Motorola Radius P-10

Business Radios
1

I was given a pair of these radios. They do not turn on, but I highly suspect that would be because the batteries are dead and I have no way of charging them. I finally located what frequency they transmit on, 154.6 and show as receiving on same. Someone told me that they were old police radios. If that’s the case, I might not want to even test them out around here! LOL

Can someone give me any kind of specs on these radios? Are they good quality? They don’t have belt clips. But they are in pretty decent shape. Any help would be great.

2

P-10 is definitely NOT a police radio. Nowhere near rugged enough.

They are a simple, probably one-channel, crystal-controlled (not programmable) radio. 154.600 MHz, is what has sometimes been referred to as an ‘itinerant’ frequency. I’m also thinking 1 or two watts RF power. Shop around on the net, or find a local battery store (like Batteries Plus) and find a couple batteries, they’ll probably work fine. You can probably find chargers for them somewhere on the net.

Forget all the licensing details for said frequency, since I’m not close to that side of the business these days. Think maybe it falls under what is now called MURS, Multi-User Radio Service.

3

The radios use MURS frequencies:

151.820 MHz 11.25 kHz
151.880 MHz 11.25 kHz
151.940 MHz 11.25 kHz
154.570 MHz (also part of business band) 20.00 kHz
154.600 MHz (also part of business band) 20.00 kHz

That means no license to use them: http://www.buytwowayradios.com/blog/2008/09/murs_unlicensed_vhf.aspx

The radios were most likely for business use, but you lucked out. They should be great to use outdoors.

They are not old police radios though. :slight_smile:

4

Thanks Jeff. I’ve been reading about it and found a parts list in PDF format for it. Problem is it shows some kind of keypad on the front which this one doesn’t have at all. Other than that, it’s identical.

That being said, a single charger is 35 bucks and a battery for each radio is at least 20. That would mean 70 bucks just to see if they work. My other option is asking my uncle to let me borrow his DC power supply that is adjustable and I can use alligator clips to the battery tabs and see if they power up and transmit, etc. Since no one will give me a charger I don’t think they’d be much use to me. Only 2 watts isn’t much. But they do have long antennas. They’re listed as optional “high gain” antennas. LOL But still only 7-8 inches long! LOL

5

You need to make sure that the radios are type-accepted for MURS though. Many commercial radios have this, some do not. Being one of the CB banda, a service-specific type-acceptance comes into play.

MURS-only radios are rare… The public doesn’t catch on to a service with only five channels. Too bad. VHF is a good band.