Time to move on to GMRS (1 Viewer)

[ChaseTruck]

If you want NMO, Signal Stuff makes one that could be trimmed. I have one in a box waiting for me to drill a hole in my roof.

As for radio brands, of course use what you want. My Motorola's were a gift from a buddy who did the work to learn how to program them. I have a couple baofengs I bought for the very reasons you describe. But now that I have both I use the Motorola and hand the baofeng off to others.

This is a 2m 1/4 wave antenna, from SignalStuff, made from Nitinol wire, on the fender of my K5:

Worked well on 2m@50W (probably not ideal for that SMA mount…IIRC, SWR was 1.6-ish), including contacts ~45 miles away. And, main point for me, it has held up well on brushy AZ trails. Probably also not ideal to transmit at highway speed due to antenna deflection from headwind, but that’s ok.

I have the “SignalStalk” from the SignalStuff folks, with the NMO base, but haven’t gotten around to trying it (haven’t decided on the vehicle, either…). Cutting a hole in the roof isn’t in the cards in any case - the Chevy sheet metal is too flimsy for a hard-mounted antenna, and both the 80/LX are too nice. So it’ll have to be somewhere on the fender or bumper, we’ll see.

 

[Pskhaat]

VHF Motorola HTs (XV2600) in the 150s MHz. Could something like that be reprogrammable to other useful frequencies?

Almost certainly they could be programmed for MURS. MURS is basically the CB of 2-meter. License free. 5 channels. Only 2 watts though which is still reasonable.