There are several great reasons to use the Kenwood TK-880 (25 watt) and TK-880H (45 watt) for GMRS. Being commercial radios, they are rugged, durable, and bot Part 95 and Part 97. This allows them to be used for GMRS, as well as 70cm amateur radio (although it is out of band in the 440 MHz range, works great).
Parts are still relatively easy to find, new OEM mics are cheap.
They cost a fraction of what new comparable mobile GMRS radios cost. Used/surplus they are generally in the $75-100 range for the TK-880, and $100-125 range for the TK-880H on eBay.
They are repeater friendly too!
One thing to watch out for is to make sure you are buying the -1 (Type 1) variant for best use on GMRS:
While we are on it, here is the rest of the spec sheet:
Another radio I considered was the Kenwood TK-860H with similar specs. The distinction between this and the TK-860/TK-860H as mentioned on an earlier post, is the 860 software was written for DOS. I couldn't get it to work on Windows 10, even using a couple of different DOS emulators. I don't want anything I can't program!
The TK-880-series uses KPG-49D programming software, that runs fine in all three Windows 10 computers I have used with it. The software is available various places online for free. Sometimes sellers include it with the programming cable. By the way, yes you do need a programming cable for this. I bought the KPG-46 programming cable with the FTDI chip on Amazon for about $15.
OEM mounting brackets run in the $15 range, and the OEM mobile (KMC-35) mics run in the $20 range, if needed.
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