[MXT115 ewbie]

Ugh, the evil Baofeng radio   /sarcasim/

 

In seriousness your neighbor probably has his radio setup in repeater mode. 

[April 19, 2018: Worker killed in Missouri TV Tower Collapse]

Wow this is right up the road from me. IIRC this had one of the main repeaters for skywarn in this area on it. 

 

 

 

Southwest Missouri Regional Skywarn’s main repeater is the N∅NWS Repeater operating on 145.490 MHz. with a standard minus 0.6 MHz. offset and a PL of 136.5 Hz. This repeater (pictured right) transmits and receives from antennas located atop a 1,000-foot-high commercial broadcast tower in Fordland, Missouri approximately 15 miles east of Springfied. This is a wide-area coverage repeater.  It uses a Vertex VHF Repeater unit along with a CAT controller.  A 100 amp DC power supply powers a 350 watt amplifier. It is the main linking hub which then connects to the following participating repeaters:

[Finally ditched the mag mount and drilled some holes!]

It sounds OK with the arm rest closed and audio is still intelligible, but it is a bit muffled obviously.  There is room for the mic cable to be fed outside when the arm rest is down, presumably put there by Ford for phone chargers and such.  Sometimes I leave the armrest up, especially when operating the scanner.  What I am planning on doing though is taking the truck to a shop that specializes in interiors, and seeing if they would be able to modify or build me something custom that will allow me to completely remove the arm rest so I can set it aside and have easier access to the radios, and pop it back on when the radios are not in use.  

 

If I can suggest something, contact a local shop that does conversions of police cars. They might be able to help you setup a external speaker that uses your factory sound system. The local pd here has a couple of the new cars setup this way. They hear the local dispatch on the left side and the county on the right side. I have a 05 with the shallow armrest that I really want to convert into my radio box. Your pictures have given me a couple ideas on how to do it now. 

[Getting into this two way hobby...]

Hi colt you had me thinking wtf that is my call sign just out of order. Heh.

 

I wish I could find a unpublished repeater in my area. I live on the side of a mountain that overlooks the town but with silly hills and trees I can transmit very far.