If you do not have the code plug password or a saved code plug with the radios serial number then this post is for you.
I recently came into possession of 2 Motorola CM140 25W radios. These radios belonged to my grandfathers old security company which is now dissolved, however amongst a lot of the kit I was able to save a few gems.
Upon inspection these radios were in immaculate condition despite there age. I was able to power up both radios only to find that they were programmed to one channel and when I used Commercial Series CPS (customer programming software) I could not read or write to the radio since the code plug was password protected.
Luckily I found a sample code plug for the model of CM140 radio I had. This allowed me to clone and change the password of the radio using the sample code plug now I can read/write to the radio
Living on a farm I often encounter communication issues coupled with the urgency to communicate when catastrophes strike. Therefore in my quest to find suitable backups and backups to the backups I stumbled upon the LoRa system. Specifically the LoRa boards in the T-Beam configuration using the Meshtastic firmware + Android app which allows text message communication over a few kilometers in my case.
After testing them I came to the conclusion that they do work and reliability, however they can get damaged easily and the quality of boards and components used is not up to the bar of commercial motherboards such as gigabyte PC motherboards as an example.
My final opinion being: they work and I would use them as one of my “coms” layers however I would not put the T-Beam on par with a mobile phone the quality is simply just not there.
