Lscott

How many "undocumented" features will be in it?

Look at the Kenwood TK-3170, but only 128 channels and 128 zones. It also has Part 95 certification. I carry one of these around for UHF Ham and GMRS. It uses the typical K1 type plug, like most or the Chinese radios use, for programming and speaker mic accessories. https://forums.mygmrs.com/gallery/image/263-tk-3170jpg/?context=new

I have one of these 40Ah battery packs myself for emergency use. I also purchased the matching charger for it. https://www.bioennopower.com/products/12v-40ah-lfp-battery-pvc-blf-1240a The attached photo shows mine and the charger. The battery pack in the fanny pouch is a smaller LiFePO4 one and the matching charger to use when walking around. Remember with a LiFePO4 battery you might not really need a 100Ah battery pack. The typical Lead-Acid battery exhibits a "Peukert Effect", which is where the Lead Acid battery has lower usable capacity when discharged at high rates. https://battlebornbatteries.com/peukert-effect/?srsltid=AfmBOoqoAjoBFTa9CHSm0C6i9hwZ_TdVi0DgazQTAiQ5bTzVMyMOrxyX Further the voltage drops to 11.5 to 12 volts around 50 percent or so of remaining capacity. Most mobile radios are spec'd at 13.8 VDC +/- 15%, so the lower voltage limit is at 11.75 VDC. Look at the attached datasheet for a typical 12Ah sealed Lead Acid battery pack and check out the "Battery discharge characteristics" curves. With a LiFePO4 battery, which doesn't suffer from the "Peukert Effect", you can use anywhere from 80 to 90 percent of the capacity and still be at 12.8 volts, well above the lower limit for portable mobile type radios. That means you can expect to get nearly the same usable operating time out of a LiFePO4 battery that you would expect to get out of a Lead Acid type with nearly double the capacity rating. BP12-12.pdf

Looks like the prices for those $25 CCR's might go up a lot more than 20% if ordered directly by mail. I just read the following on a news site today. Also the delay going through customs will likely be MUCH longer too. Get out your check book, or credit/debit card. ======================================================================================================== Trump even has gone to the point of making sure those who have been gaming the system now will be playing in a fair field, by eliminating the so-called 'de minimus' exceptions that allowed overseas companies, from China and the like, to ship directly to American consumers and avoid tariffs. Those rules had allowed shipments under $800 in value to avoid any payment, and billions of those shipments were routinely sent and delivered. Trump had given the Commerce Department time to develop a plan to collect those payments, and he said that now is in place. Starting May 2, shipments under $800 will be subject to an ad valorem duty of 30% of the value of the postal item or $25 per postal item. On June 1, the per-postal-item tariff will increase to $50, reports confirmed. Billions in revenue for America are predicted.

Has anyone used a Diamond NR240CA wide band mobile antenna? This is NOT the NR240C you commonly find for sale. I only found one place you can buy it from. You can buy one, its special order, from here. https://www2.randl.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=76310&srsltid=AfmBOoqYWGg_EvP4vp3PXD_OF0Py6YOJvRI0bT0PbjiUY4ZphNIIOmKc This looks like a reasonable alternative to the Comet CA-2x4SR antenna, which seems to be cheaper. https://www.cometantenna.com/product/comet-ca-2x4sr/

The attached paper, from my personal electronic technical library, goes into some detail on the various failure conditions for Lithium cells. Worth the read. Safety of lithium-ion batteries.pdf

All the Lithium battery packs I have, at least for Kenwood radios, have a protection circuit in them. I don't know if they protect against over charge, fairly sure they do, but they do work to prevent over discharge. When the terminal voltage drops to a bit under 6VDC the output voltage will suddenly drop to zero. I've run into this while testing my packs for usable remaining capacity with an electronic load. Also the radios seem to alarm out and shut down at the 6VDC mark too. https://forums.mygmrs.com/gallery/image/248-2117323252_batterypacktestingjpg/?context=new I found a while back a web site where a guy did a tear down of a K2 Energy 7Ah LiFePO4 battery pack. You can see the Chinese protection module inside. K2 Energy K2B12V7EB LiFePO4 Internals.pdf

How stable the battery is depends on the Lithium chemistry used. The worse are Lithium Ion types, followed by Lithium Polymer. The most stable is the Lithium Iron Phosphate type.

You can look at some of these. https://www.bioennopower.com/collections/battery-chargers

The price on the new D878UV HT's are now ridiculously priced at over $300. https://forums.mygmrs.com/gallery/image/270-d878uv-model-1/?context=new When my buddy and I got ours a number of years back they were a bit over $200. We though that was a tad high at the time.

You'll find affordable models used. New will likely exceed your budget. I would look for Kenwood radios. Personally I've had far better luck finding programming software and support for many Kenwood models. I've hard much harder time finding stuff for Motorola. Some here might have have better luck with Motorola than I've had, might know where to get the software etc. If you're looking for a Motorola radio I do own a few of these. https://forums.mygmrs.com/gallery/image/261-motorola-xpr6550jpeg/?context=new A number of the older Kenwood radios had FCC Part 95 certification so they are legal on GMRS, so long as they are properly programmed. The one I usually carry around is the TK-3170. https://forums.mygmrs.com/gallery/image/417-tk-2180jpg/?context=new https://forums.mygmrs.com/gallery/image/263-tk-3170jpg/?context=new If you don't care about FCC certification this one is a nice radio. It's currently manufactured and available new, but it's going to cost you a lot more than the other ones. Even used they're not exactly cheap. https://forums.mygmrs.com/gallery/image/290-nx-1300duk5/?context=new

@marcspaz has already mentioned using a portable mast system. Here is one I've used. https://forums.mygmrs.com/gallery/image/257-portable-mast-antenna-system/ For portable power this is one of several solar power systems I have. This particular one all you need is a lead acid battery. It does use one of those cheapo PWM charge controllers. Personally I would use an MPPT, but I got this at a swap really cheap. I was mainly interested in the panels. https://forums.mygmrs.com/gallery/image/562-dokio-100-watt-panel/ I tend to use LFP, LiFePO4, type batteries now. They last much longer and weight significantly less. To get the most out of a solar panel I recommend a good MPPT charge controller. The one in the photo I got used for $40, including shipping and sales tax. Normally they're around $100+ new. https://forums.mygmrs.com/gallery/image/569-gv-10-lead-acid-mppt-charge-controller/

This could be a good solution. It's a non ground plane type so you don't have that worry. It's also a fold over type so you can lay it down when parking in the garage. https://www.hamradio.com/detail.cfm?pid=H0-018761 There is also a Ham band version of this antenna if you have the license.

I typically go from the radio connector to BNC. Usually you can find an adapter for some weird antenna port type to BNC so I use it as a common interconnect type. I have a lot of RG-58 patch cables. You'll also end up with a collection of adapters after a while too. https://forums.mygmrs.com/gallery/image/427-adapters-connectorsjpeg/?context=new Here is an example of the Icom specific radio port type and the adapter to BNC I got for it to use external antennas. I had to order this special since it's not very common. https://forums.mygmrs.com/gallery/image/500-ic-f3162dt-front-and-back-sidepng/?context=new

People buy these cheap Chinese notch-duplexers to use for home brew repeaters. This is the data sheet I found for one and some real world test data. SGQ-450D-N.pdf Chinese Mobile Duplexer Measurements.pdf

https://www.dxengineering.com/parts/any-at-d578uviii

Since many of the favorite radios people use are of Chinese manufacturer those are likely to see a big spike in price when the tariffs kick in. And I would guess everything else that goes with them, battery packs, antennas, microphones etc.

Where is DOGE when you need them? Government waste at it's best.

Now you get to go hiking too. Make sure you bring along some conformable shoes/boots and a backpack with some food and water bottles.

I've spotted a radio or two over the years on eBay where the serial number was very obviously cut out. Not interested in those no matter how good the price looked. I'm also suspicious when the seller doesn't show the serial number, even when asked in a private message for it.

Or Detroit, or Chicago or ....

Yeah, I’ve seen them at swaps a few times. One had a price tag of $1500. Nice radio. Wait a few more years for one of those zeros to drop off the price and I might be interested then.

The point was GMRS is a shared resource. If those that use it don’t respect that point it’s easy to ruin it for the rest of us. For example I went to the local community center gym jogging track to walk for an hour or so after work today. As usual I had my HT with me to monitor local radio traffic while there. I don’t know if it was intentional or not but I got to “enjoy” several lengthy periods of country-western music playing on the local wide area coverage repeater. Of course nobody else could use it during the multi “broadcast” events. With a coverage radius of 15 to 20 miles that inconvenienced a lot of people, and it only took ONE idiot.

Sort of reminds me of this topic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

I've been on some other forums and I've read about issues like yours. In a few cases the radios got bricked. The Windows VM's seem to have some issues with serial port and USB port pass through at times. Have it mess up while programming a radio, or worse updating the firmware, could make for a very bad experience. I've had a mixed bag of luck using Chirp. Some radios it seems to do OK. Others it screws up good. Remember the guys who do the programming for the various radio models Chirp claims to support is done by reverse engineering the communications to the radio and figuring out how the code plug is "structured" internally. They don't always get it right, and if the manufacture changes somethings it can hose your radio. My general recommendation is to use the manufacturers official programming software where possible on the supported platform.