I’ve always liked radios & communications gear and back in my airsoft days after jumping from radio to radio, I finally settled on a Motorola XTS 2500 Model 3.  It worked great and I absolutely loved how durable it is, being a klutz not breaking when I fall on it is a big deal. 😉  Anyway recently I picked up another, this time the model 2 without the keypad but meh good enough.  I like the fact it has digital output and ADP encryption (my original is a military version with AES 256 but my new one is from a Washington state police dept) so people can’t snoop on my messages, easily anyway.

The Motorola ASTRO 25 CPS software is not easy to use, I guess that shouldn’t be a surprise and it took me about half a day’s tinkering to get everything working properly but yeah now these two are good!  Due to different firmware and hardware options, I couldn’t simply clone one radio to the other so I had to compare settings and there are so many, it can make your eyes gloss over.  I still have some Baofeng radios, used those when I was still a Scout leader and while I’m not really active, or need radios for anything I still want to get a few more.  Just in case right… 😉