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Hey Everyone, I've been a CB'er since Moby Dick was a minnow and learned of GMRS about 12 years ago. Just now getting deeper into it because I recently retired from EMS in Kansas City. I just bought a Midland MX400 to install in my Power Wagon. I've read some comments on here about Midland products, here's to hoping I have better luck. I'd like to know if there are any members that live close so I can put my radio to use. I'll be listening. WRAK287

Welcome! I have to say, I got into GMRS for going Offroad with friends of mine... but this forum has really got me digging into GMRS more and more. The folks here are a pretty good group. I have several MTX400 radios. 1 had an issue and Midland fixed it in just a few days with a replacement. The only down falls I have found is, its only narrow band and features are minimal. It really seems like a "Welcome to GMRS 101" radio. You should enjoy it... but when the bug bites, you will be looking for an upgrade. LOL

I figured, but wanted to clarify in case someone were to get confused. Best regards

If I owned the repeater, while waiting for FCC to intervene, I would just shut it off when I hear them get on it. If I can't use it, why should they.

The radio will scan through the tone codes and digital codes while receiving, to find a match. The digital code scan is almost instant, but the TSQL is a bit slower. Once you put it in DPL scan mode, it will continue to scan until the correct squelch is found. However, unless someone is transmitting for 15 to 20 seconds straight, TSQL may take a couple of transmissions before the tone is found. In my opinion, less than 30 seconds isn't bad. Yes, you can run split DPL methods on transmit and receive.

Hey folks! I know I said I was going to wait a few days... possibly a week... before my GMRS-50X1 features review, but I spent hours using this radio today and I had a great time. I figured I would just go ahead and get it out there. For the features review, I am going to start with the Cons this time. Since the quasi-tech review ended with the focus on the negatives, I would like to end this review with a positive vibe. Please keep in mind, this is purely opinion based after using the radio. There are tons of features... I am only going to cover what I believe would be the most common/popular to use among most people. Cons - 1.) While talking simplex to a station that is closer than 2 miles, I had to use low power, NFM and turn the mic gain down to 1. If not, the person I was talking to complained about audio clipping and audible popping sounds. After 2 miles, I could turn the mic gain back up and use WB FM. 2.) The display is going to be both in the Pros and Cons section. As some are aware, I daily drive a Jeep Wrangler. For at least 50% of the year, my Jeep has no roof and no doors. That fact brought out a big drawback for me. The display has no means of adjusting the brightness. Regardless of what I did, while the sun was out and the roof and doors were off, the display was 100% washed out. I literally could not tell the radio was on by looking at the display. At first, I put the soft top on, and the display was still heavily washed out, but was usable. I had to put on my top and my doors with 20% light transmission tint on the windows, before the display was good to use. Another drawback for the display is, there is a lot of very useful information in a tiny little spot. It takes a bit of focus to look at the display and get a feel for exactly what is going on. This is not good if you are driving and want to make a quick change. I found that I had to pull over to be safe while making minor adjustments. 2.) They advertise that it has NOAA radio built-in, but it really doesn't. The VFO covers a frequency spectrum that includes those frequencies. Not a big deal, but it is up to you to manually tune to those channels and save them to memory. 3.) You can't add new GMRS saved channels that are capable of transmitting. On my iCom, I have multiple saved channels for channel 15, for example. One with no DPL, one with tone coding and one with digital coding. Depending on who I am with or the group I am talking with, I need to use different values. With the BTech radio, I will have to manually change it every time. I am assuming this is so they could get FCC type approval. 4.) You can't transmit in VFO mode, at all, not even on GMRS frequencies. This was probably needed for FCC type approval. Still a drag that you can't manually dial to a GMRS frequency and use it. 5.) There are a lot of unneeded features and unusable functions that are locked out. Seems pointless to even have them because they will likely add a lot of confusion to new operators. Examples are Remote Stun which remotely disables transmitting and Remote Kill remotely disables transmit and receive. These are typically repeater management features that a typical GMRS mobile user just doesn't need. While the aforementioned features are present and function, there are a ton of other repeater related functions that are still in the menu, but you can't change them. It almost seems like they took a shortcut and used UV-50Xx software and just tweaked it for this radio. Pros - 1.) Range.... My son and I ran a field test today; both simplex and repeater use. Anyone who has read my quasi-technical opinion review, knows I was less than impress with what I saw. That said, going from my BTech mobile to my son's HT inside his car, we easily talked 5.5 miles in rough terrain and while I was on the blind side of a hill, 100 feet+ below the top of a hill and there were lots of trees, buildings, etc. between us. I was pretty impressed that we got that range with my son's radio "inside" his car, while driving, and he was using an HT that has a maximum power of 8 watts. That was more than twice as far as the results we had with another brand mobile I own... using the same HT. Once we were out of simplex range, we switched to a local repeater. I am 22 miles from the repeater as the crow flies. I was using low power (2.5w) WB FM. My son was 19 miles away from the repeater using the HT, on full power and WB FM. My son gave me the the same signal report as others. He said there was some noise on low power, but when I switched to medium power (18w) I was full quite and great audio quality. Given the RF signal quality I observed with analyzing tools, I am seriously shocked. 2.) While the display washed out very easily by the sun light, the display colors are extremely flexible, allowing the user to adjust the color contrast, making it easier to read as well as using font color to further segment the many items displayed on the screen. 3.) The owners manual states that the device has a 50% duty cycle. There is no power level specified, but I assume in low power. My son and I talked for more than 30 minutes, with most of my transmit time being at medium power and at about 35-40% duty cycle. During our conversation my son reported that there was no noticeable deviation of carrier or modulation. My receive quality stayed great the whole time as well. 4.) The radio only draws 3.5 amps while using the radio at full power, with the cooling fan running. The radio came with large gauge power wires. They are not labeled, but they measure about 2mm. They are likely 14 gauge, rated for 15 amps. That's a plus, as you are less likely to have voltage drop over the length of the wire and the fuse will pop long before the wires become a fire risk. 5.) While its not very useful for most cars/trucks, it does receive commercial FM Radio. This is great feature for vehicles that don't have a radio, such as ATV's, older work trucks, construction equipment, etc. 6.) You are able to monitor up to 4 frequencies and/or channels at once. The ability to mix monitoring VFO and Memory channels can be pretty handy. 7.) A cool feature that this radio has is, you can sync the displays in pairs of two. This can be a pretty neat feature. I set display A (top left) and display B (bottom left) to be in sync. This means when I change the channel on Channel A, channel B changes as well. The inverse also occurs. This allows a user to do things like have the channel Name displayed and the frequency displayed at the same time. You don't have to guess where you are if you are using channel names. 8.) This unit displays the DPL code and method on the screen. This is awesome, because you don't have to guess if your DPL is set or to what value. Its right there to read. 9.) This unit has a feature that is getting more popular; DPL scanning. If there is a group that is using DPL and you want to be part of the conversation, you can have the radio scan tone squelch and DCS values while the other station is transmitting and the radio will detect the value that the group is using. Indifferent - Something that is not really a pro or con... since we can only transmit on the hard-coded GMRS channels, 225 additional memory channels does not make a lot of sense to me. I'm sure some will love it. With the exception of programming the WX channels, I likely wont use any more than that. Summary - Quasi-tech review aside, if you are willing to tolerate some of the technology shortcomings I noticed in my radio (noted in another thread), for a low cost radio, this can be a lot of fun to play with. Sadly, the display washout is a deal-breaker for me, personally. However, I think I am in the minority there. In short, I am not going to recommend or condemn the radio. It's not for me, even with all the cool features. That said, I leave it to you to use my two threads as a tool to make an informed decision. I'm just 1 guy with one radio... but there it is. Thanks, Spaz

Hey Marc, What kind of wheeling do you do? My wife and I have a pair of Arctic Cat Wildcat 1000 X's.

Welcome from a fellow EMT, WRAK968

I have to know, why are you so set on a repeater like this? Unless a Manufacture knows its going to sell 100's of units its not going to put the time and money into this. Even construction sites that only need a repeater for a few blocks install full size repeaters simply for the duty cycle and reliability. Now in the part 90 world you can have your self a Motorola SLR1000 these do analog or DMR and are made to be tower mounted. This is all deal breakers for your wish list, its not part 95 and it will set you back $1900 but hey it is "new". I have state of the art SLR5700's in use on a business system and many 15 year old MTR 2000's in use on GMRS. For the record the SLR5700's I own (2 @ $2200 each) have given me more issues in 2 years than 10 USED MTR2000 have in 4 years. In fact one needs to go back to the depot for repair again! NEW is not always better, the list price on a NEW MTR2000 was upward of $8000 so I am more then happy to run a USED $8000 repeater I got for $800 bucks or less vs a NEW machine I paid $800 to $1000 for. In your price point and requirement of off the shelf and legal I envision this big lunch box size FRS/GMRS radio with a 4' telescopic center loaded antenna and a rechargeable battery inside. I'm sure adding a solar panel and maybe a dynamo crank to charge the battery, a local mic, weather channels, maybe even a flashlight and an AM/FM radio will help sell more to the masses. This all sounds good (ha ha) but an off the shelf turn key repeater marketed as part 95 for GMRS is just a bad idea. Last thing we need is 100's of unlicensed repeaters all over the place with kids on them causing interference to real repeaters that people invested time and money into. If you need an example just look at all the FRS/GMRS combo radios that never got a licence and the FCC just made them licence by rule, again not good for GMRS. This unicorn you have been hunting will work about as good as simplex without an antenna at significant height above ground.

These radios "Field programmable" are dangerous in the wrong hands. Way to easy to change freq. and accidentally key up on restricted frequencies. This may seem innocuous, but could have disastrous ramifications if it interferes with emergency services, causing death. I can not stress how easy it is to cause this type of interference with this "wrong type radio on GMRS",

Same thing happening here in Fort Lauderdale. there is a maritime document spreading through the industry, that list 467, repeater inputs as safe to use in USA ports.

Thanks. With all the DSP capability today, you would think they could decode (not scan) either in under 200 milliseconds. My 1995 Zetron community repeater tone panel did this, as well as my new SDS200 Uniden scanner. The split code thing is good news. G

Wow Spaz, Thanks again for the tech review of this radio. I wish you had done one on another popular, and infamous 40 watt GMRS before I bought one. I would love to see a side by side comparison of the two radios. Thanks again. Keith T

Unauthorized maritime users are now using the National Travel Tone (141.3 Hz) on our input. Yesterday we had about nine hours of regular transmissions that were strong enough to wipe out our portable radio users. This is the third time in about two months - same ones. These users had no significant accents typical of other maritime users. I believe we have filed over 110 complaints with the FCC using their Consumer Compliant site (https://consumercomplaints.fcc.gov/hc/en-us). They recently added a category for "Pirate/Unauthorized Operation", in addition to interference. Nice. And the FCC does (eventually) respond with a personal phone call.

You could just send the information to me. I can put the information into chirp and send back the saved file. Just keep in mind anything past memory slot 30 is receive only. Then you can at least have a file to look at how it was set. Also seems some locals are willing to come by. Then you can watch the process in person. It's pretty easy to do. Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G891A using Tapatalk

I sent a message over explaining my findings. Guess we'll see where it goes from there.

Hi David! Thanks for stopping by. I strongly recommend joining the forum and looking through the many threads that include equipment reviews. There are many options and varying opinions. Some of the topics may fall inline with what your intended use, and give you a chance to ask some more specific questions. What, specifically are you trying to accomplish? Such as, what will the radio be used for, type of terrain, what kind of distances are you looking at with regard to the repeaters you want to reach, etc.?

It sounds more like RTTY to me. Did you listen to the sounds on the link I posted earlier?

Hi, You have options: 1. Use a part 95 radio on GMRS. Limited options that are not bubble pack and have been reclassified as frs radios. It is legal. 2. Use a part 97 radio on GMRS. ( ham radio) This is a cheap alternative. These are usually cheaper radios dominated by Bao Feng brand. These radios have problems broadcasting a signal that is clean and not interfering with other frequencies that may belong to emergency services. The use of these radios on GMRS is illegal. 3. Use a part 90 radio. This is a commercial radio that if you can find the software can be programmed to GMRS use. The best opinion (that ive found) has the FCC will ignore if not allow part 90 radio usage in part 95 service.

Taiwan CB RadioIt is illegal to use equipment designed for the Taiwan market in the United States. 14 channels, 12.5 kHz spacing, FM: 467.5125 MHz 467.5250 MHz 467.5375 MHz 467.5500 MHz – US GMRS Repeater Input 467.5625 MHz – US FRS Channel 8 467.5750 MHz – US GMRS Repeater Input 467.5875 MHz – US FRS Channel 9 467.6000 MHz – US GMRS Repeater Input 467.6125 MHz – US FRS Channel 10 467.6250 MHz – US GMRS Repeater Input 467.6375 MHz – US FRS Channel 11 467.6500 MHz – US GMRS Repeater Input 467.6625 MHz – US FRS Channel 12 467.6750 MHz – US GMRS Repeater Input