Dakota MURS

[GuySagi]

My wife picked these up a while back, God bless her for thinking this way. But I'm not bothering to charge up, even during hurricane season. Anyone else give these a try before giving up? Looks great and simple enough for the grandkids, though. 

[gortex2]

I had a set for a while. Good little murs radio. Works better than FRS...

[WRCZ387]

I bought one when work couldn't/wouldn't get me a new h-t

I liked that I could use regular or rechargeable AA's in it [2200 mA rechargeables from Harbor Freight worked well for me] 

[MichaelLAX]

3 hours ago, WRCZ387 said:

I liked that I could use regular or rechargeable AA's in it [2200 mA rechargeables from Harbor Freight worked well for me] 

Remember that rechargeable AA's are only 1.2volts whereas alkalines are 1.5v, so the output power (and range) will drop accordingly.

I personally never buy alkalines anymore due to their toxicity as waste, so I have converted to rechargeable batteries myself.  What that means is that I would purchase a MURS HT that comes with its own lithium ion rechargeable battery pack for optimum use! 

[GuySagi]

5 hours ago, WRCZ387 said:

I bought one when work couldn't/wouldn't get me a new h-t

I liked that I could use regular or rechargeable AA's in it [2200 mA rechargeables from Harbor Freight worked well for me] 

Have you tested those batteries to ensure they hold 2200 mAs? A big part of my job is photography and I've tried knockoff/cheap AAs in my strobes, got frustrated and then tested. Some that claim hi capacity are the same you get in cheap solar landscape lights and they die prematurely (in charge and function). My favorite right now is the Sony Eneloop that allegedly holds more than 80 percent of its charge for years if just collecting dust on a shelf. They're expensive, but I haven't had to buy dozens or carry a battalion of AAs when on assignment. 

 

[MichaelLAX]

44 minutes ago, GuySagi said:

My favorite right now is the Sony Eneloop...

 

I believe you are thinking Sanyo Eneloop, which was bought out by Panasonic.  That is the brand I use when there is no lithium battery available for my other needs, but I have never tried them in an HT.

[GuySagi]

On 9/21/2021 at 8:20 AM, MichaelLAX said:

I believe you are thinking Sanyo Eneloop, which was bought out by Panasonic.  That is the brand I use when there is no lithium battery available for my other needs, but I have never tried them in an HT.

You're right....sorry. Nothing like me mixing brand names when trying to explain the capacity in some batteries is so exaggerated that it's ridiculous. They run awesome in my HTs, although as noted above watch that voltage or you can sacrifice performance. 

[WRCZ387]

I never tested the Harbor Freight AA's for their capacity

I bought the radio because work was being a PITA about getting me a replacement, since I had to invest my own $$, I wasn't going to go crazy

The OEM batteries that came with the Dakota were only 1500-1600 mA, and I wanted some assurance that I could get through a shift without fizzling out

The Harbor Freight batteries were reasonably priced to begin with, then I used 20% off coupons to buy them, and they had good reviews on the Harbor Freight page

I had good results with them until work finally replaced the h-t, I was using them in my scanner until I bought Eneloops at Costco, they're around here somewhere

[MichaelLAX]

On 9/20/2021 at 1:21 PM, GuySagi said:

My wife picked these up a while back, God bless her for thinking this way. But I'm not bothering to charge up, even during hurricane season. Anyone else give these a try before giving up? Looks great and simple enough for the grandkids, though. 

 

Always fun to drive over to the local Walmart and listen to their MURS activity: usually Channel 5 - Green Dot.

MURS on VHF in the great outdoors will usually outperform FRS in a similar situation.

[Ian]

I've got about a half dozen of these, and a few of their base stations.  Wanted to add some of their sensor modules for the funzies, but couldn't justify the expense for a toy like that.  The radios perform admirably, but their tone codes apply to every single channel, and are not set individually.  Fine for the rural family use case for which they were designed, but suboptimal for spying on Walmarts for fun and profit.  

 

Performance is really quite decent for two watts.

 

All programming is front-panel, and the menu structure is admirably simple and easy to use.  You'd spend more time setting up someone else's cloning system than just hand-programming these.

 

The included nickel hydride batteries are crap by comparison to Eneloops, at only around 600 mAh.  Eneloop FTW.  (My radios were old, and the batteries they came with were shot)

 

For a base station designed to be wall-mounted, they should really have put the cable connections on the bottom.  Ah well.

 

Never did figure out how to trigger their "alert zone XX" thing; it's some kind of subaudible tone signaling but their phone support guys couldn't give me implementation details.

 

The belt clips aren't spring loaded like Motorola's, and the whole thing feels just a little less sturdy than Motorola's commercial grade radios, but these are marketed to people who have to buy their own replacements, and are likely to treat them with kid gloves, so… acceptable?