Midland MXT 115 GMRS radio
Finally got all the small things sorted for the GMRS install.
As noted a few weeks back my partner in crime and I both found ourselves intrigued by Midland's
Micromobile line of vehicle mounted GMRS radios. The ability to have it hard mounted in a vehicle is nice, particularly when coupled with the increase in power and better antenna placement. So at little time on the FCC website, and ~$90 later, we were both legal and set out to try out the middle of the Midland range, the
MXT 115. While I think we both want the bump in watts that comes with the top of the line MXT 400 the price point of the 115 given application parameters made sense.
Installation was rather straight forward, particularly since I decided to tap into existing antenna infrastructure that was supporting the Yaseu and I opted to remove the CB entirely and thus had power and such close at hand. I decided to mimic the basic location I'd heard for where the G4 trucks had their two way radios, inside the upper glove box. I did remove it, drill a hole in the back left side to allow antenna, power, external speaker, and mic extension cables through-but this part is easy enough to replace if for some reason I decided to return to stock.
As you can see the little speaker sits in the tray area above it with its wire just smashed in the closed glove door. Speaker is velcroed in place, which allegedly is also how they did it in the G4 trucks to minimize perm modification.
I opted to extend the mic-worth noting here that this is what delayed the post for a bit as I screwed around with what type of cord and connectors were needed. Initially I thought it was simply RJ45/cat 5. Nope, should have looked closer. Ok then, RJ11 right? No. It actually seems to be RJ12 & 6P6C cord. I may not be saying that right. What I ended up doing was getting a mic extension
here. At $10, I was happy to throw them the business. This facilitates the nice handset down in the center console. Yaseu is now tucked into the center console cubby. If you wait a bit, sometime in 2018 Midland is going to come out with what is basically the GMRS version of a Cobra 75WSXT in the form of the
MXT275 Give that you still have a brain to mount somewhere I figure I'll just backfill the MXT115 with the 275 brain, and plug the new mic into the extension and shift the MXT115 over to another truck, perhaps Coyote.
Here's the mic day to day:
The unit comes with a fairly decent mini mag antenna that for an LR3 application would likely work well aft of the roof glass where it will stick and, depending on shark fin, routing of cable wouldn't be too hard. Midland also offers upgrade high gain antennas that seem to be good from what I've read on some forums. On my end I already had the motorized diamond mount and a UHF optimized antenna on the truck so I decided to try out a switch to go between HAM and GMRS. With the brain of the Yaseu in the back left, I opted to just place the switch there since for most of the time I see myself using the GMRS up in WV. If I really need to talk HAM VHF or UHF, I can take the time to get out and switch from 1 to 2 in terms of input.
Rather industrial, which I kind of like for some reason. Like other mods, I did this on a panel that would be easy to replace if for some reason I wanted to clean it up.
Switch is a cheap unit off
Amazon coupled with some
90 degree connectors to go through the panel
where things attach either out to the antenna itself or to the respective radios, as labeled. When the tools go back in, it is nicely tucked away with very little chance of damage or inadvertent contact.
So how is performance? As previous posts noted we played with the radios on the park-the distances here weren't so much as important as determining dead spots given the terrain. Specifically we used my truck as a stationary base to validate a potential repeater site that would allow comms from the primary park site, an adjacent parcel of property that is used for other things, and a nearby residence (all with terrain in between). This was easy enough, so on the way home we decided to stretch it out across the valley where we were clear as a bell out to at least 8mi and were getting hits on appropriate terrain out to 14mi without even trying. I'm sure we could do better with some designated high ground to achieve electronic line of sight but for driving down the highway and talking from a ~7" antenna to a ~6" antenna, I'm sold on GMRS in a vehicle mounted application, particularly when the MXT275 comes online and allows more control without opening the glove box.
Bottomline if your friends are considering CB (no), HAM (yes, but) or GMRS-the Midland line of GMRS should make you think hard about if you want to have the utility of UHF that you can get with HAM but the ease/convenience of an out of the packaging solution that is compact and elegant in its way.
More to follow as the truck prepares to cross 125K...on her way to Northern WI for Xmas!
r-
Ray
