutes on high power, at a 30% duty-cycle, the radio would overheat and cause the modulation circuit to fail. I called Midland customer service at the number listed in the manual. I spoke to one person, explained the issue, and had an apology and a new radio in route to my house in just 5 minutes. The replacement radio arrived in just 3 days. The new radio is rock solid. I wanted to take a minute to share my experience. While myself and others have expressed being less than thrilled with the radio's performance compared to other legacy models, I think it is important to let people know that the radio is actually really good for what it is and that I had a very positive experience with Midland customer service. When it is time to make a decision about what you want to buy, I think it is important to be aware of the bad and the good. Hope this info is helpful to someone. Thanks, Spaz

From my work in Part 90 a NB radio is down 3dB from a WB in both range and S/N. This was a common complaint during the Narrow Banding that slice of spectrum had to go through. Don't get me started on the mess MotoTRBO brought to the scene.

Wow... So, there is a lot to unpack there. So, I am not going to be much help with what specific hardware to buy, but I can help you understand the technology a little better, which may help you make better choices. The first thing I want to address is a statement you made... you stated that your narrow band radio isn't compatible with wide band repeaters. That is not a true statement. While its not optimal, wide band and narrow band equipment is cross compatible and 100% usable. If you have a narrow band radio and you can't get it to work with a wide band radio or repeater, its an equipment problem, not a technology compatibility issue. HF is great for distance. UHF is great for increased fidelity and increased data transfer rates. Do you know for sure GMRS is the platform that is going to work best for you? I regularly get 25-30 miles, station to station, on HF with as little as 2 watts, but I only get about 2.5 to 3 miles of simplex coverage with my 40 watt GMRS equipment in the same area. I think that in most cases on simplex, even with wide band equipment, you can forget 10-15 miles on GMRS with mobile and handhelds, even with 50 watts. Unless you are in a situation where you can literally see the other station, you are going to be limited by your environment. Only in line of sight (LOS) applications such as open water, plains, mountain top to mountain top, will you get 50-60 miles on 50 watts. LOS is more like 7 to 10 miles on a 5 watt handheld, too. If you legitimately need to talk 10+ miles, non-LOS, you are likely going to have to rely on a repeater if you want to use GMRS (or UHF in general). As far as coax goes, you need to have the correct coax based on your desired frequency and power levels. That means the cable needs to have a specific length, the conductors need to be a specific diameter, and the shielding needs to have a specific distance/isolator combo around the center conductor to get to the proper impedance for the frequency you intend to use, etc. Typically, pre-cut coax tuned for CB (HF) is not going to work for UHF. Also, keep in mind that a fix based station is only allowed to have 15 watts. An antenna that is only 40 feet off the ground barely clears many homes and practically no wooded areas. That is going to limit your range as well. I am sure the folks that have been doing GMRS for awhile will have some great advice on specific hardware. This site has helped me out tremendously. Good luck and enjoy.

Good luck finding anyone who has actually been charged for that. You have to be a pretty flippant repeat violator to get the attention of the FCC especially using some low power HTs, and if history shows us anything you would get a pile of cease and desist letters first before any real action was taken. If they aren't going to jail multiple well known offenders on the HF bands that were sent letters for 9 years before being fined and having their equipment confiscated I doubt Joe Blow with a HT is going to even show up on their radar unless they start stepping on the wrong toes. It's not like the FCC has the time or manpower to go around the country monitoring every transmission and then trying to find out if the radio isn't certified. It's not like the radio transmits a "hey I'm not type certified" at the start of every transmission. Stay out of spectrum you aren't supposed to be on and don't go advertising what you are doing to everyone and you'll be hard pressed to find anyone that's going to be able to figure out you aren't on a type certified radio. But do so at your own risk

I did a short Youtube video on this. Got a lot of flak from RR defenders. They are sponsoring a bunch of off road channels on YouTube now so their re-badged overpriced stuff is getting more and more out there and gaining more supporters who IMO either dont' know any better or are getting free stuff from them anyway. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChdwiXtukR4

Thanks for your feedback. With all the threads and posts being dedicated to Midland issues and failures in recent months, the recommendation still stands - "Buyer Beware" Do your homework before you purchase anything and review the threads here at the forum regarding specific brands and models.

The M1225 is a solid performer. If that price is for a complete working radio - with mic, bracket, and possibly even a power cord, you're doing all right. Pro's? Proven reliable, easy to program, simple interface. Good audio, 16 pin option connector (lots of standard accessories like external speakers, etc.) & Part 95 type accepted. Con's? The receiver can get overloaded in high RF environments (Mine used to break squelch on it's own if I drove up to a hillside transmitter we operated - near to 3 other towers loaded with transmitters). Only other con I can think of - Motorola stopped making them & they're no longer supported.

Note the original post was about retransmitting NOAA weather broadcasts. Unless there was a means to determine which broadcasts fell into the "serious life and property threatening" category, blanket repeats of such broadcasts would not be legal. If you limit the retransmissions to only EAS (Emergency Alert System) and then only retransmitted messages that pertained to the coverage area of the repeater, you might have a case. Honestly however, there are already plenty of systems for relaying and receiving EAS messages and I am not sure what the benefit would be for adding a GMRS relay channel. Yes, it might be useful for those who monitor a given GMRS frequency (simplex or repeater) 24 hours a day. If I lived in an area that is likely to have messages meeting the criteria of immediacy, I would probably sign up for a public alert service like NIXLE.

Not this Corey! Now that you have my attention you will get my Opinion. WX over GMRS, annoying to say the least. We have a garage repeater in my area that tells as the time, date, humidity, temp, ID and website every 30 min. As soon as a SAME WX alert comes thru it breaks in with the NWS for 2 full rotations of the message. To make matters worse it adds it to the end of the gibberish info it sends out every 30 min. Under a SAME alert this thing will spit out 5 min of worthless channel blocking information to nobody every 30 min. During this time the repeater is rendered useless and could hinder real emergency communications. In my opinion this is not what GMRS is intended for, if you have a need to monitor a WX radio buy a weather radio and leave GMRS out of it. Last thing we need on our very limited amount of spectrum is GMRS repeaters broadcasting something that is already broadcast to most of our population.

Do you have a balcony? I’m in an apartment, but have a balcony. I just ran LMR400 (several) and put my antennas out there, lol. I figured it was better to ask for forgiveness than pernission. Landlord did ask what they were and I explained amateur radio and GMRS. (I used angle telling her it’d still work if power and all else lost, which would as I have backup power.) She thought it was neat and even asked if I could setup some wireless bridges on rooftop (two buildings here) for their IP cameras. Easy peasy! Hoping to get brownie points and maybe sweet talk her into letting me set my antennas up there, lol. I’d put them in center roof, where can’t be seen from ground, so nobody could see, else might be seen as “tenant favoritism”. Even though, my landlord loves me, anyway. Mainly because I’m a veteran and she loves all veterans. I’m not complaining. :-)

They also used to (maybe the still do) sell radios preprogrammed with what they called "race channels" which were a mix of frequencies from the business and public safety pools. They did not make it clear to the consumerthat appropriate FCC licenses are required to operate, and that the risk of causing harmful interference was very high. Not a reputable company, in my opinion.

Part 95 has specific standards? Wow, who knew? I've got a box full of 888s that are setup to provide comms to a local neighborhood in the event of an emergency. They are what we call "good enough". Yes, the signal is not as clean as an ICOM etc. But they meet Part 90 (I mention this because there was another thread about how no BF in the history of forever was certified for anything ever, or something). Here's a video with a comparison between an 888S and an ICOM. You'll see there is a noticeable difference in signal quality. But you'll also notice that it's nowhere near as bad as some have claimed. https://youtu.be/-DGXyaDSv9I?t=4m23s

This is getting off topic and should probably be moved to the Ham area - however I have to call BS (sort of) on this. The BaoFengs and other brands work just fine. I've watched them on a spectrum analyzer, and while a little sloppy compared to a high end radio, they were certainly not as bad as YouTube would have you believe. There are always those who look down on inexpensive radios, most of them have no actual experience using them. IOW they are "experts by proxy", passing along information they heard or saw on the Interwebs. If you don't like cheap radios, fine. But they work, they are a great entry point for new Hams, and don't deserve the reputation they get. IMHO, YMMV, HAND. 73's.