HK2GO

Thanks for the insight. The Motorola's have been good to us but some have gone missing over time, others abused to the point of destruction. The last one got run over by a forklift. These things happen but at the $600 retail price point it's like pulling teeth to get the company to replace them. I'm going to recommend they look into the Kenwood. It seems like the best option at roughly half the cost of the CP200.

My company currently uses Motorola CP200's and is looking to add some more budget friendly units to the fleet. They would definitely need something IP rated and that's able to withstand large temperature fluctuations. Type certified for business use in the 452-461 range. Suggestions are welcome.

It appears that the 17 was discontinued and was replaced by the 45.

I haven't purchased one yet but am leaning heavily towards the Kenwood KMC-45D. A bit spendy for what it is but something tells me I won't find a better one when it comes to sound quality, and it should last for a very long time.

Lithium ion batteries do not like to be kept fully charged. Over time it damages the cells and causes them to lose capacity. They instead prefer to be stored at 80% state of charge. I wouldn't recommend leaving the battery on the charger for extended periods of time. Charge it up then keep it off the charger until it requires recharging or you know you'll be out and about for a long enough period of time to require a fully charged pack. Another reason I wouldn't recommend leaving them on the charger. Although they do have battery monitoring onboard to prevent overcharging, if that circuitry fails and one of the cells is allowed to overcharge it will violently vent hot gas and flame, potentially burning down your house or car. Ideally you should never allow a lithium ion battery to charge unattended, because this stuff does happen, and more often than you might think.

Sounds like fun. Back in the day I used to have a Nextel phone which used iDEN that had a baked in radio service which would call a phone number and play music through the phone. Every time I used that service while in my bathroom the GFCI outlet would trip, despite the phone not being plugged in. Oddly enough that would never happen while on a call or using the ptt function, just while listening to packetstream radio. My dad also had a ham rig which would set off our house alarm when he keyed up on a certain band, which long escapes memory.

Cars can do weird things to radios. I had to add GMRS channel 13 and MURS channel 1 to my skipped channel list on my HT because of RF interference. In the OP's case a rf filter on the radios input power line may help, but there is no guarantee that it will.