Motorola frs radio's

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westcoaster
Posts: 74
Joined: Thu Aug 04, 2005 12:22 am

Motorola frs radio's

Post by westcoaster »

Motorola talkabout T5100.
The cheap 1/2 watt radio that can at best get you a half mile range.
I was eyeballing mine the other day and decided to pull one of them apart and found the antenna was nothing more than a twizzled paper clip.

I am looking for opinions on modifying the radio to have a BNC connector and a proper 6" UHF whip (450-490 mHz) actually the modification was really easy and has already been done, all I need to do is buy the whip.

What would be the down side? would the radio be "shocked" by how well it can rx and tx? or would I be throwing something completly out of balance? or should I never mind, go test and post back the results....

I suppose I could just go buy a 5 watt commercial radio and plant the gmrs/frs frequencies in there and have all the power and range, but where would the challange be in that?
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WPA6MDuplexer
Posts: 4
Joined: Sun Apr 09, 2006 10:45 pm
Location: DFW Area

Re: Motorola frs radio's

Post by WPA6MDuplexer »

westcoaster wrote:Motorola talkabout T5100.
The cheap 1/2 watt radio that can at best get you a half mile range.
I was eyeballing mine the other day and decided to pull one of them apart and found the antenna was nothing more than a twizzled paper clip.

I am looking for opinions on modifying the radio to have a BNC connector and a proper 6" UHF whip (450-490 mHz) actually the modification was really easy and has already been done, all I need to do is buy the whip.

What would be the down side? would the radio be "shocked" by how well it can rx and tx? or would I be throwing something completly out of balance? or should I never mind, go test and post back the results....

I suppose I could just go buy a 5 watt commercial radio and plant the gmrs/frs frequencies in there and have all the power and range, but where would the challange be in that?
Well ... you know that those FRS radios are 'type accepted' as is - no mods allowed used just-as-they-are. There's also the slight chance that something could "go wrong" in the conversion; the transmitter could go spurious with a different load besides the usual 'human' stuff of accidents and all.

It is a lot easier to go with an HT1000 programmed for the FRS freqs and set for low power; although how legal this is in the eyes of the law I don't know - try not to make yourelf a 'target' and create a stir in your area and no one would know, that's really the intent of the law - provide some sort of order and organization on what could otherwise become chaotic and real mess at which point someone starts taking names and/or writing new laws to control the chaos and disorder ...
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