Ian

The ISS is in the UHF/VHF bands which a mere Technician has privileges for. A tech with a BaoFeng can do it, but more fine-grained control to compensate for Doppler shift would be worlds away better. You'll also want a UHF/VHF directional antenna and a steady hand to keep the thing pointed right at the station. (I honestly don't know which ISS radios are currently active; I read that they recently got a new Kenwood VHF rig a few years ago…)

That'd be great, but I can't afford a Yaesu.

https://cryptomuseum.com/burst/ma4230/index.htm My holy grail of "learning Morse". Digital signaling is for machines.

CCRs were in fact my gateway drug into advanced radioing.

Ouch. Seriously, though, I collect "unicorns" -- things the FCC approved though they violate FCC rules. FRS radios with detachable antennas, MURS multiservice radios, type-certified DMR FRS radios, weird shit.

Only one I've dropped coin on so far is DMR, 'cause I could afford it. Also, some of it's cheap enough that I wouldn't cry if I broke my radio! I wouldn't be happy, but I wouldn't cry either. Still, I really wish I could find a cheap radio with a really good prolific mode. I'm reminded of Motorola Talkabout DPS radios -- put them in scan, and once they pick up something, you can key up, and the radio will mimic the channel and code of the last incoming transmission.

How would it work for cross-band repeater use? That's the killer app for these ISM radios for me -- connecting to a big chunky base station in one spot in the house from anywhere on the property with a little shirt-pocket handheld. Traditionally, this has been the realm of the garage repeater, but if I cross-band, I can transmit on repeater inputs from the big remote radio, which would be kind of a killer app for me. I'd just use MURS, but that's specifically forbidden from operating cross-band. Edit: They mention double time slots, AMBE, and color codes. Is this just a DMR radio? Crap, I wish they'd support AES256 or AES512. Not that I need that kind of encryption, but it definiterly makes my inner cypherpunk happy.

Not even to someone who collects failed techology like that? :3

For the love of Xenu, why isn't the 275 programmable like the 400? I should __not__ have to ditch handheld-control-head mounting convenience for the sake of PC programmability. For Midland, it would be easy to hide advanced features behind a PC programming cable, but for anyone __but__ midland, implementing them is simply __impossible.__ They're __so close__ to actually making a __really great__ radio, and not just "Eh, good enough" radios…

I thought the point of ORI stuff was to allow opportunistic use by people who are in the region briefly to contact anyone physically nearby?

Since the consensus appears to be 19 simplex, I will be reprogramming my radios.

I'm certainly not doing it to be exclusionary, just to be able to toggle from opportunistic use of ORI repeaters to simplex without changing parameters on the radio. If I could get a MXT275 to scan just 20/22 and 19/xx, that's what I'd have as a priority scan list. I suspect this sort of thing is what dual-watch and dual-ptt was always intended for…

When I'm driving, I set 20(22) -- channel 20, 141.3 Hz CTCSS. 2022 is the year of the travel channel, friends!

Honestly, if you're going to freeband, might as well save the money and get a cheap baofeng. It's not good enough for Safety Of Life At Sea purposes, but if you just want to screw around, you couldn't really do it much cheaper.

VHF/GMRS hybrids West Marine VHF255 (22 channels, AAA backup, 0.4w gmrs) COBRA MR HH450DUAL (no repeater, no interstitials, 3w gmrs, AAA backup) Cobra Marine VHF HH425 (no repeater, no interstitials, AA backup) Uniden Atlantis 290 (black case) and 295 (camo) (22 channels, AAA backup, 3W GMRS, no repeater) Edit: Another ghost-hunter here, it seems! https://www.cobra.com/collections/marine-radios Cobra seems to still be producing the 450Dual, which makes it your best bet, perhaps. There are currently refurbished West Marine VHF255s on eBay right now, but used so YMMV. Happy hunting!

Is it worth picking up a default-programming DLR for funsies?

I use it on the regular, and I hear some telemetry on MURS3 near the Wedgefield GMRS repeater. It's about a fourteen minute loop, with a bit of CWID at the end. Still no joy on figuring out the data protocol, but I've really never actually tried very hard; if I cared, I'd get a SDR for $25 and run the usual SDR tools instead of recording it with a HT and a digital voice recorder as an MP3.

I've got about a half dozen of these, and a few of their base stations. Wanted to add some of their sensor modules for the funzies, but couldn't justify the expense for a toy like that. The radios perform admirably, but their tone codes apply to every single channel, and are not set individually. Fine for the rural family use case for which they were designed, but suboptimal for spying on Walmarts for fun and profit. Performance is really quite decent for two watts. All programming is front-panel, and the menu structure is admirably simple and easy to use. You'd spend more time setting up someone else's cloning system than just hand-programming these. The included nickel hydride batteries are crap by comparison to Eneloops, at only around 600 mAh. Eneloop FTW. (My radios were old, and the batteries they came with were shot) For a base station designed to be wall-mounted, they should really have put the cable connections on the bottom. Ah well. Never did figure out how to trigger their "alert zone XX" thing; it's some kind of subaudible tone signaling but their phone support guys couldn't give me implementation details. The belt clips aren't spring loaded like Motorola's, and the whole thing feels just a little less sturdy than Motorola's commercial grade radios, but these are marketed to people who have to buy their own replacements, and are likely to treat them with kid gloves, so… acceptable?

I always ask "How much radio do you need?" But I also have an unhealthy obsession with "vehicular repeaters" and wireless speaker-mics. So take this with a grain of salt. But sometimes you really don't need much radio -- range or power -- to achieve your goals. We should really be encouraging small garage repeaters on Open Repeater Initiative configurations; there's a lot of coverage holes, and this would help with that.

Can you post the files? They told me to download them but didn't provide active links. It wants me to log into my account, and it'll only let me download software for radios I've purchased __directly__ from them. Amazon purchase? No such luck. Suuuuper customer-hostile and baffling move. I don't think I can in good conscience buy any more Retevis products, and it's making me reconsider their lunchbox repeater.

I run a crapload of security software -- content blockers, adblock, script limitations -- because modern web technologies have made the Goodtimes Virus a practical reality.

They really don't want me to be able to download those files, though. I didn't buy them at Retevis.com, so I keep getting

The RT76P has some seriously dodgy firmware issues. This one's new to me, normally it's getting config files to stick when programmed from the radio's control pad. I highly recommend trying a firmware update and seeing if it resolves that. I'll let you know if it works for me… once I figure out how to update the firmware! Seriously, I'm considering giving up on my 76P and ordering the RB27 at this point. If you have any insights, please share.

I'd like to second the MXT 275. Had nothing but good results with that radio in practice, except for the included magmount antenna. Like most of them, they fail after a year in the Florida sun.

The killer feature that I don't expect but would love would be a second jack for a speaker-mic. https://www.bearcatwarehouse.com/accessories/wireless-cb-microphone The whole house is now your radio shack…