A coworker had a couple of Radio Shack BTX-122 radios he was willing to let go for about $15. He let me take them home yesterday to try them out and see what information I could find on them.
Both radios will power up but the PTT button on one works when it wants to work. However both radios' audio sounds scratchy especially on receive. The batteries are rechargeable but I believe the recharge circuits in one is bad. With the wall wort plugged in, the power to the contacts drop to about a half a volt while the other one has no volts with the wall wort plugged in.
The (bad) battery, when you unplug it, appears to reach 9-10 volts after a short time on charge but dies quickly on the radio. The other battery appears normal in that respect and will hold a charge for at least 4 hours, with the radio on, after it has charged for about 6 hours.
Both radios have the MURS freqs (Blue and Green Dot) programed in them. We tried the good one out last night using my Wouxun KGUV2D. The BTX-122 did surprisingly well! Not sure of the distance but had to be at least a .25 of a mile, on the other side of a very large building in and around hundreds of tractor trailers. It didn't start to cut out until I walked into the building with it. Which even the Kenwood UHF radios have some difficulty from time to time.
According to the FCC information on the radio the max wattage on it is 3 watts and the minimum is 0.6 watts. I'll try to mod the battery pack on the bad one and see if I can't get the PTT to work better on it. Maybe eve redo the speaker on it.
Both radios will power up but the PTT button on one works when it wants to work. However both radios' audio sounds scratchy especially on receive. The batteries are rechargeable but I believe the recharge circuits in one is bad. With the wall wort plugged in, the power to the contacts drop to about a half a volt while the other one has no volts with the wall wort plugged in.
The (bad) battery, when you unplug it, appears to reach 9-10 volts after a short time on charge but dies quickly on the radio. The other battery appears normal in that respect and will hold a charge for at least 4 hours, with the radio on, after it has charged for about 6 hours.
Both radios have the MURS freqs (Blue and Green Dot) programed in them. We tried the good one out last night using my Wouxun KGUV2D. The BTX-122 did surprisingly well! Not sure of the distance but had to be at least a .25 of a mile, on the other side of a very large building in and around hundreds of tractor trailers. It didn't start to cut out until I walked into the building with it. Which even the Kenwood UHF radios have some difficulty from time to time.
According to the FCC information on the radio the max wattage on it is 3 watts and the minimum is 0.6 watts. I'll try to mod the battery pack on the bad one and see if I can't get the PTT to work better on it. Maybe eve redo the speaker on it.
