APX as a vehicular repeater?

[Zapster]

Just curious about the dual band APX radios. I assume the VHF/800 version has separate vhf and 800 radios inside....is it just a firmware update away from becoming an in car repeater. Am I missing something? I have not played with one or looked at the service manual yet just curious if someone is in the know on this.

[Jim202]

Just curious about the dual band APX radios. I assume the VHF/800 version has separate vhf and 800 radios inside....is it just a firmware update away from becoming an in car repeater. Am I missing something? I have not played with one or looked at the service manual yet just curious if someone is in the know on this.

Before you go wetting your pants, there is one big important fact that you need to know about all these "milti band radios" that a number of the radio vendors are up on their soapbox trying to sell. There is only one complete receiver in there. Sure you can scan both bands, on channel at a step. The first channel that pops up with activity, gets the speaker audio. If your trying to listen to 2 bands with activity at one incident, you far better off with 2, yes I said TWO radios. That way you wont miss any traffic.

Does this sound like the $500 scanner you have to monitor a trunking system? Yup, these $5K to $10K radios are no better for a receiver than your home scanner. You can go spend $1k for 2 radios and be much better off. Use one on each band and hear the complete picture.

Jim

[tvsjr]

Jim - your response has *what* to do with the OP's question?

To the OP, yes, it's theoretically possible but totally unsupported. If you can rewrite the firmware, sure. But there are easier ways to build a crossband repeater.

[wd9cms]

I agree with Jim, you are better off with two separate radios with a controller if you want to do crossband repeat. The APX series dual band radios will not transmit and receive at the same time, they are not full duplex radios. The best you can do with existing firmware is maybe add an external crossband Futurecom (if supported) or Pyramid (if the mulipin connector can be programmed with the appropriate input and outputs) type repeater. What would be neat is to have a VHF/800 APX7500 mobile with a UHF Pyramid repeater then you would be able to crossband on VHF or on 800 when you needed too.

[wd9cms]

Went to the Pyramid site and the have cables for interfacing their crossband repeaters to the APX series radios. This is a link for there application note for mid powered APX radios http://www.pyramidcomm.com/pdf/an_pdf/AN293.PDF

[Jim202]

Jim - your response has *what* to do with the OP's question?

To the OP, yes, it's theoretically possible but totally unsupported. If you can rewrite the firmware, sure. But there are easier ways to build a crossband repeater.

He asked if the APX can be a cross band repeater. The answer is NO. There is only one receiver in there. The radio is not set up to do cross banding. To do cross banding, you really need 2 receivers and 2 transmitters. That is not the way this radio is built by Motorola.

Jim

[motorola_otaku]

For the OP, it's best to think of the APX radios as ultra-wideband single-band devices, as opposed to dual-band. They were never designed to be true dual-band radios with simultaneous dual-band receive or cross-band repeat like a ham radio, only to incorporate two RF bands into one device. Or to look at it another way, they're like baby MBITRs with all but two band segments deleted.