I like the GM300 16 channel the best. Some of the other Radius and
Motorola radios that look the same have a 5 pin accessory connector
with less flexibility. Likewise the 16 channel GM300 has more
programability on the 16 pin accessory connector than the 8 channel.
Now, the 8 channel is a lot cheaper usually, and probably would do
anything you need. I stockpile radios in advance of a project, so have
stuck to the 16 ch to make sure I can do whatever I need to with them.
I've bought about a dozen GM300 16ch UHF on Ebay in the last year at
anywhere from $80 to $140 -- one need an IF chip replaced ($20) and
that was the only problem with any of them. I MUCH prefer the 10W
version, which is often cheaper but harder to find. I almost never use
a GM300 in an application that uses more than 10W and they run nice
and continuously at 2.5W for a link transmitter as well.
The GM300 does use DOS-based RSS that will run under windows, but it
can take 10 minutes to read or write a codeplug and sometimes things
fail... I avoid that. I just boot my shack PC - a Celeron 2.6GHz
machine off of a FreeDOS live CD and run the RSS off of a small FAT16
partition I keep on the PC's only HDD.
Models to avoid -- use the info on repeater-builder and Batlabs. Don't
accidentally get a GM300 that's narrow-band (unless that's what you
want -- never know an ham to want that), and watch the 45W units if
you're going to use the transmitter. If you need 5W, get a 10W radio,
don't crank down a 45W
On Apr 23, 2009, at 1:42 PM, John Transue wrote:
Thanks to you all for good advice. The project is to have a VHF
receiver (remote receiver), a UHF linktransmitter, a UHF link
receiver (at the base repeater site), and probably a voter. All of
this is in ham bands. I am getting the idea that good choices for
the radios would be MaxTrac, Radius, or GM300 radios. These are
available for about $200. I am reluctant to include SpectraTAC
because it seems to come in a bunch of modules, and I don’t
understand which ones I would need, and I suspect that when the
pieces are ll included, it would be more expensive than the other
radios.
Questions:
a) Are there specific radio models to avoid?
b) Are there specific radio models that are particularly good
for my application (easy to interface, easy to program, good
performance, etc.)?
c) Is there different specific Radio Service Software for each
model radio? Are these DOS programs that require a native DOS machine?
d) I see some Midland VHF (71-3051B and 3032B) and UHF
(71-5051B and 5052B). How do these compare with the Motorola radios?
Your opinions and experience will be much appreciated. Thank you.
John
--
Cort Buffington
H: +1-785-838-3034
M: +1-785-865-7206
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