Programming commercial radios

[VETCOMMS]

I've read commercial radios are much higher quality and recommended to those who can afford it and would like the benefit of a radio with better components.

I also read it can be challenging to find software to program these radios but that some here can help with programming.

My question is two-fold.

1.  Is one brand easier to program than another?  Ie-Kenwood vs Motorola

2.  To get help with programming do I ship the radio to someone here or can they send me software and walk me through the process?

 

Just learning how it all works.

[nokones]

WHAT! You mean they don't have tube testers at the Drug Stores like at Thrifty's?  What in the hell is this world coming too!.  I guess I'm going to be out of luck if I need to test or need a tube in the future for my radio.

[nokones]

On 2/6/2023 at 7:07 AM, PACNWComms said:

Always good advice. Have found some very nice test equipment (HP8920, Bird wattmeters, and antenna analyzers) cheap at hamfests. Also vintage tube type radios....although I would say that is a niche area of the hobby now. I always see something I never even heard of at local radio club meetings and vendor tables. 

I picked this up on eBay and I'm about $300 into buying the Bird, The case, and an extra slug from Martin RF Supply. 

[Lscott]

27 minutes ago, nokones said:

I picked this up on eBay and I'm about $300 into buying the Bird, The case, and an extra slug from Martin RF Supply

A Bird watt meter is one of the items on my bucket list of test equipment to buy. So far all the ones I've seen are either beat to crap, priced way too high or have the crummy SO-239 connectors. I know they can be changed out but why bother if I can get one with "N" type already installed.

I'm interested in the power meter because the Ham grade ones I don't trust to be all that accurate. With the low power slugs, like a 5 watt one for HT's, for the Bird even a 5% full scale error isn't that bad. A 10% error, of full scale reading, on a 20 watt scale for a Ham grade power meter is 2 watts. That's nowhere near good enough when you're checking a 4/5 watt HT.

https://birdrf.com/Products/Test and Measurement/RF-Power-Meters/Wattmeters-Line-Sections/RF-Wattmeters/43_General-Purpose-Wattmeter.aspx

[MarkInTampa]

5 hours ago, nokones said:

WHAT! You mean they don't have tube testers at the Drug Stores like at Thrifty's?  What in the hell is this world coming too!.  I guess I'm going to be out of luck if I need to test or need a tube in the future for my radio.

 

My grandfather had a couple of fully stocked tube testers that he had at a few local drug stores in the mid 60's to 70's. He had them sitting in his garage for 10 years and gave them to me when I was 14 or so in the early 80's. I just wanted the cabinets so tore out the guts and tossed them. I was into audio and guitar so kept the 12AX7, EL84, 6L6GT tubes and the like but tossed the rest. 90% of the tubes were for tube type TV's that didn't really have any value at the time.

[tcp2525]

On 2/7/2023 at 12:05 PM, Lscott said:

A Bird watt meter is one of the items on my bucket list of test equipment to buy. So far all the ones I've seen are either beat to crap, priced way too high or have the crummy SO-239 connectors. I know they can be changed out but why bother if I can get one with "N" type already installed.

I'm interested in the power meter because the Ham grade ones I don't trust to be all that accurate. With the low power slugs, like a 5 watt one for HT's, for the Bird even a 5% full scale error isn't that bad. A 10% error, of full scale reading, on a 20 watt scale for a Ham grade power meter is 2 watts. That's nowhere near good enough when you're checking a 4/5 watt HT.

https://birdrf.com/Products/Test and Measurement/RF-Power-Meters/Wattmeters-Line-Sections/RF-Wattmeters/43_General-Purpose-Wattmeter.aspx

The only problem with Bird meters is you can't have just one. It started out innocent enough, but I just been finding sweet deals on them and now I have five of them. The one in the pic is hooked up top my GMRS radio pushing 47 watts. I won't even tell you about my slug and dummy load collection.

[Lscott]

1 hour ago, tcp2525 said:

The only problem with Bird meters is you can't have just one. It started out innocent enough, but I just been finding sweet deals on them and now I have five of them. The one in the pic is hooked up top my GMRS radio pushing 47 watts. I won't even tell you about my slug and dummy load collection.

You should see my HT collection. I have a pic in my photo gallery. Once you look you’ll see why I’m interested in the wattmeter.

[tcp2525]

18 hours ago, Lscott said:

You should see my HT collection. I have a pic in my photo gallery. Once you look you’ll see why I’m interested in the wattmeter.

Nice!! Definitely will need to collect some 5w slugs up to 2.7GHz Like I said, once you  start, there's no end to it.

[SteveShannon]

Moved to new thread. 

[Lscott]

3 minutes ago, Sshannon said:

I’m looking at a pair of Icom F4161DS handheld radios at an auction site.  They’re NXDN and I might be interested in playing around with them. I’ve got a three days to decide whether to bid on them or not.  Do any of you here have the necessary software?

I would research those radios a bit more. They come in different band splits. Often the seller gets the info wrong. I always try to get the FCC ID and look up the frequency split the radio has the grant just to be sure.

I don't know if the Icom radios will operate outside of the official band split. In your case I would likely go for the 400-470 one. That covers the whole Ham 70cm band, GMRS and most of the commercial band frequencies.

A few other things, make sure you can get the radio to do wide band FM, and most of the older Icom NXDN radios will only do the 6.25KHz digital NXDN protocol. I heard the new Icom radios might do both 12.5KHz and 6.25KHz NXDN. I know all my Kenwood NXDN radios will do both.

As far as software goes I don't have any. You might get a copy from this link. If you haven't registered before you get points for signing up. I think you will get enough to qualify to download the software.

https://hamfiles.co.uk/index.php?page=downloads&type=entry&id=radio-programming%2Ficom-programming%2Ficom-cs-f3160-f5060-rss

Now if you want to buy it then try this link.

https://www.buytwowayradios.com/icom-cs-f3161-f5061.html

If you do want to bid on the radios make absolutely sure they are NOT password locked!!!! I had that happen with a few Kenwood radios. Fortunately I had the special "engineer" cracked versions of the software that allowed me to bypass the damn read/write passwords used on them. Those were sort of hard to find. One I had to get the cracked software from a source in Mexico of all places.

IC-F3161_4161.pdf

[SteveShannon]

6 minutes ago, Lscott said:

I would research those radios a bit more. They come in different band splits. Often the seller gets the info wrong. I always try to get the FCC ID and look up the frequency split the radio has the grant just to be sure.

I don't know if the Icom radios will operate outside of the official band split. In your case I would likely go for the 400-470 one. That covers the whole Ham 70cm band, GMRS and most of the commercial band frequencies.

A few other things, make sure you can get the radio to do wide band FM, and most of the older Icom NXDN radios will only do the 6.25KHz digital NXDN protocol. I heard the new Icom radios might do both 12.5KHz and 6.25KHz NXDN. I know all my Kenwood NXDN radios will do both.

As far as software goes I don't have any. You might get a copy from this link. If you haven't registered before you get points for signing up. I think you will get enough to qualify to download the software.

https://hamfiles.co.uk/index.php?page=downloads&type=entry&id=radio-programming%2Ficom-programming%2Ficom-cs-f3160-f5060-rss

Now if you want to buy it then try this link.

https://www.buytwowayradios.com/icom-cs-f3161-f5061.html

If you do want to bid on the radios make absolutely sure they are NOT password locked!!!! I had that happen with a few Kenwood radios. Fortunately I had the special "engineer" cracked versions of the software that allowed me to bypass the damn read/write passwords used on them. Those were sort of hard to find. One I had to get the cracked software from a source in Mexico of all places.

IC-F3161_4161.pdf 580.61 kB · 0 downloads

The FCC ID is AFJ289402. Also these are intrinsically safe radios, which I thought interesting, although I have no need for this. 

[WRUM330]

I looked at those also. Was thinking of getting the 400-480 version. Right now I have many others. Please let us know if they worked good for you

 

[SteveShannon]

1 minute ago, WRUM330 said:

I looked at those also. Was thinking of getting the 400-480 version. Right now I have many others. Please let us know if they worked good for you

 

I haven’t bid on them and I’m not sure I will. They’re up for 3 more days and the current bid is still just $61.

[Lscott]

2 hours ago, Sshannon said:

The FCC ID is AFJ289402. Also these are intrinsically safe radios, which I thought interesting, although I have no need for this. 

Be careful of the "intrinsically safe radios" since part of the specifications has the output power reduced for operation in explosive environments in some cases. I've seen nominally rated 4/5 watt radios set for 1, or maybe 2, watts at the most. If that's what the radios are set for then you either need the equipment to re-calibrate them or spend the bucks sending the radios in to a shop. I've been there and done that a couple of times, expensive, $120/hour bench charge minimum, $20 shipping each way and $8 insurance. 

[SteveShannon]

7 minutes ago, Lscott said:

Be careful of the "intrinsically safe radios" since part of the specifications has the output power reduced for operation in explosive environments in some cases. I've seen nominally rated 4/5 watt radios set for 1, or maybe 2, watts at the most. If that's what the radios are set for then you either need the equipment to re-calibrate them or spend the bucks sending the radios in to a shop. I've been there and done that a couple of times, expensive, $120/hour bench charge minimum, $20 shipping each way and $8 insurance. 

Well, the icom brochure lists them as 5 watts for both the UHF and VHF version, even intrinsically safe models.  Are you saying that someone might have turned the output down to further reduce the risk potential?

They're nice looking radios and of course I have no idea what the person bidding on them right now wants them for.  I don't really need them.  I think I'll let the other person have them for a good price.  There's no point in just running up the price for them.

[Lscott]

1 minute ago, Sshannon said:

Well, the icom brochure lists them as 5 watts for both the UHF and VHF version, even intrinsically safe models.  Are you saying that someone might have turned the output down to further reduce the risk potential?

That's possible. Look at the Kenwood NXDN radio brochures attached. These are the radios I have. The IS models show as 5/1 watt. I got two UHF radios from Canada a while back, both were IS models and both had very low output power. The Canadian brochure shows no more than 2 watts for the UHF models, bummer. I had to send both radios to a particular shop that was certified to work on Kenwood IS rated radios. I couldn't send them just anywhere.  They set them for the expected 5 watts, for the US market, and still kept their IS rating.

NX-200_300IS.pdf NX-200_300 Canada.pdf

[pcradio]

Which Motorola models have VHF/UHF? APX 7000 & APX 8000? Those are big radios, does any of the XPR line have a dual band configuration?

[gortex2]

12 hours ago, pcradio said:

Which Motorola models have VHF/UHF? APX 7000 & APX 8000? Those are big radios, does any of the XPR line have a dual band configuration?

APX 7000/7500 and APX 8000/8500 are the only Motorola radios that can be dual band. They come in any flavor. I have many of the splits in the 7500 series but have migrated most gear to 8500 to have all bands (VHF/UHF/700/800).

The 7000 series only came in dual band (v/u, v/8, u/8, u/u)

XPR are only single band.

[VETCOMMS]

12 hours ago, gortex2 said:

APX 7000/7500 and APX 8000/8500 are the only Motorola radios that can be dual band. They come in any flavor. I have many of the splits in the 7500 series but have migrated most gear to 8500 to have all bands (VHF/UHF/700/800).

The 7000 series only came in dual band (v/u, v/8, u/8, u/u)

XPR are only single band.

That APX 8500 sounds like the most universal quality commercial radio due to it's wide frequency range.  I realize we're on a GMRS website but how do others use this radio outside of GMRS?  I thought I saw on the Motorola website this radio transmits at 100 watts?

[gortex2]

17 hours ago, WRTZ750 said:

That APX 8500 sounds like the most universal quality commercial radio due to it's wide frequency range.  I realize we're on a GMRS website but how do others use this radio outside of GMRS?  I thought I saw on the Motorola website this radio transmits at 100 watts?

The 8500 comes in mid power and high power. All of mine are mid power (45 watts) as there really isn't a need for high power on anything I use. My radios are used for work to some extent but alot of public safety also. Been doing SAR work for over 25 years and have been involved in the communications and command side for many of them. They are great radios but most will never own one due to the cost factor and availability at this time.