Batboard

My VFD is fortunante enough to be recieving a butt load of new APX7000EX. Only held one for a few minutes and now waiting for the shipment to arrive. A very nice Christmas present.

Cool. How will they improve life safety for the taxpayers in your district?

They were donated by Motorola

Ahh, so your department is the beneficiary of this gift. Congrats.

jban wrote:My VFD is fortunante enough to be recieving a butt load of new APX7000EX. Only held one for a few minutes and now waiting for the shipment to arrive. A very nice Christmas present.

Was there a question assoicated with this or was this just to taunt and brag? Either is acceptable.. just checking.

If by chance you do your own programming then you're in for a new and exciting brain twisting experience.

The radios are great, by the way.

Merry Christmas.

Well, honestly, I do have to brag a bit. This was a total surprise and we are extremely greatful. On the question side, does anyone have tips/issues with the radios we may need to know about (other than the lime green will never lose the radio case). How well does the multi-band feature function?

The shop/agency handling the trunking programming will likely restrict the ability to cross scan trunked talkgroups and conventional frequencies to prevent constant affiliation/deaffiliation. If you have 8CALL/8TAC conventional channels programmed you can scan those and VHF channels in any combination just fine. Also enjoy the 30-member scan lists.

You should probably also check with the trunk shop to ensure that they don't ASK-lock the entire radio, so you can go back in and add/delete/modify the conventional programming yourself.

If you use a public safety mic only the 700/800 side will be ported to the mic's antenna; VHF stays on the antenna on the radio. That's.. kind of neat, I guess.

edit: Hey look, you guys made RadioResource Online: http://mccmag.com/newsArticle.cfm?news_id=7756

jban wrote:Well, honestly, I do have to brag a bit. This was a total surprise and we are extremely greatful. On the question side, does anyone have tips/issues with the radios we may need to know about (other than the lime green will never lose the radio case). How well does the multi-band feature function?

The big point to remember in what the companies call "multi band operation" is that yes they will function on the 2 bands they get built with. The down side is you can only hear one at a time. There is only one receiver. So if your at an incident where there is activity on both bands, you will only hear the first one that locks the scan up. The transmissions on the other band are lost. When the first channel goes back to scanning, then you might be able to hear a transmission on the second band if it captures the scan first.

This in my opinion is not having the ability to have multi band operation. Unless your only using just one band at a time, your better off with 2 radios. At least that way you can hear both bands at the same time.

Another point to ponder is the fact that these multi band radios go for better than $5000 for a bare bones unit. At those prices, you can obtain 2 real good radios that operate on just one band and have the interoperability you need. It just means you carry 2 radios to do it. Sort of what many of us have been doing for years.

Jim

Now that we're on the APX subject, is there ANY talks of M making the APX7000 a TRUE multi-band portable ( ie - doing ALL the bands 700/800, uhf1, 2, VHF ) without being limited to picking only two of the bands ? I would assume this would take more than just a firmware upgrade lol Possible a new APX that can do ALL the bands in one unit ? Something like the Thales Liberty ?

Thanks for the tips guys. Now we get to learn a whole new radio. I had enough trouble teaching them about the XTS2500.

Congrats! That sure is a great christmas present!