Lscott

I monitor MURS along with FRS channels when at home. I hear way more activity on FRS/GMRS than on MURS, in fact I hear almost nothing on MURS. It seems to be mostly neglected in my area.

So what really drives the high prices? One could say the engineering, testing certification and so on. Or the manufacture knows the customer will pay it simply because there isn't anything else out there that's competitive. As technology gets better one should be able to buy the same quality equipment at lower prices as time goes by. How many would continue to buy the older models because they know they work but can't due to the manufacture obsoleting them so they can sell an updated version at higher prices when maybe you don't care about those new features. When the manufacture knows a customer will pay $8K for a radio what stops them from introducing an updated one for $10K?

Sad part is government agencies and mega businesses are paying those prices. Then 10 to 20 years later you can buy them used for a small fraction of those prices, and most are perfectly usable.

Part of metric is how much performance do you get for the money spent. A lower spec'd radio might be a better deal if the price is right. Of course for some people price is not a consideration. But I did read a few posts where some comments were made about the cost of one or more models.

Can you add in the MSRP value for the base configuration of each?

I would be a bit more conservative on the solar insolation value used in your calculations. The charts I've seen from NREL, National Renewable Energy Labs, had a margin of error of about 10 percent. Also your eye may not notice it but small about of dust and haze in the air can result in a noticeable reduction in panel output. https://www.nrel.gov/gis/solar.html On the battery side the general recommendation is NOT to discharge a Lead Acid battery below 50 percent of capacity. Doing so can result is a large reduction in the number of charge/discharge cycles the battery can support before it become unusable. You also DON'T want to let a Lead Acid battery sit around for very long at anything less than full charge. In a partially charged state the Lead Sulfide is porous but then becomes less so over time. When the acid can no longer penetrate the Sulfide it can't be converted back to Lead and Lead Peroxide during the charge cycle resulting in a permanent reduction in battery capacity. Most people don't consider what happens when a Lead Acid Battery is charged too fast. Some of the water in the electrolyte is converted into hydrogen and oxygen gases. Even in a so-called "sealed" battery there are vents to release gas build up. Once that gas is released it can't be converted back to liquid water, yes there is a complicated chemical process in GEL and AGM batteries that can do this, but only if the gases generated is done slowly. If you look at a some of the smaller battery specification sheets this max charge rate is specified. Of course with liquid filled batteries this isn't a problem since you can always add more distilled water. https://datasheet.octopart.com/NP7-12FR-EnerSys-datasheet-32762402.pdf For the above example a 7 amp-hour battery the max recommended charge current is 1.75 amps. At a terminal voltage of 14.4 VDC the max power you can safely use for charging is 1.75 X 14.4 = 25.2 watts. I just cringe when I see guys selling so-called solar power generators at swaps with these small batteries and have a 50 to 100 watt PV panel connected to them. https://www.power-sonic.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Technical-Manual.pdf

"You ask what Morse Code is good for? I'll tell you. Morse Code is used exclusively by Electronics Based Life Forms to communicate amongst themselves using advanced Organic Digital Signal Processors, running state of the art Artificial Intelligence Software, to perform the highly complex transmit encryption, receive decryption and error correction functions."

https://www.ariss.org/contact-the-iss.html

One might be tempted to assume it's secure. I don't know if the exact protocol is documented but some kind of synchronization code has to be communicated between the radios. Who knows what else is being sent. In fact it might even be a requirement that "secret" hop info is being transmitted and that only "authorized" government agencies have access to it for monitoring use.

Unfortunately that isn't really available, promiscuous mode, for some digital systems. That would be very handy for monitoring things like NXDN and P25 trunking systems. The protocol is written such that when a digital transmission is picked up, and its tagged as from a trunking system, unless the radio has a valid "system key" loaded, not an encryption key, for that system the data is not decoded to audio and the radio stays muted. At least that's my understanding. https://forums.radioreference.com/threads/for-simply-receiving-nxdn-digital-audio-do-i-need-to-use-the-nxdn-trunking-system-feature-when-programming-my-radio.402726/ For my NXDN radios, NX-300's, the programming software won't even show the NXDN network info window without a valid system key loaded in to the software. Kenwood keeps a fairly tight lock on the software for these system keys. It's the KPG-110SM. https://comms.kenwood.com/en/products/model.php?ID=KPG-110SM-a I have a buddy the does use a XTS-5000 P25 radio on 800 MHz to monitor his local public service agencies. He used what was called an "non affiliated" mode but still had to fudge up a system key for the radio to get the thing to work. http://www.mtolab.com/howto/non-affiliation-scanning/

With only 22 channels available for me I just scan them all. I even do that at home. If I hear something interesting I stop the scan. It helps if the radio scans reasonably fast too. Some of the Chinese radios are really SLOW while scanning, if that matters to you. That might be one thing to check before laying out your money.

Well you can ask those who have been convicted and I'm sure they can tell you what equipment doesn't work.

Well it simply comes down to the money. Somebody has to pay the software guy to rework functioning firmware for their Ham version of the radio, or totally new firmware, to meet FCC GMRS regulations. It's not going to be done for free. If the manufacture doesn't see a huge market for a product with those features it's poor business sense to spend money on something that won't increase sales in a major way. Once you sit through a few meetings between sales and engineering groups, I have for the kind of business our company is in, the question pops up "how much is the customer willing to pay for feature "x"?". The answer in some cases is little to done. Guess what? Management kills the idea and it doesn't make it to production. That's they way the business world works.

These commercial radios are worth looking at. These are Kenwood radios. Some others here have recommendation for Motorola and other brands. https://mra-raycom.com/wp-content/uploads/simple-file-list/Specifications/portables/TK-270G-370G-Product-Brochure.pdf https://www.urci.com/downloads/kenwood/kenwood_tk_2170_3170_brochure.pdf The TK-3173 is basically the same as the TK-3170, and uses the same software too, but includes trunking which you don't need for GMRS anyway. http://www.swscomm.com/kenwood/TK-3173.pdf http://www.swscomm.com/kenwood/TK-2140_3140.pdf https://kenwoodsub.dealerarena.com/ProductPDFs/10/TK-2180&3180Brochure.pdf The TK-3212L and TK-3212 are almost the same identical radios expect for several very minor feature differences. https://orizonmobile.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/LIT_TK-2312_3312.pdf https://literature.puertoricosupplier.com/044/FL43682.pdf I have all these radios except for the TK-3312 at the moment so I have a good idea what they can and can't do.

One of the first two things I do when looking at a radio model I don't presently own, typically the commercial versions, is find the manufacture's brochure for it and then look to see if the programming software with cable is available. The brochure answers most of the questions one might have about number of memory channels, power and other features of interest. It's better than trying to ask people on forums like this while trying to figure out if radio fits with your operating requirements. Also if I can't get the programming software I have ZERO interest in the radio regardless of how good it looks. If I can't program it then it's just a paper weight.

And people wonder why older folks don't give a crap about opinions from the "Tide-Pod" eating generation.

It's not a hardware limitation. It's just the radio's programming software and firmware. A company see's they can make a few bucks selling an inexpensive GMRS radio so they give some firmware programmer a job to hack the current code, for one of their cheap Ham versions, enough to pass the FCC's certification requirements. Most likely they didn't want to spend much time and money on it, just do it quick and cheap. That's particular true if they don't see a huge market for the end product. They are not looking to make the radio highly customizable.

Then you have the local PD's officers and detectives using modified Ham radios while doing surveillance operations. They operate on non licensed police frequencies for the above reasons, the criminals don't know which frequencies are being used, thus likely aren't monitoring, and the detectives can switch in seconds. Many years ago I was siting with a ground of friends for dinner at a local restaurant. I saw two uniformed police officers enter and sit down. Both had their Motorola brick radios and switched on. One of the officers had an easily identified Yeasu FT-50 sitting on the table as well. I seriously doubt he was playing Ham Radio while on break. Was the radio modified? Don't know. But it got me researching and discovered it wasn't that uncommon for the police to use "free-banded" Ham radios for "private" communications that aren't monitored by dispatch.

Is this just a complaint with all GMRS radios or just the cheap ones, mainly of Chinese manufacture? I have a huge collection of LMR radios certified for Part 95 that have no such limitations. Then again they weren't cheap radios when new, and some are still sort of expensive used. IMHO the cheap GMRS radios are using quickly modified firmware originally designed for the Ham version of the radios. It's probably easier to lock out whole banks of channels for TX programming rather than doing a major rewrite of the code to add in all of the necessary range checks to limit the frequencies to GMRS specific ones for the extra channels. The same goes with the radio's programming software too. Then you look at the FRS radios. How many of those allow custom programming of channel names etc.? Same with CB radios. How many users of those really care? From a manufacture's perspective they look at a small group of users who use the full suite of custom features. They are not going to spend the design effort adding them in until the majority of the market demands it and the price will reflect it too.

You made some invalid assumptions. I simply mentioned what other people have done, cable end in a glass jar. It’s fair to debate the merits of the practice. I’m not advocating the idea. Perhaps that wasn’t made crystal clear in my post. If I’ve stumbled across this then it’s assured others will. It needs to be addressed. The second one is nowhere was there mention of not using a lighting arrester in place of the cable in a glass jar either. http://www.na0tc.org/lib/exe/fetch.php?media=technical:dissipation_of_lightning_energy_dayton_050908.pdf This is a good read on the topic. https://www.w5nor.org/presentations/PolyphaserGuide.pdf

I don’t have a KG-935 radio so this is just for my educational benefit. I’m a bit confused by the above. Are you saying you can’t use mixed CTCSS and DCS as spilt tones on one channel? That would be a bit restrictive having to use both tones, TX and RX, as CTCSS or DCS.

I don’t recommend using receive tones at all except under exceptional conditions. Myself I almost never use them. I want to monitor any and all traffic on a channel. The only exceptions I have is one simplex frequency I use with a group of friends when out at large radio swap meets. The other is to block DMR traffic, from a hospital, when I’m just interested in the analog FM when monitoring a local mall security frequency. Both use the same UHF frequency.

That needs to be hammered in to everybody's head! If you can't hear the other station nothing else matters. People get so hung up on how much power does the radio have, 5 watts, 15 watts, 50 watts plus. Seems sort of silly to get other people to run high power because you radio's receiver sucks. Some of the crappy CCR's are fairly deaf and or very prone to receiving signals that are not on the actual frequency being used. I have one that I can pickup a UHF fire dispatch transmission clear as a bell on several FRS/GMRS channels. And that transmitter has to be a good 15 to 20 miles away!! Nice looking radio, receiver selectivity sucks. It's good for a beater radio but that's about all. I haven't used it in many months. Fortunately I didn't spend that much on it.

I'll bet it would have been fun to be the fly on the wall during the design review meetings where that was discussed.

Then again maybe not if people say screw the new radio and would rather keep using the older model. The price used might go up.