Blanking a radio for resale?

[bayfire300]

Hello is it a Law or a Rule that radios need to be blanked before resale?.
My Fire Dept went with a uhf p25 system and no longer need the VHF system. My Chief thinks the radios need to be blanked out so noone can use the frequencies on them.He told me he got a quote to have them blanked and it was rather expensive. Any info or comments are greatly appreciated

Otto

[N4KVE]

No law. Some agencies do it because they want to prevent the buyer from being able to get on the system. I have purchased radios fully loaded with 413 MHZ freq's in them. Obviously the Fed's were the 1st owner. Others come blanked out. It just depends on what they did, but there is no law. GARY N4KVE

[Tom in D.C.]

If your FD plans to still use the legacy channels (like for dispatch) then there might be some justification for blanking the radios, but if not he's just blowing smoke, probably just to cover his ass because he doesn't know any better.

[FireCpt809]

At least he didnt want you to drill holes through them. I had a Chief who wanted me to take a bunch of MT500's to the drill press. I just pulled the elements and gave him them in big zip lock bag.

[bayfire300]

No we are not going to use the vhf anymore............Thanks for your replies guys ..
Very helpfull

otto

[n7maq]

Well you do not have to by any rule and they may not be able to bother your department. They may get sold to someone who has no concern over licensing and only knows they have good working radios that will talk to each other. Then the radio become some other agency's concern, and they will cause interference with some legit user. You may want to check around for other prices on getting them "blanked".

Jim

[GlennD]

My city blanks all radios that are surplus. The last thing we want is some yahoo jamming our PD channels.

In the past I have drilled some radios that we no longer had the means to program but usually we pull the proms or reprogram the radio to a bogus channel.

[FireCpt809]

Glenn. I had some of your surplus sabers. They still had the property tags on them. It was pretty easy to know where they came from. Thats understandable. I think its easier for a department that has its own in house techs to blank the radios. Its not cost effective to send them to a dealer who my charge $30 a radio to do a minutes worth of work.


Were the VHF Systems Sabers Ex WHCA radios? Every one I pulled the tag off was engraved.

[Will]

Were the VHF Systems Sabers Ex WHCA radios? Every one I pulled the tag off was engraved.

I think Glen told me they were.

And on blanking, I delete all but one Mode and make it the default setting. So I would not really call that 'blanking', more like removing the Mode information.

I do like to know if a radio is working when I buy it (used).

[n3eg]

I usually program everything on VHF to receive a weather channel or UHF to receive 464.500.

And no, I don't give it an alphanumeric name of "FAIL 01/90"...

[GlennD]

On Spectras I have switched from fail 0001 to. fail 999. I also set the radio to receive only.

[GlennD]

We had a Fire guy find a lot of WHCA VHF Sabers and System Sabers Federal surplus. Those radios were from the last years before we switched to XTS5000s.

We still have the odd Saber turn up that we send to Propertyroom.com but for the most part PD and Fire has XTS5000s and everyone else HT1250s. For the shop we just got in some APX7000s in UHF/700.

[bayfire300]

Wow ...Glad to see so much input. Thank you all for the replies..........My dept is very cheap so I seriously doubt they will blank or remove modes and or personalities.
We no longer use the vhf system but for some reason (which I just found out) My dept renewed our vhf frequencies.Anyway
on hehalf of myFire Dept. Thank You all for your help we really appreciate it.
Otto