gortex2

Its a $25.00 CCR. What do you expect for manuals. All the CCR stuff has horrible documentation. Enjoy the radio then go buy a better one.

I run the larsen on all my vehicles. Its the best all around antenna I have found for all the bands you asked about as well as public safety bands I operate on.

Motorola Solutions for software

Unless I missed it you never specified your antenna cable type. If your loosing that much power from your radio your using the wrong feedline.

Unless its an entire swap out most systems will migrate and allow phase 1 for a certain time to get folks into new stuff. Because of that you see less at good prices. You can get Type II dirt cheap now. Still if you search you can get XTL in both VHF and UHF for a couple hundred dollars with some searching. The issue is knowing the exact flashcode you need and band.

What is your goal ? I have been to Jacksonville a few times as a family member lives there. I have yet to hear anyone other than a store on FRS in the town. I used it to talk to another jeep in our convoy but thats it.

What antenna are you actually using ? Do you have an actual laird PN you can share ?

Correct Phase 2 currently only works in trunking scenarios. Again the APX is like the XTL not all are sold with TDMA. WE have multiple SAR APX radios with FDMA only in the flash code. Our newest radios were ordered with TDMA but we are still not using it. As for encryption modules in the XTL series it was an actual module that could be removed swapped easily. Alot of folks will remove it from a radio before selling. The XTS was a board in the case and not as easy to remove or add. In the APX its a board level component (MACE Board) so all older APX will have the mace and normally included ADP/ARC4. Since 2022 if the radio does not get ordered with the $0.00 ADP option no encryption will work and requires a trip to the depot and a major cost jump from ordering with encryption.

All 50 watts vs 5 watts will do is help you talk out. You wont receive them any better. AS others said spend money on antenna before radio. Unless all of you are getting better radios its not worth it

The XTL is capable of both P25 and encryption but only if its in the flash code and the modules are installed. I have multiple XTL mobiles for SAR that are analog only and do not support encryption. I thought @marcspaz had another post about them when he got them but can't seem to find it now. I know of a couple P25 repeaters in the DC area on amateur radio. One is P25NX not sure on the others. I'm normally on simplex when i zing thru that area.

In reality its actually only 2 watts as 90% of the users would be on FRS. While I agree with the "issues" again I'll go back to they did something. That's more than most. I'm sure if any of you on the forum wanted to donate thousands of dollars to help promote a channel other states would be happy to take your money.

Not accurate at all. Yes GMRS and Amatuer Radio cannot use encryption but there is no laws on business LMR nor public safety on who can or cannot use encryption. All our work radios are encrypted as are some of our SAR stuff (both simplex and TLMR). You will also see alot of encryption on military and federal comms.

Duplexers all day long. Unless your adding multiple repeaters the filtering, feedline and antenna space will cost more than its worth. You can get a decent duplexer for under $1000 all day long in UHF on used market. You'll spend more than that for the tower crew to get their helmet on.

This has been in place for a couple of years. It has been discussed on this page in the past. I give them kuddos for picking something and sticking to it. Everyone has ideas online but very few actually follow thru.

DPL is the same as DCS. Motorola used the term DPL.

What radio is it ? Way back in the maratrac and syntor days we would splice cables but in the end was faster to pull pins from cable and re-pin the connector. If your dealing with XTL/APX cables no way id try to splice them.

What is you goal ? Do you need a dual band ? There are multiple antennas with springs for GMRS. Laird is the better ones. If mono band is what you want the Laird B4503 is a decent antenna. I run these on multiple SAR vehicles. Good place to view them is here https://theantennafarm.com/shop-by-categories/shop-all/mobile-antennas/gmrs-mobile-antennas

For hobby use the $45.00 set of crimpers on amazon will work for LMR. If your crimpling hundreds of connectors a year then the better tool you should get. I have a $40 pair in my go bag thats been used twice to fix a cable at an event. Worked fine.

What you are proposing wont work in GMRS. Its commonly done in the ham community but using different bands. IE uhf portable to mobile then VHF to repeater. A lot of ham rigs actually support this feature. In the LMR field it is done with a DVRS or variety of mobile repeater or extenders. Rarely is the "extender" in the same band. I have a DVRS in my truck and while it was used in the past since I got a BT mic for my mobile 90% of my traffic is on that when outside of the vehicle.

I have used XP on both versions. I never had luck with either on W7. I still have multiple old units for programming stuff. My Toughbook has dual boot XP and 95 for alot of it. Once you have a codeplug its simple to do. MTR requires a special cable thats a bit different but is out there. GR1225 uses same cable as M1225/CDM etc. I still use a rib on my GR1225 radios. MTR is straight 9 pin to comm port.

Both are easy to program. Both are windows based but wont run on W10/11. I run both on an old w95 pc

Just because the new radio is 50 watts doesn't mean coverage is any better than the 15 watt radio. Unless your testing simplex line of site its tough to know if its the radio. I've run the MTX275 in both my jeeps since they came out and have yet to not be able to do what they are for.

Not cheap but APX8500 is my go to for that application. The 7500 would fit the bill also but think its a unicorn for the bands you want.

For years I have had radios next to my chair or couch in my Livingroom area. Currently have 2 scanners on mine as well as a XTL2500. Cables run down to floor to a bulkhead. Power supply is on floor behind the stand. Works well for me. No need to build it in for me.

No. The majority of LMR gear including the CP200's you bought are on one split/band and that's it. To be honest thats one of the good things is the radio is designed to work in XYZ area vs a CCR that is so wideband. If you plan to play with ham and get your ham ticket look for R1 radios from motorola. A R2 will not work on ham but will work in GMRS.