DeoVindice

For your application, take a look at the KRK-10 remote head kit. That will let you stash the RF deck under a seat or in the trunk, so only the (much smaller) control head will need to be mounted in the cab. A cupholder mount or other Lido product should work fine for the control head.

This bears repeating. It's easy once you get over any initial stress of drilling the vehicle, and will perform great. I have a PCTel quarterwave on a drilled NMO and it regularly receives repeaters 75 miles away without perfect LOS. I saw about a 5dB improvement over a 5/8-wave mag mount.

I concur, they're excellent units and the documentation is also very good. RJ45 is the right connector for the job because of how easy it is to build custom cables.

Have you hooked it up to a power meter? Could be anything from a blown PA to SMA damage to internal antenna damage to needing alignment...

As with many myths, there is a shred of truth in there. The original (V1) 5100s used XTS3000 RF decks. The V4 ("X-platform") and V6 ("ES-platform") 5100s introduced an all-new EFJ RF deck. I strongly advise against buying a non-ES/V6 5100 as they are infamous for a variety of hardware and software problems. The 5100ES is a very good radio and I prefer them to the XTS5000 in many ways.

The in-house radio shop that maintains the TRBO equipment concluded that channel selector lock was not possible; there was a long and frustrating email chain on the subject. I believe the radio in question is running 2.10.2 but I don't have it on me right now so don't take that as gospel! The shutdown issue is caused by the volume knob getting snagged when the radio is carried on a belt clip. On my personal radios (EFJ 5100ES and VP600), I use soft power down and volume lock to solve this issue and it has worked perfectly. One of those had its volume knob bumped into the off position this past weekend but these settings kept it functioning normally. I'm inclined to think that this issue is only common in industrial and public safety applications.

If the size and weight don't bother you, the 5000 is an excellent radio. Personally, I deeply dislike the XPR7550 having used one extensively for work. I had a lot of issues with inadvertent channel/volume changes and uncommanded shutdowns from bumping the radio against process machinery in cramped areas. The zone/menu structure is also illogical to me.

I have not used either of those mobiles, but I can attest to the fact that the AD-SR1 works nicely with mobile radios. I connected one to an EFJ 5300ES with a shop-built cable fabricated from an Ethernet cable and a DB15 solder connector. The programmable CWID function is very nice to have. I have the various DTMF commands programmed into all of my portables for remote control of the repeater, which is mounted in my truck and can be readily powered off solar and a separate battery.

The PSTN as legally defined doesn't really exist anymore.

Virtual machine. Learn it, love it, program radios with it. FTDI converters work perfectly with VMs. I ditched Windows over privacy concerns and now use Linux as my primary operating system, with Windows XP running as a VM for programming.

There's an issue in this region with a commercial Capacity Plus DMR system splattering onto GMRS frequencies. The DMR system operator and FCC have been made aware of it but seem to have no interest in correcting the matter. You could be seeing something similar.

I still do all my programming in an XP virtual machine running in Ubuntu!

That is the purpose of talkaround.

I've been quite impressed with with RF performance of the 7550e I carry for work. It maintains control channel reception even several floors underground. Motorola's engineers did good work with the Rodinia receiver. I personally haven't seen 30-hour battery life. On an LCP system with midlife batteries, we get 9-15 hours per charge. My personal "weapon of choice" is an EFJ 5100ES. I've always liked P25 audio a bit more than DMR, and the controls are very glove-friendly (especially with 51FIRE blade knobs). Specified sensitivity is only 0.25uV and I haven't hooked one up to a monitor to see how actual performance compares to the spec. I guess I give up some performance to get PS-grade controls at that price, but with proper end user training and employment it's not been noticeable. I use two antennas, a Smiley Super Stick and an RCBI stubby. The stubby is for MMDVM hotspot use and underground work where a whip would get snagged. When handheld or worn on a chest rig/harness, that Smiley gets out better than anything I've ever used. It's surprisingly close to mobile performance.

On my end, a Kenwood TK-290 and NX-200, as well as an EFJ 5100ES, all on 146.52 with Kenwood and Motorola wideband antennas. Not sure what my buddy was using; it's possible that his equipment was the problem. He has some quality LMR equipment and some CCRs.