Lscott

The first problem was positively identifying the source of the transmissions. I was hearing them on the same channel as a local GMRS repeater I use. I heard references to cleaning, food court etc. With all of the local strip malls, hotels and more within a few miles, many using FRS radios I couldn't ID them. Then one day I heard a reference to a hand cleaning station, then a few seconds later I heard the mall security on the same frequency then on their own frequency. That nailed it. I had the call sign for the mall security frequency. Next stop was the FCC database. I looked up the call sign for the mall's security. Got the FRN number. I was lucky the mall security frequency was registered to the mall and not the mall security company, which is an outside service. Then did a search for ALL licenses under that FRN for the mall. 0002748242 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakeside_Mall I guessed the house cleaning would be registered to the mall. Bingo, there it was. KAB1523 https://wireless2.fcc.gov/UlsApp/UlsSearch/license.jsp?licKey=194751 Under the "Admin" tab scroll down to the section "Special Conditions". The exact frequencies are listed there, the pair for the GMRS repeater channel 16, which is where I heard them.

I monitor it frequently but almost never hear anything. With only 5 channels you get a few more ding-dongs running telemetry and the available channels are all gone. That user might even be grandfathered in and thus has priority use. You might figure that out by looking up the license info on the FCC database, you hear the CW ID, that's where you start your search. Just because you hear the CW ID doesn't mean the license is active. The shopping mall by me, for example, the house cleaning staff uses GMRS channel 16 with a repeater. I found their license info on the FCC database. It expired in 10/2015 and was canceled a couple months later because it was never renewed. They have been using their radios and the repeater illegally for the past almost 7 years. Oh, nobody ID's and neither does the repeater.

I believe some antennas have a DC connection from the radiating element to the shield. Grounding the shield bleeds off static electricity buildup and generates less noise in the signal while protecting the sensitive front end components from failure. You can get huge static voltage build ups even on sunny days just due to a small breeze blowing across the antenna. I read a story about one Ham who got knocked off his roof after touching his un-grounded antenna, no feed line attached, due to the static voltage on it. I also know people who will disconnect the coax from all their radios, sticking the ends in glass jars, when thunder storms are moving in to the area.

There are some solid recommendations for used commercial grade radios if you want to go that route. I have primarily Kenwood radios so I'll confine my comments to them. The ones I have and feel they work good are the TK-370G, TK-3140, TK-3170, TK-3173, TK3212 and the TK-3180. The radios are either 4 or 5 watt radios. There is little difference between a 4 and 5 watt radio range wise. They all can do repeaters, split tones, wide and narrow band FM, high and low power, scan and so on. The one I've been carrying around for a while now is the TK-3170. I just like how it works, it's small enough to fit in a shirt pocket, light with the Lithium Ion battery packs, and uses all the same programming cables, speaker microphones, antennas and other accessories the cheap Chinese radios use, which is the Kenwood dual prong "K type" connector. The TK-3173 is the same radio but includes trunking, which you don't need for GMRS anyway. https://mra-raycom.com/wp-content/uploads/simple-file-list/Specifications/portables/TK-270G-370G-Product-Brochure.pdf http://www.swscomm.com/kenwood/TK-2140_3140.pdf http://www.swscomm.com/kenwood/TK-2170_3170.pdf http://www.swscomm.com/kenwood/TK-3173.pdf http://www.deisradio.com/files/TK-2212-3212 Brochure.pdf https://kenwoodsub.dealerarena.com/ProductPDFs/10/TK-2180&3180Brochure.pdf You can find these for sale on eBay frequently. You'll also probably need a new battery pack, antenna and charger base. If you already have the two prong programming cable you're all set on a few of the above. The TK-3140, TK-3180 use a different type of programming cable. I believe all of the above are Part 95 certified for legal use on GMRS. The software isn't hard to find on line with a bit of searching. Be careful of the exact model "Type" you buy used. These UHF radios come in several different frequency ranges. The Part 95 certified ones are the 450 MHz lower end to 490 MHz to 520 MHz upper end. I have one or more of these specific radios and they all will be great on GMRS. Just one caveat about any commercial radio, they are not front panel programmable. You can set some of the function keys to select things like tones etc. but in general you need to software to do a proper job setting them up. Oh, these radios can be "pushed" down below the official lower frequency limit, down to at least 440 MHz or lower, so they are usable on the repeater section of the Ham 70cm band for dual licensed people. Now you can legally have one radio to use on GMRS and Ham with zero modifications or special software hacks required.

Selling an "add on" software by the manufacture for their own radios? A company has to make a decision, are they primarily a hardware vendor or a software services provider. Some try to do both and end up doing neither well. What is being proposed is the business model used by example Motorola, now Kenwood looks like they too are moving in that direction. You pay for the basic software, then again for each additional feature. You can end up paying on a per unit basis too. Now you have to keep track of which radio(s) have what licensed features enabled and so on. Even the code plugs are directly tied to an individual radio by serial number. You simply can't take a code plug for one and directly load it in to another radio identical hardware wise because the enabled features may be different. If the radio programming software is a for purchase type option, well it had better work and the vendor needs to be quick about fixing bugs. Forget about "feature creep" I want what's there already to "just work", no excuses. One way to kill a great hardware product is crappy to non existent support. I have a low threshold for buggy software and even less for vendor excuses why it's not fixed or have no intention of fixing it, ever. The danger with any third party software are several. One most likely the hardware vendor doesn't document the communication protocol nor the code plug content structure. With CHIRP its all done through lucky guess work, reverse engineering and experimentation. No guarantee that a later hardware version won't break to software. Even worse that a bug in the software won't "brick" your radio. A few have had that unfortunate experience. Second while CHIRP presents a consistent user interface across multiple radios you can loose access to features that are specific to a particular model. In that case you're back to using the hardware vendor's software anyway. Remember CHIRP can only implement what can be reversed engineered, and even then the developer may choose to note it's just experimental so any bugs discovered may never get fixed because they don't have the time, lost interest or just don't have the radio to experiment with any longer. Remember it's free, so what did one expect for zero cost, so there is little motivation for the developer to spend heaps of time on it.

More companies are going that route. For hobbyists it doesn’t make sense. Some are figuring out that the hobbyist is the ticket to future business. For example with microprocessor development systems they cost a fortune in the past. Now you can get really cheap development boards and free IDE’s. The idea is once you get somebody, college or university student, familiar with their hardware and software they go on to recommend it once they begin working in their field because they know the products. I would guess a number of people have recommended radios from the major manufacturers for their work place, or for others personal use, based on their experience using second hand radios purchased for personal use and scamming up the software. Myself I’ve recommended a number of Kenwood radios because I know what they can do and the software wasn’t hard to find. I wouldn’t mind their new radios, the NX-5200, 5300, 5400 series, but their change in software licensing is a complete show stopper for hobby use. So, for those models I wouldn’t even take one for free. The software licensing model Kenwood has moved to is expensive, restrictive and in general doesn’t fit how I use and program my radios. I have several computers I use, at work - home - traveling, and having the software tied to a particular computer with Internet activation is a deal killer. The above isn’t just with radio programming software you find this with just about all the CAD software out there too. I use a number for hobby use and they are 10 to 20 year old versions before the companies moved to the same license scheme above or required hardware dongles.

For just a few radios that will add up. For hobby use I couldn't justify the cost. For a business it's a drop in the bucket. That's Motorola's business model. They don't cater to the single user. For a dealer it's like buying toilet paper. Spread the license fee over 100's or radios and the cost is almost nothing.

OK. I read it. Not as expensive as I thought. What happens after the initial 3 years ends? You still can legally use the software? If not that sort of sucks. I find I need to make changes time to time, either changing the configuration, buttons, menus and so on. The other is keeping up with the changes to the local repeaters. Talk groups changes mainly on DMR. Others the repeaters simply fail and never seem to get back on the air so off hunting for another one to use. Or new one pops up. One is never really done programming their radio. Something always needs tweaking or changed.

What are your out of pocket expenses so far buying software and the license entitlement ID's?

No Bluetooth option for programming with any radio I have. I think the XPR7550's can do it but the XPR6550's and XPR6580's I've got don't support Bluetooth. I got my cable from the frequently mentioned source, BlueMax49ers. The guy is very easy to deal with and the quality of the cables I got was very good. I spent more than buying some no-name one on eBay but his are guaranteed to work. https://bluemax49ers.com/ What was in that "training" video that required you to spend 15 minutes of your time watching? I probably could have produced the video in 30 seconds. If it's wide-band click this. If it's narrow-band click that. Done. I need to get the radios out and play with them a bit. I had to think about how to organized the zones since the radios I have only allow 16 memory channels per zone. I had to set them up a bit differently than any other radio I own that has zone support.

Did you need to re-tune the cavity filters?Somebody else said theirs was tuned rather wide so they could change frequencies without having to mess with the filter tuning. I find it hard to believe it works that good without getting the RX de-sensed because the notch isn't that deep when not tuned narrow enough.

Makes you wonder how they manage to get and keep customers.

I believe they would be initialized to zero by default. One could also set the compiler warnings to ignore it too depending on whose you use.

Things got stupid because there was no accountability or meaningful enforcement action. Years ago I went round and round with a number of people on the “rec.radio.cb” news group. There was a hard core group who had no regard for FCC rules, couldn’t care less who was interfered with etc. Because of the lack of FCC licensing and no real enforcement they felt “entitled” to do whatever they wanted and had no fear of repercussions. A few of them were the most narcissistic people you would have the miss fortune to ever meet.

Yes, the CPS can import and export different parts of the radio’s setup. In fact that’s how you would keep the HT and the mobile version D578 in sync. When the firmware is updated for one it looks like they do the same for the other. If you’re interested in DMR these are two radios worth looking at. While some might protest they are CCR’s they aren’t that bad. I have the D878UV early model however I don’t use it much at the moment.

That’s a very good way to do it on those radios. You have 4000 memory slots on the D878UV for example so why not use them.

Things on 11m started really going to crap when the FCC dropped the license requirements and effectively quit policing the band.

I had an XPR6580 I wanted to experiment with on the Ham 33cm band and it had the trunking firmware on it. Somebody had used V2.0 to program it too. I managed to get it back on the old firmware usable with CPS 16, but in the process the “tune” date, the internal hardware calibration, got mucked up. I saved it before doing the down grade but found out there are differences between the two so the original “tune” data file won’t load. Using the tune data utility I can see the values but not all of them can be adjusted manually. A few of the receiver gain settings can only be adjusted on Motorola’s “auto tune” test station, which I don’t have or access to one. I could send it out for this but I’m not spending $80 to $100+ on a bench fee to adjust the radio. I only paid $45 for it. In the mean time I loaded the tune data from another radio in the one that got mucked up and reset the parameters I could manually adjust to match to original ones where possible. Not perfect but better than nothing.

I have CPS 16 build 828 for the XPR6550's I have a couple of the VHF and UHF models. The software has the mod's for the wide band FM and radio/code plug password work around. The later is almost necessary when buying used radios since some might be password locked. I just got a Kenwood TK-3180 yesterday I purchased on eBay last weekend. The radio is the rather rare type-2 which has an official band split of 400 MHz to 470 MHz, perfect for Ham Radio and GMRS. It was $30 including shipping. Normally these sell for $80 to over $100 each. https://kenwoodsub.dealerarena.com/ProductPDFs/10/TK-2180&3180Brochure.pdf The radio had the special "passport" trunking firmware loaded and not the normal conventional/trunking one, LTR, so the usual Kenwood radio programming software wouldn't work on it. The radio displayed a message showing the special one that had to be used, which of course I didn't have. I flashed the normal firmware to the radio since I had it. Once that was done I found it was password locked for writing. Fortunately the radio programming software I had is modified to enable all sorts of features even the dealers likely don't have access to. One was removing passwords. All I had to do was enter the radio's serial number and do a write. That cleared all the passwords in the radio and I was able to write my code plug to it and now it's working. I guess the reason why the price was so cheap was the seller couldn't program the radio either.

The antennas are not super expensive, but making the connector non standard is just another way for Motorola to capture more of the accessory market. It might cost you $9.95 and they have them made in China for $1 each most likely.

oops. float VHF, UHF, 10db_gain; if (VHF != UHF) { UHF *= 10db_gain; }

They're nice radios. Myself I don't like the funky antenna connector. I use my radios at times with external antennas. Having a standard SMA connector is a perk in my book. The weird antenna connector is just a move by Motorola to capture more money from customers since that's one item that gets frequently broken by careless users. You look on eBay and you can find packs of antennas for Kenwood radios for sale cheap. No so much if at all for Motorola's proprietary ones. I bet Motorola makes a good profit on them.

No. I requested an account but never got the notification. I just found it last night in my junk email folder. Now it's expired.

This is why I'll NEVER purchase one of the new Kenwood radios, new or used. They changed their business model to extract more money out of business customers. For private hobby use it makes no sense at all. With a license key tied to a specific PC, effectively turning it in to a hardware dongle, if your hard disk dies so does your license. I forget if it was either Kenwood or Motorola, but they told people when your hardware dies or the license file gets screwed up you get to buy a new one. What might make more sense is installing the software and license on a virtual machine. That way you can keep backup copies of the VM in case of a real hardware failure. Second you can load the VM on any PC that can host the VM environment effectively allowing you to run the software on multiple computers without the necessity of buying multiple licenses. So, for example, you can have the VM on your desktop computer and a laptop for when you travel and need to make last minute changes. I had several computers running the exact same VM with Microsoft Windows a few years ago. Windows would start, update etc. with zero complaints about multiple copies running or pirated versions. If Microsoft isn't detecting the multiple versions running I doubt Kenwood's software will either.

DMR isn’t that complex to setup. It’s just messy. For a single repeater which supports multiple talk groups the easiest solution is use one memory for each full time talk group using the appropriate color code and time slot. The repeater frequencies, and just about everything else, stays the same. I myself have used 6 or more memory slots in a radio for just one repeater due to all the supported talk groups.