MURS Radios for a School

The radio that I am considering is the Motorola RDM2020. Is there a consensus on this? Am I even on the right track? I would need six radios total.

Jeff

I would suggest this is an excellent choice.

You should also look a the Motorola DTR radios.

http://www.buytwowayradios.com/products/motorola/motorola-dtr550.aspx

It is an unlicenced frequency band like the MURS, but in the case of the DTR radios, they are UHF radios and pure digital radios. Because they are UHF, they are more likely to have a longer range in an urban area because UHF will penetrate glass, concrete and steel more readily than VHF. (VHF radios like the MURS would be slightly better for rural areas because it can penetrate vegetation better.)

The other advantage to the DTR is that they cannot be monitored. It would be virtually impossible for anyone with a consumer-level scanner to monitor the frequencies from more than a few feet away. They are very secure and have hundreds of combinations of “channels.” (They skip frequencies many times a second, so they don’t really have channels; they more correctly have channel-hopping algorithms.) MURS radios share common frequencies so the possibility of anyone hearing your transmissions depends on how many others in the area have MURS radios or scanners.

But both radios would be a good choice for schools because both are industrial-grade business-class radios. They have good components, with quality speakers and high audio outputs so the clarity of sound is much better than most typical bubble-pack family radios.

The forum hosts have a lot of experience with both MURS and DTR radios, so read the various reviews and listen to their advice. Both are well-made high-end radios. While both VHF and UHF communicate only through line-of-sight, these two business-class radios are likely to have as good a range or better than any other VHF or UHF radio on the market.