Best radio for mobile use

[SOBERONE14]

I am just wondering what the best radio to use in a mobile to use as an over the road truck driver so I need a scannable radio to find local repeaters and radio channels any suggestions will be appreciated. Thank you

[berkinet]

IMO...if you are looking for an off-the-shelf radio, look at the Midland MXT115 and MXT400. However, if you have the time, interest and skills, you might look at used Motorola equipment, like the CDM1250. Also, make sure you buy a good antenna and mount it properly. Look around this site for some recent articles on antenna mounting.

[oldtech]

The 'best' radio is the best one you can afford. In the equipment reviews section ( Equipment Reviews) you can find out the quirks and kinks of many radios available. But before you decide on a radio, the wiser person investigates antenna options. The most highly engineered radio cannot make up for a crappy antenna, but a good antenna can make a crappy radio seem golden.

[Elkhunter521]

I currently use 2 different Midlands. The XMT400, ant the new XMT275. Both seem to work as advertised.

 

I totally agree with the first two respondents. The antenna is paramount.

 

The radio is a RF power supply for the antenna.

[berkinet]

I am just wondering what the best radio to use in a mobile to use as an over the road truck driver so I need a scannable radio to find local repeaters and radio channels ...

Ok... I am back at a real keyboard and can add a little to my previous answer. To your question  as to the best radio for your needs. The answer really is, you have to decide that. There are many factors that impact how good a radio might be. You mentioned mobile use and scanning. There are other attributes as well, size, power, audio quality (in and out) low signal performance (reception) ease of changing settings, ability to receive other services,etc.

 

In your post you mention searching/scanning for repeaters and channels. Since GMRS is a defined service the number of channels you can listen to is fixed at 22. Plus, you can transmit (and listen if you want to) on an additional 8 channels used as repeater inputs. In practice, you cannot really scan to find repeaters, just occupied channels. You might be right under a great repeater, but if it's not in use, you won't find it by scanning.  In addition, just finding a repeater is not enough. You also need to have the access tone (PL)  and, in most cases, permission to use the repeater.

 

If you drive different routes all the time, there is little you can do to preset your radio, so a flexible scanning system and an easy ability to detect and set PL tones is important. On the other hand, if your route is regular, a programmable radio with lots of channel/memory locations (like the Motorola CDM1250)  would let you preset frequency PL pairs for each of the repeaters you might encounter.

 

Hope this helps.

[NavyBOFH]

To add to the above:

 

If you're a truck driver - you'll want a radio with loud audio - I don't know what truck you're using but I can tell you that even in my comfy sedan or SUV - I can use a 7.5 watt speaker pretty easily.

 

As others have said - GMRS is pretty limited in terms of the number of channels - but unless you're able to program the repeaters you know you'll be accessing ahead of time, you'll be hurting.

 

The BEST answer I have come up with is this...

Buy a Motorola Astro Spectra, Astro Spectra Plus, or PM1500/XTL1500/XTL2500/XTL5000. They are COMPLETELY overkill - however you gain a HUGE advantage in that price point - a feature called MPL - or selectable PL. In my UHF I have most common PL and DPL codes pre-programmed into the list and to be selected dynamically. The default is for a 141.3 encode with carrier squelch decode. If I hear traffic during scan - I can hopefully either quickly look up the repeater online, or go through the MPL list and PTT until one of them opens up the repeater. 

 

Down-side... you are talking about easily $200 of radio equipment to do what I said. But the MPL feature works well in this case and technically gets around the Part 90/95 limitation of "cannot program the radio from the user panel". I have both a VHF and UHF in my car and love them more than any other brand.