Ian

Not yet.  Enjoying my MXT-275 in spite of that, though.  
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDBrXb44fBc
 
Trying for an install like this. 
 
Edit:  Already bought the parts, just holding out for an antenna I like.  The original plan for a fender-mounted Sti-Co covert antenna is on hold pending saving up about $400, and an RF safety evaluation because being in the same plane with 50 watts and a high-gain antenna gives me pause.  Yes, the 275 only does 15 watts, but I'm not willing to limit myself to 15 watts in the long term.  Now I'm looking at a Meso Customs brake light with NMO mount.  Better visibility, AND no new holes in the hullmetal!    Downside is it costs $290.  Upside is that it frees me from spending $317 for the covert antenna, or that I could save that for a CB mount at some point in the future.
 
Edit:  Hm.  A $290 mount and antenna cost about the same as the $317 Sti-Co antenna, come to think of it.

My personal use-case is mostly caravanning, much like what CB would be used for in decades past.  Just this last weekend, I had an hour-long conversation while driving on 22-22 (channel 22, 141.3)
 
I also plug radios into my hearing protection when doing something loud ever since a couple hurricanes ago (chainsaws are loud!).
 
But generally, lately, I favor FRS radios for the occasional around-the-house or around-the-store thing now, because they're smaller and easier to carry than GMRS or MURS radios I own.
 
One of these days, I'm putting up a Ventenna and setting up a home base radio doing 40-50 watts and/or a garage repeater, but that's pretty niche utility for me; scanning on handhelds produces basically no traffic around here, and I'm not super hopeful of reaching my neighbors.

Regarding rooftop antennae?
 
www.ventenna.com

There is a reason we are suppose to clear the air for emergency traffic. Sometimes the phones go down, or the battery dies, or we leave them home. Such an incident happened to a family member on her way to work. A vehicle had taken out a pole, continued on into a fenced off area containing a cell tower destroyed a trailer that was in there. The cell tower went down and all cell coverage dropped. Having seen all this, and being an emt, she called by radio and gave me what info she had and her location, I then relayed the info through to the PD using a neighbors phone (We use cell phones so no landline in the house.) Officers were dispatched and driver was charged with DUI.
 
Turns out the trailer was running as a temporary controller until a part could be replaced in the little brick hut next to the tower. When the car struck the trailer it damaged the coax jumper going to the tower and the equipment inside. When it went down the next closest tower was about 5 miles out with heavy pine forests and hills in-between them.

Okay, I'm hooked.
 
I was walking out to our local crop share pickup today when a neighbor texted me and asked if I knew what the huge plume of smoke is rising from near Alexandria, Virginia. Nothing (yet) on the news.
 
I had my radio with me because I was doing a couple of antenna/signal tests anyway, so I hopped on the local repeater and asked for anyone nearby to provide a visual situation report. Within a minute, I had 3 separate responses.
 
Turned out to be a huge construction fire, now at 5 alarms.
 
The local news story hit their web site and alert system > 30 minutes later. (See https://wtop.com/fairfax-county/2020/02/massive-fire-engulfs-fairfax-county-construction-site/)
 
No big deal, I suppose, but I will add that from my vantage point, the smoke was along the glide path into DCA (Reagan National) airport. I'm the son of a retired 747 pilot (and fighter/aerobatics RAF team), so big plumes of smoke near airports have always made me uneasy, since long before 9-11.
 
Anyway, LOVE my GMRS comms now that I've learned about the world of repeaters out there. I'll be taking my Ham technician class exam in a couple weeks as well.
 
I'm hooked.
 
Cheers,
 
Ken (WRFC318)
 

The radio was only a few days old when it broke.  The Ham Radio Outlet gave me a brand new radio and sent the damaged one back for analysis.  It may be a month or so before we hear back.  They may never tell me what the result is... but at least the HRO took good care of me.

Around by me there seems to be more business use of the frequencies than anything else. Mainly what I hear are the cheap "bubble pack" FRS radios. They're easy to identify due to the funny "Roger Beeps" you hear. FRS is legal for business use as far as I know.
 
Some local retail and manufacturing business, and typically during the day the cleaning crews at the nearby hotels use them.
 
I hear very little personal or family use however. When I do it's mostly after Xmas with kids and lasts for a few days until the novelty wears off and or the batteries die.

I just looked through the MFJ catalog to see if they have something like that. They don't, although they do have some manual mic/radio selector boxes.
I don't think it would take all that much to do it. Just some latching semiconductor switches, controlled by the COR from each radio. LEDs on the box to show which radio is active, and some momentary pushbutton override switches.

Not yet.  Enjoying my MXT-275 in spite of that, though.  
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDBrXb44fBc
 
Trying for an install like this. 
 
Edit:  Already bought the parts, just holding out for an antenna I like.  The original plan for a fender-mounted Sti-Co covert antenna is on hold pending saving up about $400, and an RF safety evaluation because being in the same plane with 50 watts and a high-gain antenna gives me pause.  Yes, the 275 only does 15 watts, but I'm not willing to limit myself to 15 watts in the long term.  Now I'm looking at a Meso Customs brake light with NMO mount.  Better visibility, AND no new holes in the hullmetal!    Downside is it costs $290.  Upside is that it frees me from spending $317 for the covert antenna, or that I could save that for a CB mount at some point in the future.
 
Edit:  Hm.  A $290 mount and antenna cost about the same as the $317 Sti-Co antenna, come to think of it.

I was sort of imagining a civilianized version of the military radios that share a common backplane a while ago -- something that'd fit in a double-DIN stereo slot, with separate radios, and a shared screen and mic.  Seems like it has potential to work really well with an auto-voting mic like you're imagining.

… Those exist?

Gawd I hate politicians!!!!
They tell me what radios i can use.
The tell me what guns i can own (i know, not for this forum)
But damnit,
I dont hurt people
I dont tell people what to think.
Why cant Politicans just leave me alone!,
 
 
 
Ok, thxank you for letting me vent!
 
If thes dialog is innapropiate for this forum. PLEASE DELETE IT.

Ah, yes. Corey will have lots to add here as his dealings have gone much further.
 
Long story short, the guy is a nutcase and I had to ban him from myGMRS after constant nonsense. It started with him trying to list dozens of fake repeaters claiming he has hundreds of repeaters he was going to personally finance and put up all over the country for everyone to use for a fee. Needless to say, he lives in a trailer in the middle of nowhere and everything he said was a lie.
 
Don't send any money whatever you do! If you're going to waste perfectly good cash, at least go spend it in our store so you get something in return, and not empty promises. 

Many years back, before these CCR became the rage, it was a common complaint of ham users of Japanese handhelds that when replacing the factory supplied "rubber duckie" antenna with a 5/8 wave dipole or a base station antenna that the receiver sensitivity would erode. 
 
This was quickly identified as being a combination of both poor RF front end selectivity and poor dynamic range and IMD .
 
It would be interesting to subject these CCR radios as well as known good commercial grade radios to the rigorous testing of TIA603D.
 
Lacking the complete facilities to do so, it occurred to me that a UHF TEM cell could be put to use to combine a desired signal (12dB SINAD reference) and undesired noise spectrum (rejection notched at desired) from an amplified noise diode generator to perform a Noise Power Ratio test of these various radios having integral antennas. This set up could be used to quantitatively measure radios and rank them on a dB scale of best to worst. 
 
This setup would simulate the "real world" environment of powerful emitters in and out of band of the receiver.

Super cool, thanks!
 
 
 
Actually, only one GD-77s.  The other is either a Midland MXT275, or an Anytone TERMN-8R.  Perhaps they're covering up for the weakness of the GD-77s' front-end filtering with clean output into a low-noise area?  I know I don't have any repeaters nearby, the only thing I can hear from here is, occasionally from a hilltop, a Jacksonville repeater automatically ID'ing, so I suspect I'm in an unexpectedly favorable RF environment.  Terrain is Florida, so flat as a pancake.  I have a few repeaters handy when I go to the beach, but the middle of the state is a dead zone.  Also, I'm the only one who ever uses those repeaters in Cocoa Beach, as far as I can tell; I like to monitor them and SARnet when I'm beaching it up.
 
This place is just a dead zone, for the most part.  Every third time I drive by a park, I hear DMR on channel 16.  Occasionally a kid with a walkie-talkie after Christmases.  But for all I scan, I don't hear much at all. 
 
Edit:  Nah, you were right.  I just checked the maps, and it's closer to 1.7 miles to the grocery store.

The problem I see with some of the Zello channels, be it "radio" related or not is owner/admins that spend way more time on air barking at people, asking who is xxx and who "trusted" them in. I can't even log in to Zello on my PC without 3 seconds later some admin yelling my handle wanting to know what I am doing on the channel. 
 
Well...you "trusted" me in....that's why I'm here.
 
I really laugh at the ones that are setup as "anyone can listen" but they still get all bent when you appear online. I don't spend 10 hours a day on Zello, so no, you probably haven't talked to me. When I log on to see what's being discussed, stop acting like I'm an intruder. You let me in. In one case you emailed me a password. 
 
Today some dude went in a level 13 panic calling people trying to find out who I was and who let me on....I never had a chance to answer, so I just let him go on sounding like he thinks he is so important, if he wants to play radio cop...have fun spazing out! 
 
There is nothing that ruins human interaction, like.....human interaction! 

I’m in the market for another MXT275 in the next several months. Glad I can support the forum while I’m at it.

Look at how little filtering the RT-22 has. There's all sorts of unpopulated pads on the production model that aren't on the FCC submitted model. I bet those harmonics aren't 50dB down on production models.
 
 
Again, you're in a highly unconventional RF environment, RF power coming from the Candelabra transmitters through a typical UHF passband (370-530 MHz) should be in the ballpark of 0dBm. Most people are around -50dBm. That's a HUGE difference.
 
That said, CCRs aren't meant to be used on fixed antennas; they're designed to be used as portable radios. Most handhelds will show measurable desense on a high-gain base antenna, CCR or not. The typical CCR construction with a wide-open frontend happens to have a lot more desense. In open spaces away from other transmitters, they have a slight advantage due to less filtering loss.
 
They have their place, and that's on-site business use on the hip; can't desense if the strongest transmitter is the repeater you're using. They also work good enough for amateur use that people keep buying them. Few people in reality will cite receive performance as a reason to upgrade from a D878UV or something to a Motorola or Kenwood, it's mostly for audio quality.
 
 
Over here, where the noise floor is high on VHF, I get better coverage on GMRS than MURS, and better 800 MHz Part 90 reception than 460 MHz Part 90 reception. In my experiences with line-of-sight conditions, the higher gain from UHF antennas gives better audio (helps to make up for deep fades, which are briefer on UHF), while in mobile-to-mobile situations with some separation VHF has an advantage in punching through terrain. UHF has much better spot coverage. For mobile-to-mobile operation, ~50W out into a gain antenna on GMRS should give universally better coverage than your Part 95 compliant MURS setup. Portable-to-portable simplex will be much more variable due to terrain. Noise floor is also an important consideration in urban environments, and lower frequencies will have more noise than higher frequencies.

Well, I can't say I agree on your first point (see below), but, I do agree whole-heartedly with your conclusion.
 
 
Agreed. In open space, VHF will travel further, have lower path loss  and better building penetration than UHF (See this paper for more information). On the other hand, UHF may actually work better inside a building because of signal splatter and reflection.

I’m in the market for another MXT275 in the next several months. Glad I can support the forum while I’m at it.

I’m in the market for another MXT275 in the next several months. Glad I can support the forum while I’m at it.

Man, can I relate. I have two Btech HT's that I use when off-roading. I'll settle for the reduced performance out in the mountains because we are only a few car lengths apart and if I drop a radio in the mud, I would rather have it be a $20-$30 BaoFeng than a $250 Yaesu.

I used the Baofengs for quite a while before going the Vertex Standard route... and again, so long you're aware of the limitations, it doesn't really matter so long it works.
 
G.
 

I hear DTMF tones all over Nebraska on MURS.  I looked into it a year ago, and found out that several farms in the area use MURS for a remote monitoring and telemetry system for their crop irrigation systems and water wells.  There is also at least one company making MURS remote alarm systems for farm buildings and gates.
 
MURS is legal for all of those kinds of things, so that's likely what you're hearing.
 
Most people using MURS for these types of operations do not even know what frequency or band they are using.  All they know is that they purchased this wireless thing that lets them know back home when someone opens the pasture gate, and they have another wireless thing that tells them how many gallons per minute the pump is flowing.

I have one of these units but I haven't had the chance to throw them on the service monitor yet. Danny from BuyTwoWayRadios said they selected this model because it wasn't a radio-on-a-chip design, so the performance should be better than a lot of the CCR's. I haven't been able to independently verify that yet.
 
The radio does work, I programmed it for a repeater a couple miles away and I was able to talk between my Kenwood NX-5300 and this radio side-by-side via the repeater. So even with the obvious desense, they still worked. That's about the extent of my testing aside from scanning around the FRS/GMRS frequencies to see what else I pick up (which isn't much as this area is very quiet now).
 
myGMRS is also selling these on our shop, and we're working on reseller arrangements with several big names that are in the final stages. The goal is to have a GMRS-friendly shop where you can find type-accepted equipment and some non-GMRS equipment as well, like Part 90 and Amateur equipment. But if you're new to GMRS and have no idea what equipment you can buy, we'll have a clearly-marked GMRS section so you can buy something legal without worry.