gman1971

AFAIK, only the Asian region versions of the XPR radios can do FPP... So, does anyone have any ICOM gear they might want to share some insights with the rest of us? I've always wondered about ICOMS, but out of the brand names they seem to be least "promoted" G.

Nice!!

Looks great! Yeah, I didn't get the tool, I only needed one cable... so it was much more cost effective to just buy a ~25 foot premade factory cable. Which clocked at 50 ohms perfect... When I was referring to my poor crimping skills I meant to say when crimping RG400 and RG142 cales... not for Heliax, although I can probably ruin those too... Even with the tool there is a chance I could ruin it too... haha, but like I said, for just 1 cable it wasn't worth the expense at the moment. G.

Well, the CS800 is not much more than a CCR mobile, from what I've heard from other forums, its not a particularly good radio... I think its made in China by CoValue... I asked them, CS, a while ago for performance figures vs the 5550e and their answer was: "Get the Motorola, you'll be happier." The guy was certainly honest... and I thank him for that. I now have two 5550e, one U one V, and are the best radios I've owned to date in terms of receiver performance for their respective bands, nothing comes close, not even my best aligned EVX-5400 can touch these XPR5550e.... Sometimes I wish that such mesmerizing TFT screen could support some minigames... would be awesome to write a small retro game for it... haha... can you imagine? the police officer playing Tetris on the 5550e while clocking speeders... G.

Thank you! So you can do FPP on those, that is nice, its some sort of VFO, but without scanning, which can still be helpful. G.

Could someone please put a couple of Kenwood portable quick Pros/Cons? Does anyone like ICOM UHF portables?

I totally agree, while it wasn't a drawback for me.... I figured I'd put it out there, so people are aware... I did something like what you did. I have all the itinerants in UHF and the Motorola radio "Factory channels" programmed on the 7550e... but then again the 7550e has a much higher pricepoint (IMO worth it, considering the kind of receiver you get)... but... G.

If you are going for a Part 90 radio then go with a 2nd hand Motorola, Kenwood, Icom, Vertex Standard, etc... just don't believe the hype about those cheap China radios (CCR), Oh, and to be clear, a superhet without proper front end is just worthelss too... those radios are just expensive trash. The superhet buzzword is just used to mislead customers by sleazy salesperson like bsmark. Why? b/c the top of the line Motorola XPR7550e uses a direct conversion receiver, not a superhet, and that direct conversion receiver smokes every other superhet brand portable I have, even the Motorola XPR 6550, which uses a superhet with a proper front end, and still no match for the XPR7550e.... So, my unsolicited advice is: don't waste your money on that piece of trash, which btw, its just a rebadged piece of crap radio made 5 years ago. For 189 you can get yourself a real radio like a Motorola XTS3000 UHF that will draw rings around any turd made in China, and moreso when someone just came here to post claiming they are "working with Wouxun" snake oil. If you decide you don't like that radio, good luck ditching that Wouxun derelict, nobody will want to touch it for what you ask for it... so you won't recoup your money, been there, done that, whereas something like an XTS3000 will hold its value rather well if you decide to ditch it, sometimes you might even be able to flip it for a few bucks gain. There are lots of members in the forum that can and will help you get a radio like that working... Its your money, tho... G. Here is an XTS3000 https://www.ebay.com/itm/Motorola-Astro-XTS-3000-Two-Way-Radio-Analog-Digital/274396332810 EDIT: Please PM me directly if you need any help.

Another Anaconda? hahaha.... How did you manage to coil the anaconda??? with 1 a kilometer curvature radius?? hahaha.... the 7/8 Anaconda was just too much for my 25 foot run, basically to the top of the mast over on a 2 1/2 story house, so I went with FSJ4-50B b/c I could also fit it easily inside the 1" antenna mast tube... At some point before I had some Heliax 1/2, but turns out the cable, for some unknown reason to me, was clearly damaged as it always read massive SWR on the analyzer... no matter what connectors were installed. Good to know about the gigantic spool of FSJ4-50B, however, factory made cables for me only, with factory pre-installed tri-metal N connectors b/c I now know I can't crimp those Heliax cables to save my own life... so its better to pay the professionals to do it right, just once. heh... I think the FSJ4-50B is a great cable for most runs, provided you don't need a 200 foot run or something that long... for anything above 50 feet I would probably go 1/2 and anything beyond 150 probably 7/8 Anaconda... G.

Surprising to hear the Xeigu is as good as the ICOM, but at 500 it better be... My experience with expensive China radios hasn't been as good, the AT-578UV, a 400 dollar triband mobile DMR/FM is measurable inferior to my (used, but less expensive) XPR 5550e in terms of stability (hangs all the time), screen quality and of course, the utmost important part, in RX performance... the only thing the Anytone has going is multi band and Single Frequency Repeater in DMR, which would be a very nice feature if the darn radio didn't freeze up after sitting idle for 20 minutes in SFR mode... so, the radio is useless. Its collecting dust on my shelf... I use EVX-5300 for all my infrastructure... TM-V7A... wow... that is pushing right there.. .the TH-F6a was produced since 2001 IIRC... it still is a great radio, but all you hear noawadays is MotoTRBO/digital noises anywhere else outside the HF bands... G.

n4gix: The XPR 6550 (SIX FIVE FIVE ZERO) is a Gen 1 TRBO radio, and uses a regular SMA connector... The one you have, the XPR7550 (SEVEN FIVE FIVE ZERO) that is a Gen 2 TRBO radio, which uses the bolt antenna you mention (same for the 7550e) I found performance on the 7550e to be superior to the 6550 no matter what SMA portable antenna I used in there, give a reasonable similar length, that is. I know a 1/4 wave magmount is going to beat any rubberduck... but I don't carry my 6550 on my belt with a 1/4 wave VHF antenna...

Maybe I did, I am sorry if I did. I think you meant to say the Yaesu FT-857D, which is a really good radio, certainly not a CCR. I have no comments on the Xeigu, but its probably another CCR HF flavor... sorry but no love for CCRs here... had too many of those and I feel cheated. The 868 is not really a total CCR, @ 180 bucks or so, if not more... While its a decent radio, its not on the same league as the XPR7550e. Lucky dog!!, my Alinco broke from a 4 feet fall, screen internally cracked... and that was the end of it. The TH-F6a was the radio I used to carry before the Alinco MD5, still own 2 of those, they are IMO the best portable ever built... b/c it had everything, it could hear anything from DC to daylight... but sadly, now everything is digital so the TH-F6a is only decent for listening HF stuff, and while its receiver is not too bad, it still lags way behind the 7550e. G.

Effective Sensitivity has very little to do with receiver sensitivity. Sounds like you don't know what Effective Sensitivity is... b/c your statement about selectivity vs sensitivity clearly denotes you are confusing terminology here. Its okay to be confused... I was too... That statement about sensitivity not being important is also misleading. You still need enough sensitivity to pick the signals you want to pick. If you are dealing with signals in the -100 dBm range, then a receiver that has a sensitiviy of -90 dBm won't work. Much the same applies for Effective Sensitivity. If you're dealing with -100 dBm signals and the Effective Sensitivity of the receiver is only -79 dBm (as observed in many CCRs) then you won't hear zip. Effective Sensitivity is never the advertised sensitivity. Although most CCR radios usually have a bit lower absolute sensitivity than most high end stuff, EVX-5300 mobile, as measured, can detect the presence of signals, reliably down to -129 dBm... most CCRs, stop detecting those faint signals at around -124 dBm, as measured. That is the absolute Receiver sensitivity in an ideal conditions.... which is absolutely meaningless. The problem is that once you take these radios off the service monitor/signal generator cable, the EVX-5300 immediately suffers a 5-10 dBm reduction in effective sensitivity, just by being exposed to the RF noise from everything around, thus leaving the EVX-5300 mobile at about -118dBm (0.28uV) to -122dBm (0.18uV) Effective Sensitivity depending on how strong the off band signals used to calculate it are. On the other hand, the CCRs immediately suffer a massive -45 dBm reduction in Effective Sensitivity due to lack of filtering (which is the sum of selectivity AND off band rejection), so if the CCR crap receiver had an absolute sensitivity of -124 dBm (0.14uV), now the Effective Sensitivity is 124 dBm MINUS 45 dBm, and what once was a respectable -124 dBm absolute sensivitiy, now is a mediocre 79 dBm (25.089uV ) Effective sensitivity, so the CCR in question will be unable to hear anything that is fainter than 79dBm.... which around where I live is less than 300 meters... A 35 dBm relative desense is the difference between < 1 mile and 15 miles in Madison WI for an antenna placed at 40 feet AGL, as measured... so the question now is. Have you measured it? Nothing in RF wireless communications is ever simple. Not sure if your statement denotes ignorance or arrogance.... but whatever of the two, not good. And best for last, as always: deflecting to a legality matter when you haven't provided any factual data to support your misleading claim about 35 dBm being irrelevant is a rather sleazy and cheap tactic... which deflects from the real issue at hand: that those radios are garbage. G.

Well, the problem is rarely, if ever, a 5W portable TXing nearby, although it can be for a lot of CCR radios... The real problem are the giant 1000 feet antenna towers within 10 miles from you house that you don't know about. You are probably wondering why do you care? well, you really do b/c those towers usually pack a dozen of 250 kiloWatt transmitters pumping RF all over the spectrum creating intermod heaven for these POS CCRs, yes you read that right 250,000 watts... (or 84 dBm) A 84 dBm signal, at 15 miles goes through the missing, or vastly insufficient front end of these pieces of crap... so when the mixer puts signals together, all those get mixed up too... so you end up with nothing but a noisy mess in the IF stage, or in layman terms, radio range measured in tenths of a mile. An 84 dBm signal at 15 miles gets attenuated in free space -113dBm, so the CCR receiver sees a -29 dBm signal... that is a stronger signal than a 50 Watt GMRS mobile under <1 mile from the same radio. B/c there is no filtering, or not enough filtering, these direct conversion basically "check out"... they will be unable to separate the valid signal from these strong off band/off frequency signals. Again, those radios ARE GARBAGE. Even the 878/578/MD5 are, those desense and have intermod problems with a 100 watt transmistter VHF NOAA weather station placed 1 mile from my house... even when on UHF... In contrast, none one of my Vertex Standard or Motorola radios have issues with intermod, not even my 2nd hand $49 dollar EVX-531 with no display... Waste your money at your own peril. G.

So, as AdmiralCochrane pointed out on another thread... there isn't a main thread where the pros/cons of brand, non CCR, name radios are explained, so beginners don't fall on the Cheap China Radios trap... thinking they are getting a killer deal, when they are not. The question for this thread is: Why are used, and usually older, brand name radios a much better value than most Cheap China Radios? or CCRs? Most of those 2nd hand brand radios, Motorola, Kenwood, ICOM, et. all are perfectly functional radios, some might have scratches, dirt, etc, but they are no longer being used b/c the company upgraded to fancier models, usually with color screens and lots of buttons to click around, etc... The best example I can think of this are the XPR 4550/6550 Gen1 MotoTRBO radios (DMR) which are, as measured, still pretty darn good radios for the money; obviously the Gen2 have even better receivers, and fancier screens, with more buttons in some cases. So, I'll start with the XPR 6550 portable series. First I'll put the price I've seen on average on eBay, then some pros/cons. Average price doesn't mean its always that way, some go for much higher, others have gone for much lower. 135 is the average of what I paid for all my 6550 radios, so its not a made up number. Average cost: $135 USD, eBay. Usually includes charger and battery, both tend to be genuine as well. Some might even include programming CD too.. Cost of programming cable: 35-85 bucks, 85 being Moto genuine cable, 35 being the no brand one. I have one of each. Pros: -High performance, tunable, varactor Front End. (Radio won't become useless (desense) when other strong signals are around) -The last superhet dual conversion in the XPR line AFAIK. -LCD backlit screen. (6550 model) -Motorola SMA connector. (same as Baofeng, ugh... blasphemy... Motorola and Baofeng should never be in the same sentence hahaha ) -Lots of inexpensive accessories, including batteries and chargers, if you want to keep costs down vs. the genuine Moto accesories. -FM and DMR digital (Tier II) -Battery on digital will last a very long time. -Submersible, and the brand name Motorola shoulder mics are also submersible too. -Nearly indestructible... don't ask me how I know this. -Microphone can also sport an antenna without an additional cable, since the side pinout has a coaxial RF out. (very handy feature) -Loud, in fact its so darn loud you can use it in place of an alarm clock. -Several audio tuning features, which improves audio quality to your liking. -A ton of "community" support. -Very easy, and affordable, to replace the entire housing if it ever breaks. -Service manuals to fix nearly anything that might wrong. Cons -Single band. -Bigger than average... its not a brick, but its much bigger than say, a TH-F6a... -CPS can be challenging at first... it was quite daunting for me when I first moved into DMR style CPS/radios... but once you get the hang of it there is no going back. -No VFO, if you like that sort of thing. I thought I would miss that, I haven't, and I think its been nearly a year since I stopped carrying my Alinco MD5... -Rotary knob cannot be locked when the keypad is locked. Can be frustrating, but you put the holster loop around the antenna so its not a problem. -16 channels per zone. This one was somewhat of a pain... since the Rotary Encoder only has 16 positions, the channel per zone is just 16. I split the GMRS channels into FRS and GMRS channel zones, so I could fit 14 FRS use and 16 for GMRS use, 12.5 vs 20. -Needs an entitlement to do 25kHz, which can be obtained free from Motorola. -Only Part 90. G.

Yes, that is why I carry the mobile UHF in the car. Sometimes I'll carry the 7550e UHF if I am going out and about with the family, so we can talk via GMRS... but... We should probably start a new thread, hijacking a CCR thread to post about pros/cons of Motorola/Kenwood/ICOM et. all radios is probably not going to fly well with the moderators. DONE: https://forums.mygmrs.com/topic/2183-brand-name-radios-proscons-thread-usednew/ G.

Oh, dang... I am very very sorry if I came out that way. Just trying to help, that's all, sometimes I get too passionate about it... So, there is a plethora of older Motorola (and other brands) radios to chose from, to my mind first comes the workhorse HT1000, the radio that public safety used to carry back when I was in college, or the HT1250s, both of those are good radios to own, but if you want to do the newer digital VHF/UHF ham radio stuff, the newer XPR series offers DMR and FM, although only single band. The APX radios (more $$$) will do more than one band, but in P25. The XTS will also do P25... which is not compatible with DMR (or MotoTRBO) unfortunately, although some people build MMDVMs that will link P25 repeaters to DMR, or D-Star, or Fusion... et. all. In my experience, once you get past the "single band" psicological barrier, b/c most of the LMR stuff is going to be single band, I think you won't ever look back. I will say that, b/c for me at least it was a very hard pill to swallow at first. I've always carried dual band radios on me for more than a decade... But been carrying a single band radio for a year or so now and never looked back. Most of the time on my belt is a VHF XPR6550, but I have two mobiles, one VHF and one UHF in the car to reach the other band. You might ask why VHF? well, I found it to be much further reaching than UHF, has HAM VHF repeaters, has MURS in case you need simplex, plus Marine VHF along with the NOAA weather channels to which I listen. Then there is a host of EMS/Public safety stuff on VHF too, like Dane County EMS, etc, which is all VHF FM still. All Police Depts around here went digital circa 2017 IIRC, most of them are P25 now. I found the XPR6550 to be a really good radio for the cost. I have a few of those, in both flavors, U and V. You can find those for < 100 bucks on eBay from time to time, and the CPS can be purchased on eBay as well, along with the XPR programming cable. The APX/XTS/XTL radios I don't know much about, but I've spoken with people who swear by them, so I figured those are worth a look too. There are a lot of <100 buck used radios that are way better than most CCRs. ICOM and Kenwood make a lot of decent stuff too, some of the newer Kenwood NX-series radios will do P25 and DMR on the same radio... and while Motorola won't, the audio overall sounds better, IMO, of course. The RX Audio Leveling function available on the XPR7000 series and XPR5000 series is probably the best feature I've ever encountered in a radio... which basically makes every incoming transmission sound exactly the same volume, regardless of the other person having the gain on their mic set to +30 dB... So you never have to reach for the volume level ever again... Feel free to PM me. G.

Did I say this already? THIS... this is how its done.

Thanks for the tips, I might try it... but I've given up on crimping any cable, b/c when you finally discover what rendered the setup range-less was my poor crimping job... its kinda sad.... G.

And this, ladies and gentlemen is the best example of "doing it right, doing it once" Dang it... I guess I am in need to step up the ante here... 7/8" holy anaconda Batman.... and I am only running FSJ4-50B as my 25 feet feedline... all silver and trimetal connectors, tho. G.

Well, was there any particular reason you want a 1225? Why not an HT1250? or an XTS1500? https://www.ebay.com/itm/Motorola-XTS1500-UHF-Radio-Model-H66QDC9PW5AN-Flash-1000080004104-TESTED/254733189596?_trkparms=aid%3D1110006%26algo%3DHOMESPLICE.SIM%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D20200818142525%26meid%3D7327a248e34d4632a6744c6447bdda37%26pid%3D101195%26rk%3D2%26rkt%3D12%26mehot%3Dpf%26sd%3D113304010803%26itm%3D254733189596%26pmt%3D1%26noa%3D0%26pg%3D2047675%26algv%3DSimplAMLv5PairwiseWebWithDarwoV3BBEV2b%26brand%3DMotorola&_trksid=p2047675.c101195.m1851 or an XTS 3000? https://www.ebay.com/itm/Motorola-ASTRO-XTS-3000-Two-Way-Radio-H09UCF9PW7BN-UHF-w-Battery-Antenna/113304010803?epid=1400257048&hash=item1a61720033:g:UF8AAOSwSWdezY3Y Those radios are very good too... G.

I don't think anyone here disputed portable or mobile repeaters... I use them on all my cars... If Racine is anything like Madison WI (in terms of terrain), then you DO need repeaters to get any decent range, the terrain here is just too rough/hilly with a lot of dead spots for just simplex portable-portable operation. G.

If you are starting out don't fall for the UHF chrome connector trap like I did. Once you start It will be very hard to change to N .. For patch cables, my advice is to go with Harbor Freight RG400, and if you have never crimped anything, have it crimped for you, a bad crimp will hurt more than you think. I would stay away from anything LMR400, or LMR400 equivalent... its a problem waiting to happen, especially if you want to have reliable reception after a couple of years being sitting outside... For a 100 foot feedline I would use Heliax FSJ4-50B, its the same diameter as the LMR400 but none of its drawbacks. And these cables can be purchased N.O.S from places like eBay with factory installed trimetal connectors (low PIM, good impedance match) for a fraction of their original cost. Buy a base antenna that comes with N connectors. As the UHF connectors will deteriorate over time due not being weatherproof like N. Been there done that. If the radio uses UHF connector, try not to use an adapter, buy an RG400 patch cable with UHF to N. I would do the following: Radio -> patch cable -> surge arrestor/grounding -> heliax FSJ4-50B -> antenna. Hope this helps. G.

As a general rule, getting into ham/gmrs repeaters shouldn't be used as a test of how good your radio is. Why? b/c its the repeater what is really doing all the work... again, measuring how good a radio is by its ability to hit repeaters with ranges measured circa the 50-60 miles mark, its absolutely preposterous. After measuring a lot or radios, I already knew outperforming Hyteras was rather easy to do.. so... moral of the story: Don't buy a Hytera, don't buy a Wouxun, both equally terrible, and the same applies to Baofeng, TYT, Retevis... et. all. I am rather curious to hear from you what Motorola radio did you compare the Wouxun in simplex and what was the test procedure. And best for last: Not sure why you said it, but your 35dBm statement not being important to you, respectfully, shows a careless attitude towards others who might actually need those 35dBm and not know they actually need. Misleading and careless statements like yours, mislead me into believing that CCRs were "not that bad" for a long time.... so I kept buying them, getting the next model priced up, all the way up to the Anytone AT-578, a 400 dollar CCR... all with the same disappointing results, and while the 400 dollar AT-578 was certainly better, we are talking a 400 dollars radio here, hardly a CCR!! So at that point there wasn't anything CRR left to try, so I decided to finally listen to the "so called" brand snobs... and sure enough, range started to increase, so I listened more, not only about radios, measuring equipment, cables, antennas, connectors, filters... you name it... And now that I can actually measure signal RSSI with my radios, I can factually state that a 35 dBm desense in the Madison, Wisconsin area is the difference between having roughly a ~1 mile range vs 15+ miles from my house base... If that isn't important to you, I am sure it is important to others. To conclude: Buying a used quality radio is not misleading anyone, those radios will resell for nearly the same amount of money you paid for them... so if you don't like the hobby, or whatever, then you can recoup all your investment, as opposed to just losing half of your investment, b/c nobody wants a used CCRs when they can be had, new, for a few extra bucks. G.

And how can you tell it hasn't desensed? All radios desense to some degree when hooked up to an antenna, and the CCRs just desense a lot more than the non CCR stuff I've tested. Again, using a repeater is not indicative of radio performance, its only indicative that the repeater works well. G.