Best Mobile for wife

[Guest Ed Burke]

I want to get a mobile for my wife's vehicle, to also use in the house. I have heard mixed reviews on the Midlands, anything else out there worth getting or should I get the MTX400?

[MIKEROD67X]

I have the Midland Mxt115 and it works great  i can hit my local repeater from 35 miles away and sound good . also make sure get get a good nmo antenna 

[BoxCar]

Buying new in that price range means you have many to choose from. While having mixed reviews one of the simpler models would be a BTECH UV-25X2 or for GMRS only the GMRS 50X1. Both are on Amazon. You'll need an antenna, I suggest the Laird 450-470 MHz Unity gain and HYS TC-MB90 magnetic mount for a removable mount or an NMO drill through mount. All are on Amazon.

[garbon2535]

The MXT400 is a great radio and I would recommend it. However, if your wife isn't big into radios you might want something smaller. Midland makes other Micromobile that are much more discreet.

[wayoverthere]

Midlands are limiting for hobbyist usage, but they're hard to beat for simplicity, and standing behind their products.

 

My gmrs 50x1 has been solid, though I don't know about the level of support from btech. I know my contact with them was less than helpful (questions on a menu)

[berkinet]

I want to get a mobile for my wife's vehicle, to also use in the house....

 

Do you have an idea of how you will use the radios, or some expectations from them?  Like, are these just to stay in contact between hone and car? Or, are you thinking of contacting other people in your family or social circle? Or, maybe looking to meet new people through radio.  Or...

[FrancisHaws]

I want to get a mobile for my wife's vehicle, to also use in the house. I have heard mixed reviews on the Midlands, anything else out there worth getting or should I get the MTX400?

I have to second the Btech 50x1. It comes set up ready for gmrs out of the box and programing repeaters is pretty easy using the manual. It sounds great on their recommend NMO-200c antenna and I also just got done swr testing the 3db ghost antenna which has very low profile and on a proper nmo mount it won't look obnoxious to a woman.

[AdmiralCochrane]

Local terrain makes or breaks GMRS and other UHF.  2 hills and tall buildings between me and the nearest repeater at about 2 miles, I can hardly get in with a MXT400 on full power with my antenna at 40 feet elevation.  

 

Flat terrain with a tall antenna (or your base on top of a hill) for direct line of sight is a winner

[gman1971]

Well, my recommendation goes to a 2nd hand (used, but not abused) Motorola XPR4550 mobile. These XPR4550 are very nice, and they can be found in decent condition for around 100-150 bucks on the bay, cable can be had for 20 bucks, and the legacy CPS can be purchased on eBay as well. These mobiles have a proper superhet receiver with a multiple tuned varactor front end, which will allow you reach more than 2 miles on a lot less power than 50W. To give you an idea, my XPR6550 portable, (which uses the same receiver as the 4550 mobile) can easily reach 1.5 miles on just 1 watt. Where? in the Madison WI area, which is super-hilly  suburban terrain... All my 6550 radios are used (2nd hand), some have small scratches, etc, but the scratches didn't stop them from demolishing all the crap inexpensive radios I own... 

 

Some background: most of those GMRS cheap mobiles usually show a 10-20 dBm loss in effective sensitivity, a loss that cannot be made up by just cranking power to 50W. 20dBm means you'll need 100 times the power to make up for it... So, if a radio has 95 dBm effective sensitivity means that it won't be able to hear anything below the 95 dBm mark... vs. a radio which has 115 dBm effective sensitivity, which will be able to hear equally good a signal coming from a 1 watt radio as a 95 dBm effective sensitivity radio would hear a 100 watt signal.

 

That is the importance of having a real receiver with tuned front end... etc.

 

G.