Motorola XTNid - Opinions?

Trotter

Hi all,

I've been searching for a 2 way radio that will take a bit of bashing and give me a little more range than your standard Argos gear. I'll be using it hiking and at hot air ballooning events, and a bit of paintball too.

I've just about settled on the Motorola XTNid

Motorola XTNid Dabs.ie

For some reason they seem to be out of stock on a lot of websites. The XTNid is the replacement for the XTN446 as far as I can gather.

I was just wondering if some of the more knowledgeable among you might give me the nod as to whether its an ok choice, and even better you might recommend a website to buy one from.

UK sites are fine because I've a friend who travels over and back a lot from London so I can get it delivered to his house there and he'll bring it home for me.

Thanks a lot

watty

All PMR446 are basically the same range. Anything else is illegal or needs a licence.

You need double the power for a little more range. Which is not allowed.

Those Motorola are exactly same range/power as cheap Lidl 30 Eur or any Argos ones. Legal max 500mW / 0.5W

Trotter

watty wrote: »

All PMR446 are basically the same range. Anything else is illegal or needs a licence.

You need double the power for a little more range. Which is not allowed.

Those Motorola are exactly same range/power as cheap Lidl 30 Eur or any Argos ones. Legal max 500mW / 0.5W

So what are you getting then for the extra €130?

watty

Brand name.

Tactical

Perhaps the Motorola units have a better receiver? A little more design budget spent on the unit?

A more sensitive receiver is another way of increasing range with needing to increase transmit power (up to a point naturally before you start to suffer all sorts of other problems).

The XTN units will be a little more rugged than the cheaper units and spares and accessories will be available for the sales lifetime of the radio. Try getting accessories for the cheaper units.

I'd def go with the brand anyday, especially when its a respected manufacturer like Motorola.

watty

There will be very little difference on receive. You need 4x the sensitivity to see a useful improvement. But if you are already more sensitive than the background noise, then you can't increase the range. Any model will already be more sensitive than the background noise.

The basic noise level rises as frequency drops. Thus < 0.8dB NF is needed at 10GHz. At 446MHz a NF of 5dB or 6dB is adequate. It's hard to design a front end (RF preamp) worse than 3dB NF.


It's FM, not SSB, so once the signal is poor it is lost quickly.

None of the 446s by anyone are worth repairing.

You can use motorola accessories on any radio as long as it has Mic in and Ear out. At worst you have to change the plug (50cents).

Even cheap Lidl ones I bought are excellent VOX performance and as good receiver performance as you can have on FM with small builtin aerial.

The PMR446 is a fairly limited spec and simple to implement. There really is no value in paying big money for them. The "big brand" ones are no more rugged than some of the cheap ones. (some are ugly or brittle, but there are cheap ones.).

I'd even bet that there are cheap ones made in same factory and/or same design as big name ones. This is not "PMR taxi" /police gear, or Marine, Security, Industrial or even Amateur stuff. They are all basically the same.