PACNWComms

Excellent point. This made me check some of my radio gear, with the XPR6550 radio label on the left and the newer XPR7550e label on the right. Occupational Use to Satisfy FCC RF Exposure Limits. The XPR6550 is considerably older than the XPR7550e in this case, but had the same type of label, whereas the older XTS1500 did not have a label like this. Not shown is also the APX4000 that does have the occupational use label, like the two Motorola Trbo radios, so it might have been ten years or so for this tag to be present (at least for Motorola manufactured radios, do not have any other brand next to me right now to verify).

Good to know, I like my current DB-20G and may get another one at the $85 price point. Thank you all for sharing the deals going on.

This reminded me one of my own Garmin Rino units, and the field repairs many of us did when the antennas did come off in the field (using them in Afghanistan to keep track of team members, with the caveat that location polling was turned off/radio was turned off when we did not want to be sending data). this was a check and balance to the AN/PSM-11 GPS before the newer DAGR series came out. Many Garmin Rino's that had broken antennas, 120 and 530 models, often ended up with a retrofitted longer antenna. In my case, I just jammed the rubber cover with black Permatex and sealed it back up. Then when the rubber itself broke, it got the heat shrink with polyolefin sealant fix. Part of the failure on these is that many of us pulled the radios out of a molle case by its radio antenna, so the cover would pull off eventually. Do not pull radios out of pouches by the antenna. Somewhere online someone may have posted a Garmin Rino with a longer antenna fitted, but I could not find one myself. Better than throwing the unit away and new models come so fast support from Garmin often ends after 2-3 years.

Note on 100/500 series Garmin Rino's and texting notes, from the Garmin site. Note the firmware of the device, as some will not be able to send notes/text messages. Sending a Text Message Using a Rino 100 or Rino 500 Series Text messages, known as Notes, can be sent from one compatible Rino device to another compatible Rino device*. In order for the notes to be sent properly all Rino's that are supposed to receive the message must be on the same Channel and Code. To send a Note to another Rino user using a Rino 100 or Rino 500 series: Press Page to reach the Map page Select the icon of the user you wish to message with the thumb stick Press and hold the thumb stick until a menu appears Select Send Note Edit a new note or select from the saved notes in the list below Select Send If there is no option to send notes, ensure that the device firmware is up to date by downloading and running the WebUpdater program. *Rino 120 devices were manufactured with two different versions of software. The devices with software 3.90 or less do not offer the Notes feature. Users with software 3.90 or less will not be able to update to the 5.XX software that does offer the Notes feature.

+1 on what Sshannon said, willing to test. I have Rino 120 and 530 units that work together as they are both Garmin products but have yet to have another model that texts to test out. They work well for texting, because a short data burst often gets through where voice will not be clear. I'm just glad that Garmin cracked that egg with the FCC years ago, text and location data for showing position on a map, can be useful.

In my part of the Pacific Northwest, flaggers often still do use FRS as well. Which has also thrown off some Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) types that push for the use of FRS for neighborhood emergency response. In some larger cities, this prompted many corporations to purchase the now older Motorola 900 MHz ISM band DTR series radios (DTR410/550/650). However, even with the DTR series radios, most are defaulted to the channels/TalkGroups/Privacy code (hopset) settings as shipped from the factory. I still hear tugboats from a nearby river, schools and construction crews now using both FRS and DTR series radios, to include the swearing, personal information, and jabber expected by those types of end users. For the flagging crews though, it is nice to be able to hear how long the backup will be, or when traffic is being allowed in a specific direction. It beats hearing the little kids pressing the "call" button over and over or asking "hellol" on FRS....lol.

If the frequency hopping is like the DTR410/550/650 series radios, the end user programming the radio is only picking the hopset via a unique code entered into each radio. Radios with the same hopset code in them can talk to one another on that channel. The frequencies are the same but the hopset itself changes. A radio going from hopset frequency 1,6,2,4,9,3 cannot talk to a radio with hopset frequency sequence 6,2,3,1,9,4 for example. What I find interesting with the DTR series is that they were often sold as an alternative to FRS/GMRs radios for business use (DTR410/550/650 in 900 MHz ISM band in the United States), but many people kept the default hopset codes that came from the factory. I hear tugboats and construction crews on the default setting often in my part of the Pacific Northwest where UHF comms have been saturated with cheap radios and many users.

Interesting piece, and glad that "prepping" is becoming more mainstream with the population, at least according to this 60 Minutes segment. The whole Doomsday Preppers show seemed to go for the oddball types to make this seem for fringe than reality (of course). However, I tend to go with what the local community Emergency Response Team (CERT) recommends radio wise, begin with a cheap FRS/GMRs radio instead of a Baofeng, unless you like to fiddle with USB drivers and program radios via computer, which also requires computer skills. My own neighbors were able to figure out Motorola TalkAbout series radios, tune on and place onto the same channel, then push the side button to talk. A Baofeng with a full keypad would have been too much for many of them. These are "Walkie Talkies" to them, and many non-radio geeks. Keep it simple. To OP, thank you for sharing, it is always great to see this prepping situation becoming more normal. the government at every level may not be there to help, and people need to take some personal responsibility in life.

Also found this brochure for those interested. Looks like the DTR 550/650's with a shorter antenna for the 2.4 GHz band. Other features look the same as other DTR series radios, private calls, one to many calls, messaging. Could be useful for some users, barring the line of site issues mentioned in the video. The DTR series radios I have put into place mostly went into schools for campus wide use. The requirements were for unlicensed spectrum radio equipment that would cover about a mile wide campus, and radios that could not be heard with a cheap Radio Shack scanner, as there were concerns about stalkers and people monitoring children getting hurt on the playground, kids wandering off, and just general snooping taking place. If you can set your own hopset like the other DTR series, this can be a very secure method for short range comms. dtr2430_dtr2450 Brochure.pdf

If you mean the Motorola DTR2450 handhelds, I have not used these, but have supported many 900 MHz versions in this series of Motorola portables. The DTR410/550/650's in 900 MHz are great. 2.4 GHz may benefit some users, but I tend to stay away from 2.4 GHz myself as I do not wish to raise the WiFi noise floor in my area, and the 900 MHz radios work. Perhaps as they break, they will get replaced with DTR2450's in time? Here is a video I found online; I do not take credit for any of this video.

Great antennas.....have used these and similar variants for years on fleet vehicles for commercial and public safety users. This version of coil also does not get caught in car wash brushes or cloth flaps (we tell end users to hand wash the cars but they do not listen) as often as the exposed coil version too. Some have lasted so long that they only fail (after years of use) when the center conductor spring has corroded into pieces, breaking the connection between the antenna and NMO mount. This is in a very wet environment, the Pacific Northwest, so everything gets wet over time. As for the 12 miles, you should try again as they do tend to get a bit further out, depending on what you are talking into (in my case it is a UHF repeater network, so 12-16 miles is common with a GMRS mobile.

Could be useful on small vessel or personal watercraft (or some people car's where they can't seem to keep from spilling drinks etc. [kids/elderly]). I had an incident a few years back when one jetski in my group needed to be towed by a larger vessel and this would have been a great use case for a radio like this, as many people on shore had FRS/GMRS radios in use. The jet ski was a rental and did not even have a handheld Marine VHF tucked with its "survival kit" that consisted of a few band aids, and the phone number of the rental company.

I clicked on this as I had no clue what a Motorola XTS4000 was, only XTS1500/2500/3000/5000 LMR's, so this was interesting for me. Attaching this link, as you may be able to get parts, battery/belt clip through a Motorola vendor that may have "new old stock" or more information on a belt clip. https://www.ebay.com/itm/151191959689

Brings back some memories, had a few of these myself. As well as the Uniden handhelds. I found out that the base station units had been donated away, as the wife thought they were old cordless phone bases. But, still have many of the simple Uniden handheld radios. Two digit display and rubberized case that was larger than comparable TalkAbout series Motorola radios at the time, meant easier to hold. When used with these Audiovox base units, spread across the farm, they worked great for a couple of miles, or until the Uniden batteries got low. Base to base was great though, and they were left on all the time between outbuildings and sheds. Wish these were still available, or something like them. AC powered, big buttons, and decent size display. Was easy to teach others that they were a "wireless intercom" rather than a "radio" at times.

I ended up with a GM-30 as part of a package deal with a mobile VHF/UHF radio, and am actually pretty amazed at the abuse it will take. I am in the Pacific Northwest and have had that GM-30 get rain and moisture all over it, and it has held up well. The case has taken a few knocks too. I bet yours does just as well, and having a radio is the first step in using radios (hobby or pro). There are many I know that get a license and then never get a radio, they just wanted the piece of paper to put on the wall.

Snarky answer is "yes"....as members of my former employer, that responds to hurricanes, floods, and oil spills needed a distant end to test their equipment. I spent some time on a Kenwood FT-920 HF transceiver, 500 Watt amp and beam antenna acting as their distant end. They were using WSPR to check HF propagation, some were located in Florida, while others were in the surrounding area. Most took satcom gear, but one did take his portable GMRS radio and hotspot, setting up in the hotel as he made his way from Houston Texas, to Miami, Florida. It was through him that I found out that a former co-worker of ours working out of Miami had quit a week earlier, leaving that site without a radio technician.

Good to know. I support one VXR-7000 repeater located in a remote area, where the fan is the only thing keeping the mold and ants from invading the chassis. It has chugged along for about seven years now, and is still going strong. But that fan and environment always worries me. Location is on tribal land and the tribe does not want to spend money on the building, which makes me wonder if they would spend that on the repeater when it fails. Luckily, VXR-7000's are pretty tough devices.

Another tool in the toolbox....I know many AUXComm/Emcomm/support elements that assist government agencies and private industry at all levels that have thought about bringing GMRS into the fold. Right now HF is big with the push for DHS SHARES, a program to link sites across the country via HF and data over these links during large disaster situations. GMRS is also on the table, but the first step now is still to get workers back into the office. My employer has 54 cities linked via radio across the nation (Motorola Astro/Trbo and analog conventional, Kenwood NXDN sites, and HF Radio over Internet Protocol), but if there were a real incident, it would still be only the few that are already at work and near one of the radio stations. Covid proved that, and I and my crew were in the office every workday as the federal government considered our public safey and fire interop with 9-1-1 Public Safety Answering Points to be critical. That was the reason I went and purchased a GMRS call sign and joined this site, so the station in my building would then be able to also use GMRS. As other have said, government GMRS is most likely through a user that ends up as the conduit for the service, and may bring their own gear, or have some provided. In my own use case, what this meant was for one person at each site to get licensed for GMRS, DHS Shares registered, AFMARS license, amateur licenses, FEMA ICS trained, and anything else to make it realistic to have these government affiliations. Then each station made sure to separate the commercial company comms and the interop radios. It is a little odd to see GTR8000 repeaters racked in a corner, and high end Motorola and Harris radios on a bench, and then go to the other end and see Yaesu, Icom, Kenwood, and SGC tuning equipment for the amateur side in a support role.

I have an old Motorola Spectra repeater kit that I used for when out and about. Subscriber units can be whatever one brings though, shown here with my Motorola XPR7550e and Anytone "878" as examples. This along with a tripod, a couple of deep cycle marine batteries on an RV tray (let's you connect two batteries in an easier to move sled type of configuration, and a dipole antenna 20 feet in the air gets signals out well enough. I also have an old GR300 desktop repeater that had Motorola GM120 radios in it initially, after putting XPR4550 mobile Trbo TDMA radios in it, I now have narrowband and two slot TDMA possibilities in a portable package. Lots of possibilities when it comes to portable comms.

I made my own spark gap transmitter as a kid.....it knocked out television and radio and this made my father hunt me down and paddle my backside. There were sparks flying from my metal "gap" pieces all the way to the ceiling, scorching that ceiling a bit. From then on, I was restricted from using ignition coils for "experiments"....but then ended up with a crystal AM radio receiver kit i was encouraged to solder together. Now, I have an amateur ticket, GMRS license (hence being here), commercial licenses, and a soldering iron. I spent some of this weekend repairing a 1944 R-100/URR receiver, that needed recapped.

Bought the DB-20G mobile with a GM-30 handheld combo.....that GM-30 is the one wish I had not spent money on. It is a decent radio, but already having considerably better radios, to include those also made in China (Anyton 878) as well as Motorola, Harris, and other radios made in the United States (some Motorola is still made in Chicago, as is Harris), that GM-30 is a little too basic for my likes. I gave it away to a neighbor that wanted to get into GMRS, and seems to like it a lot. So, all was not lost. My issue with it was that it was only UHF, just did not fit my larger hands well, and had very tinny audio. Neighbor uses it, but has also bought nicer and more expensive radios since.