TERA TR-505 Dual-Band GMRS MURS NOAA Emergency Two-Way Handheld Radio

Excellent Radio: This transceiver is very clear whether transmitting or receiving. The range is short, about 3/4 of a mile, which is not bad considering I live in a part of the country that has quite a few hills and valleys. [BSR Note: Customer may have been operating on UHF (GMRS) instead of VHF (MURS), which would likely result in better range in his area. We have average reports of 1-5+ miles on these radios. As with all two-way radios, your range will depend on obstructions and operating conditions.]

Overall Great Radios: I programmed these radios for MURS, with monitoring on selected NOAA and Marine channels. I plan to use them mainly for hiking and four-wheeling. I have been looking for programmable, handheld MURS-certified radios with removable antennas for a couple of years, so I was very glad to finally find these. The GMRS capabilities were a very pleasant bonus.

The programming software was easier to use than I expected, but the software help file and the user manual are poorly translated into English. However, with a little tinkering, I was able to figure everything out. The programming charts from bettersaferadio.com were extremely helpful in choosing the programming that works best for me. The great part about the software is that you can save the programming files and just upload whatever profile you want to the radio without going through all the details every single time.

Using MURS, I got ~2 miles of range with moderate line-of-sight barriers in a suburban area using the stock antenna on high power, which is more range than I expected.

Using the ANTMAG at home and a MURS45 antenna from Firestik on my Jeep, I was able to get ~4.5 miles on low power, again with moderate line-of-sight barriers, including some significant hills. Not ideal terrain for radio, but it is a real-world scenario. This is ~1.5 mile more range than I get on the CB radio in my Jeep using a similar length antenna over the exact same terrain. I think the VHF/MURS signal gets through power-line obstructions much better than HF/CB signals. I have power lines in front of my house and I can’t use CB there, but the MURS radio worked great.

The speaker on the radio is quite loud; most of the time I keep the volume turned down as low as possible.

When I plug headphones directly into the radio, I can hear a clicking sound when the Rx power save feature is enabled. I think this is due to the Rx circuit cycling on and off to save power because the interval between the clicks is a function of the power save ratio selected. The clicking is only heard through headphones directly attached to the radio, and not through the radio speaker, the speaker-mic, or headphones plugged into the speaker-mic. I plan to simply disable Rx power saving whenever I plan to use headphones without the speaker-mic.

Overall great radios. I can’t recommend them highly enough.

Happy Owners Of Two TERA TR-505 Radios: I knew almost nothing about two-way radios when I decided to get a pair for myself and my wife for hiking. I still had questions after visiting several information sites and was overwhelmed with information and reviews (many negative) for low-end Motorola, BaoFeng and Midland radios. I was lucky to finally find the BetterSafeRadio site. Mark has been responsive and friendly and has answered all of my questions patiently and thoroughly, even after sale. Being able to buy units preprogrammed for our needs was a huge bonus, especially being completely new to this. We are now the happy owners of two TERA TR-505 radios in the GMAX configuration (and an FCC GMRS license).

Excellent Radio: Feels durable and well made and arrived fully charged. I tested low power MURS to both low and high power GMRS and found MURS to work better overall for my use. With thick trees and large rock piles low power MURS reliably will get out 1/2 mile. Beyond that is a little spotty but finding a little extra elevation helps a lot. In comparison a handheld 4-watt CB (which is a brick) with stock antenna gets 350 feet range and doubles to 700 feet with a 28″ whip antenna in the same area. Mark was great and got the radio shipped out the same day.

Outstanding: By far the best GMRS radio I have ever bought and used. Upon unpacking I was immediately able to hit a repeater tower 25 miles away and talk to a policeman buddy who was 40 miles away from me. But the astonishing thing about that is I was sitting in my concrete basement and using the stock antenna! I was completely blown away.

These are attractive radios and feel great in the hand. Build quality is very good indeed – far better than the bubblepack units sold in stores. Audio quality is 10/10. Mark programmed the radio to GMRS and GMRS repeaters for just $10. What fantastic service. I recommend the Tera TR-505 and bettersaferadio.com without reservation.