nokones

There is a guy on You Tube that doesn't have a Rubicon Jeep knows a couple things about radios

You can't program custom channels in that radio with that software. You can only program custom receive-only channels

Don't ground your radio negative power lead directly to the battery. Ground the radio negative power lead to a factory chassis grounding point.

You can't change anything except the Tones, PT-T ID, Display Name, and the wideband/narrowband emissions in RPT-23 channel.

Make sure that your antenna system is grounded to the vehicle ground at the mount and not just through the coax connection. Also, do not ground your radio negative power lead directly to the battery with the later model vehicles that are laden with LED lighting and various control modules connected to a CAN system. Connect your negative power lead to a factory chassis grounding point. There is one in the front passenger kick panel well.

I guess you could call that "wideband noise"

If others are receiving you choppy and/or garbled on wideband emissions and clear not choppy or garbled on narrowband emissions than the other users more than likely are using FRS radio that have to be set for narrowband emissions or their non-FRS radios are programmed for narrowband emission operations, which means you should also have your radio set for narrowband emission operations so they can receive you clearly. And, that will resolve the interference you're receiving when operating with Wideband emissions on the affected channel. Most inexpensive radios will definitely notice the difference in the audio tone quality because those radios do not have the quality filtering components as professional radios possess.

Batteries for the JEDI series radios are still widely available in the three battery chemistries, NiCad, NiMH, and Li-Ion, and from the NTN7143 equivalent capacity of 1200 Mah to the Li-Ion capacity of 5500 Mah from numerous sources and at various prices from low as $34.00. Radio holsters will be challenging for fit with the larger battery capacities, so be aware. If you use a Li-Ion battery with your Motorola or any radio, do not use the Motorola NTN9702 overnight single pocket, NTN1171 rapid rate single pocket, or the NTN1177, NTN1178, and NTN1179 chargers to charge the Li-Ion battery or you will damage the battery or it will catch on fire. You will need to use the WPLN4144 Impress single pocket charger or the WPLN4127 Impress multi-pocket charger or equivalents to safely charge the Li-Ion battery. If you condition the NiCad and NiMH batteries regularly, you will get multiple years of service beyond the normal two years of service. I get about 3-5 years depending on the quality of the cells used. You can't condition the Non-Impress Li-Ion batteries. You will get what you get with these batteries. Just use the appropriate Li-Ion battery charger.

The pictured Motorola labeled battery will be 35 years old this coming June, according to the date code. I pretty sure that Motorola discontinued selling those batteries for the JEDI Series radios way before the turn of the century in 2000. Also, the battery charger is the very slow rate overnight single pocket charger and not the rapid rate charger.

I never mentioned Amazon in any of my postings.

Larsen or T E Connectivity (Laird) and buy them from a reputable professional radio electronics retailer like Talley Communications, Pasternack, Arcadian Antenna, Tessco, or Antenna Farm, and not from a cheap discount big warehouse operation that only specializes in shipping cheap junk sold by resellers that knows nothing about radio electronics.

I just learned that my Dummy Load took a dump and I am wondering if they are repairable and worth repairing? The casing/housing appears to be assembled with two halves and the N Female fitting has 4 screws attaching the fitting to the housing. I didn't realize that the Dummy Load failed on me. At first, I thought that the three radios I was measuring the RF output with the Dummy Load was in a dire need of an alignment and tune since I was measuring only 7 watts of output power. I measured the three radios with three different in-line Watt meters and one of the meters and slugs were calibrated last year by Bird. So, I packed up the three radios and headed to a Motorola Service Shop in Tucson. As I was about to leave, the technician came out to my Jeep and told me the first radio is putting out 50 watts and is on freq. I said no way. He quickly checked the second radio with the same results, and the third radio was transmitting 40 Watt, but was a tad off freq and needed an alignment. I said do it. The first radio was Jeep radio so I put the radio back in my Jeep and remeasured the RF and it was at 48 watts. After the Tech tuned the third radio, I headed home and when I got home, my first task was to recheck the radios again. I checked two of three radios on the bench since they were loose, and they again only put out 7 watts. So, I started replacing cables, cords, adapter connectors, ensured the power supply was putting out 14 volts. I bypassed my Anderson Distribution Block and directly connected the radio and controlhead to the power supply, only 2 watts were drawn from the power supply. So, I tried another power supply and still only two watts being pulled from the second power supply. The only thing that I haven't changed was the Dummy load. My second Dummy load was only an UHF Dummy load and these three radios were VHF mobiles so I couldn't use the UHF Dummy load. However, I have NMO magmounts and a couple VHF mobile antennae so I hooked up the antenna to the radio in place of the dummy load. When I keyed the radio, 48 watts, hot damn. I reconnected the Dummy load, 7 watts, hooked the antenna back up, 48 watts. I decided to get out my ohm meter and check the Dummy load resistance and it measured "OL". Although, I wasted a whole day going to Tucson with two perfectly good working radios, I did get one radio aligned and I did discover that the Dummy load failed and my meters and radios were nof the cause of measuring 7 watts.

In my Motorola XTL5000 UHF mobiles, I have 35 Zones with a combined total of 860 channels programmed with GMRS for coverage in six states, and several business radio service channels. In my Motorola XTL2500 VHF mobiles, I have several business radio service channels in about ten zones in various channel configurations. In my XTS5000 UHF portables, I have 43 Zones with about the same number of channels, not to exceed 16 channels per zone. In my Motorola XTS5000 VHF portables they are essentially programmed the same as my VHF mobiles. Oh, by the way, it appears that these series radios will not allow you to program more than 50 zones. I think it is stupid that radio manufacturers design a 1,000 channel radio without any zone banks. Can you imagine trying to zip through a gazillion channels in one zone. Typical $20 POS CCR, and without PL Defeat/Monitor, Home Channel, Display with more than 6 characters, and Talkaround features.

I was comparing Trail Apples because most of the Jeepers use the little Itty bitty FRS radios and the test was also to prove a point.

I did some comparison testing measuring distances between FRS being operated inside of a vehicle and the CB Radio in both the AM and FM modes. The test was conducted on relatively flat desert terrain essentially nothing but giggley weeds and pucker bushes between the two test points at various distances. The FRS radio was operated on a two-watt channel and the maximum distance was just shy of a half-mile. The CB Radios were using 5-foot Tuneable Firestiks and the maximum distance was 2 1/4 miles in the AM mode and 3 1/2 miles in the FM mode. At the 3 1/2 mile test point and just for giggles, a 60-watt CB amplifier was turned on which barely put out 45 watts, and there was very little difference in the signal and audio qualities in the AM mode. The FM mode was not tested with the amplifier since it was not FM capable. Personally, I think the FM CB Radio could have potential use for Trail Comm.