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Amateur radio maker getting into the GMRS market.


WRUI365

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I'm sure the radio will be excellent, but we have The radioddity GM 30 and zero issues but i may see if the aftermarket antenna's make much difference and the price we buy them at is excellent $23-$29 if we buy more than 2 at a time $23 each  

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Apparently they got their FCC type-acceptance.  MTC, RW Antenna, and DX Engineering have them for sale tonight:

https://www.mtcradio.com/alinco-dj-g46t-portable-5w-gmrs-ht/

https://rwantennastore.com/alinco-dj-g46t-professional-series-gmrs-ht-uhf-fm-5w-transceiver/

https://www.dxengineering.com/parts/alo-dj-g46t

Oy.  I'm going to buy one, I just know I am.

Yup.  I did.  Just couldn't help myself!

I'll give a full report once I have it.

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14 minutes ago, tweiss3 said:

I like all the Alinco radios I have or have messed with. They already made commercial radios, so this is a logical step for them. Nice to have another not CCR in the game.

I can't say 100% sure about Allinco but I do know that Yaesu is having their radios made in China. And I have heard that Allinco does too.

That being said. Allinco should have better quality control versus Baofeng, etc.

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11 minutes ago, WRYZ926 said:

I can't say 100% sure about Allinco but I do know that Yaesu is having their radios made in China. And I have heard that Allinco does too.

That being said. Allinco should have better quality control versus Baofeng, etc.

All seven (I might have a problem 🤔) of my Yaesu radios are marked made in Japan, including the two least expensive, the FT4x and FT65. I heard that the FT65 was briefly manufactured in China, but mine definitely says made in Japan. 
My Alinco DJ-MD5 doesn’t say, but the firmware and CPS looks just like Anytone’s so I suspect it’s made in China. 

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1 hour ago, WRYZ926 said:

and they say made in China on them.

Many years ago people laughed when the Japanese were getting into the US auto market and GM had about 50 percent of the US market share. Now you see Asian auto's everywhere and GM's market share is down around 25 percent or so. I wouldn't laugh about the Chinese radios.

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7 hours ago, WSAK691 said:

It’s for sale now..

https://www.dxengineering.com/parts/alo-dj-g46t

Honestly, I don’t see anything super special about it. A pretty plain 5w handheld. No mention of superhet circuitry or anything. 

I believe that it is superhet, it's based on the Alinco DJ-A446 PMR446 h-t https://www.alinco.com/Products/bis/DJ-A446/DJ-A446.pdf

If you have DJ-500 series/DJ-MD5 series/DJ-A10/A11/A40/A41 series, the batteries, chargers, DC adapter, etc are compatible

6 hours ago, WRWE456 said:

Maybe not but at least Alinco is testing the waters. If it sells well they will likely add more models as time goes on. Wouxun needs some competition in the GMRS market.

I've corresponded with Remtronix & they said that Alinco is gathering info for features for a GMRS mobile

10 hours ago, tweiss3 said:

I like all the Alinco radios I have or have messed with. They already make commercial radios, so this is a logical step for them. Nice to have another not CCR in the game.

I have 6 Alinco Part 90 h-t's, both mono-band + dual-band, & I've had good luck with them

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17 hours ago, Lscott said:

Many years ago people laughed when the Japanese were getting into the US auto market and GM had about 50 percent of the US market share. Now you see Asian auto's everywhere and GM's market share is down around 25 percent or so. I wouldn't laugh about the Chinese radios.

Some historical perspective for the young folk: The "model" for the major American car manufactures was: Small car, small features; Large car, large features.

Japan brought to American - Small car, BIG features and never looked back, especially after the oil embargo crises of the 70s had even luxury car drivers looking for better gas mileage.

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2 hours ago, mikesradiorepair said:

It is definitely a repurposed chassis.  Look at the technical document internal pictures on the FCC database.  The radio only has 4 buttons on the front of it.  The circuit board has 16 buttons (4 rows).  FCC Internal Photos

I saw that, the PMR446 & A10/A40 series probably have common roots

https://www.alinco.com/Products/bis/DJ-A10/DJ-A10_40.pdf

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Alinco has a number of radios with that form-factor and some are direct conversion and some super-het.  It will be interesting to see which this one is.

With that said, I have a couple of their direct conversion radios and they perform well.  It's more about decent filtering than what kind of receiver.

On the other hand, I have a GMRS radio that is super-het and I'm not at all impressed with its performance.

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OK first impressions.  A real review will have to wait until I can actually use the thing.  I was planning to take it with me when I went out of town this weekend and test a new GMRS repeater but it was delivered on Saturday instead of the expected Friday.

I'd say it's definitely based on the DJ-A446.  Actually I would bet it's the same radio with different firmware.  The inclusion of the "Emergency Alarm" and "Jacklight" (Alinco's words, not mine) nails that for me.

Seems like typical good Alinco build quality.  I found it interesting that it came with the antenna attached (making for a long skinny box) but it IS removable.

The manual talks about programming software being used to change various settings, but so far my quest to find it has been in vain.

More to come ...

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4 hours ago, wrci350 said:

OK first impressions. A real review will have to wait until I can actually use the thing. I was planning to take it with me when I went out of town this weekend and test a new GMRS repeater but it was delivered on Saturday instead of the expected Friday.

I'd say it's definitely based on the DJ-A446. Actually I would bet it's the same radio with different firmware. The inclusion of the "Emergency Alarm" and "Jacklight" (Alinco's words, not mine) nails that for me.

Seems like typical good Alinco build quality. I found it interesting that it came with the antenna attached (making for a long skinny box) but it IS removable.

The manual talks about programming software being used to change various settings, but so far my quest to find it has been in vain.

More to come ...

Call or e-mail Remtronix & ask them to e-mail the software to you

I have a loaner unit to test & they e-mailed me a copy of the software

You'll need an Alinco ERW-15 USB cable, or, the RT Systems USB-29A cable also works, that's what I used, the cable terminates in a 1/8" stereo/two-band plug

I used it today in the car with a 1/4 wave NMO mag mount, it sounds great on receive, it has a clear speaker, I was told the transmit audio is good

I'm going to give it more of a workout this week, both in the mobile & portable with different h-t antennas

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  • 2 weeks later...

Looks like a nice radio Alinco has seemed to make quality radios. I have a friend who swears by them. Websites can be interesting when you read them:

MTC states  "GMRS is a PAID land-mobile service and a license is required"

Are they referring to the purchasing of the license or am I missing something?

RW AntennaStore says "This is a professional tpe radio and should not be compared to cheap chines built GMRS radios. "

I don't know who the CHINES are but I won't be comparing their radios to TPE radios, whatever that is.

 

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13 hours ago, WRHS218 said:

MTC states  "GMRS is a PAID land-mobile service and a license is required"

Are they referring to the purchasing of the license or am I missing something?

Purchase of the license.  That text is on the Remtronix site too.  Nice that they are reminding folks that a license is required!

13 hours ago, WRHS218 said:

RW AntennaStore says "This is a professional tpe radio and should not be compared to cheap chines built GMRS radios. "

I don't know who the CHINES are but I won't be comparing their radios to TPE radios, whatever that is.

Pretty sure those are typos.  If you read the rest of the description it's pretty obvious that it was written by someone who has English as their first langauge ... like maybe the owner of RW Antenna Store (which is in Western NY)?  A lot of the text is copied from the Remtronix site (Remtronix is the US distributor for Alinco) but it's not verbatim.

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