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Midland MXT275 Installation

Dennis Austin | Published on 5/8/2020

Several club members have recently installed new 2-way radios for use in their vehicles.  Midland Radio is now offering a line of Micromobile GMRS radios.  They operate on the same UHF channels we normally use in our walkie-talkies, but have two important advantages:  First, they use an external antenna which is much superior to the little antenna on a walkie-talkie.  Second, they can operate at considerably higher transmit power because they run off the vehicle battery.

The Micromobile radios are available in several models.  A popular choice in the club has been the MXT275 because it has all its controls located on the microphone module.  That allows the radio itself to be mounted up under the dashboard since it does not need to be accessed during use.  There is a more powerful model as well, but it has to be mounted in an easy-to-reach location.

Radio install


David Gray mounted his MXT275 behind the glove box as you can see in his photos.  He connected the power wiring to the dashboard cigarette lighter wiring.  The lighter is switched by the ignition, so you don't have to remember to turn the radio off.

Midland offers several antennas.  David chose the MXTA25 which is a whip antenna.  He mounted it near the driver's side mirror.  Midland sells a Wrangler mount for this location, but it is out of stock at the time of this writing.  You can a similar mount, Rugged Radio MT-ANT-JEEP-DS, from 4WheelParts.  Poison Spider also makes one.

Antenna Installation



Midland sells an antenna cable with a nice low-profile connector that you can also see in the photo.  That is MXTA24.

You'll want a place to hang your microphone on the dashboard.  Midland doesn't sell one, but they are available from  Jeep suppliers.  Quadratec offers there CBM-75WX11 which fits JK dashboards.  There is also a Red Rock 4x4 CB mount from Extreme Terrain.  For the JL grab bar JeepUniq sells a mount that is specifically supposed to work with the MXT275.  The model number is C-K18JL-B-M1-30250.

Microphone installation