Dakota Alert handhelds- other applications?

[DeeEx]

(Note: I’m not posting this in the FRS/MURS-oriented forum because the subject is the radios themselves and not band-specific)

I’m sure we’ve all noticed the Dakota Alert MURS handheld transceivers over the past 15 years or however long it’s been. I finally got my hands on one at a yard sale and I’m frankly very impressed.

Build quality seems superb for something plastic. The proprietary antenna thread is odd as I expected to see SMA. With six batteries I’m expecting run time to be decent. The only weaknesses I see are a somewhat-flimsy feeling PTT and a very limited display.
It seems DA has a great design here— was this marketed by anyone else for any purpose? I could imagine it being a platform which would work for a simple and durable single-band transceiver.

 

[MarkVee]

Bought one 2007'ish along with the MURS alert transmitter (MAT), the HT has been hanging on a hook in the unheated garage for much of that time. Usually only turn it on now when working in the garage but it's also suffered some abuse at the hands of kids playing with it around the house over the years. Only problem I had with it was the kids broke the solder joint on the helical antenna using it as a handle, cut open the antenna shielding and resoldered it, and wrapped it back up with electrical tape. Overall pleased with the quality of the Dakota Alert MURS products in general, I've bought 7 of their products and only one has failed (a MAT hanging on a tree, after about 7-8 years of outdoor use).

Pros:
Uses AA nimhs, and doubles as a battery charger for them. Has an "alert" icon that indicates whether it's received a signal from a MAT, basically a missed message indicator which is a nice feature on a security monitor.

Cons:
That stupid proprietary antenna connection.

 

[kny2xb]

Years ago, I bought one for work when management dragged their feet on replacing the broken Motorola they issued me

They FINALLY replaced it because:
1) I kept accidentally hitting the CALL button & transmitting a VERY annoying sound over the channel
2) They changed from open squelch to DCS & the Dakota didn't support DCS

Pros:
Uses AA nimhs, and doubles as a battery charger for them.

I wasn't sure of the battery life that I'd get with the OEM AA's, since they were only 1600 mA, so I bought two 4-packs of 2200 mA at Harbor Freight just to be sure
It never died during an 8-9 hour shift