Batboard

First off, if the mods feel this is more appropriate for the RIB forum just let me know...I'm posting it here because this board gets more traffic.

In the latest issue of MissionCritical I saw an advertisement for this radio:

http://www.wwtechnologiesdirect.com/ima ... eb2007.pdf

Apparently they're selling them for $159. Has anyone tried these out? Is it legit or snake oil? I'm guessing these are cheap Chinese radios, but if they meet the MilSpecs they claim to and can sell them for that price, it's going to be hard to beat for a lot of small volunteer departments.

If anyone with experience with these could offer some insights that would be great.

Thanks in advance,

Andy

I bought one off ebay very similar.....good for short distance TX, battery life is about 6 hours maybe 8 if you have a real good charge!

What kind of battery did that radio come with? These ones are supposed to come with 1200mAH Li-Ion, so they should have decent life.

I think the only major difference between the ones on ebay and these ones (besides maybe the battery) is that these ones seem to be FCC Part 90 certified. Here are the docs:

https://gullfoss2.fcc.gov/prod/oet/cf/e ... imeout=500

https://gullfoss2.fcc.gov/prod/oet/cf/e ... imeout=500

I've never seen an FCC compliant radio offered at that price, but it seems legit??

Andy

I bought one just for kicks to try out. It's kind of an attempt at a cross between fully frequency-agile ham radio and a commercial radio. You get what you pay for though. It does sound like the company is trying to make some improvements, but I'd have a hard time recommending it to a fire department. Maybe for a SAR team, etc....PM me for more info.

Andy

If my fire department chose those radios I would move to another town 'cus it's obvious they are not serious about their business.

What's next--- ambulances made by Yugo ?

Same thing as the Puxing PX-777. Buy 100 of them from Puxing directly and you can get them for very cheap. I played with the idea of buying them but opted against it. They've received decent reviews on some of the UK PMR444 websites though.

Typical beater-quality radios that have no place in ANY Public Safety environment.

Better antenna and front -end, reports show that the radio sees 10 -18 miles added range, radio to radio over other competitive models.

Haha, "competitive models" - they must be talking about these:


-Mike

Yeah...I've been corresponding with the company marketing these in the U.S. quite a bit via email, and they can't stop bragging about how they get 12-30 miles more range than similar radios. That's the first thing that threw up the red flags when I saw their literature...if you're going to brag, at least make it somewhat believable. The best quote was how the "extraordinary gain antenna" is what makes it get this alleged range improvement. A rubber duck is a rubber duck is a rubber duck. Jeesh.

They have changed the firmware in these radios from the PX-777 to do 2.5 kHz steps, plus a bunch of other things, but they're still a consumer-grade radio as far as I'm concerned. I'm trying to decide if I should send this one back or just hang on to it as a spare...can't ever have too many radios, right?

Andy

A buddy of mine bought a Red "Jing Song" radio or whatever it was branded as. It was pretty sensitive, but felt like $40...and that's what it cost.

I'm pretty sure these are all from the same factory and are just "re-branded" to suit the company pushing them. Think "black box" radios in the back of MRT. I wouldn't be surprised if one of these was inside one of those fake Kenwood TK-3XXX/2XXX on ebay.

I had a conversation with mr kirimuss about these radios, I wanted to buy 4 for eval, he was all fired up, but he got pi$$y when I wanted the software, even though I sell and service equipment, am a self mantained end user, and a licsensee...he said he would have to lock them. I said my point was to be able to demo them to a FD, etc and I would need to put thier freqs in. I understand being a steward of the air waves, I wont sell to someone and program to a freq w/o a license, but I sell all the time with no prog, I can't control what they do after that, I just disclaimer it. heck some of these people have alot more s/w than I do! Anywho ol chuck was all crappy about it like I was doing something wrong, so I said never mind. What a yo-yo.

Looks like all of the speaker mics in that catalog are clones from the company Pryme, inc.

I will be somewhat interested when they try to copy an XTS or Astro radio.

Take a close look at the claims on that PDF sheet. First of all the
antenna gain specs are pure baloney. Second, down the sheet it says the audio output is 5 watts. Now, wouldn't THAT be
something in a portable? I did a closeup on the printing and there
is no decimal point; it does say 5 watts.

You get what you pay for, and the truth in that saying never changes.

Quarterwave wrote:I had a conversation with mr kirimuss about these radios, I wanted to buy 4 for eval, he was all fired up, but he got pi$$y when I wanted the software, even though I sell and service equipment, am a self mantained end user, and a licsensee...he said he would have to lock them. I said my point was to be able to demo them to a FD, etc and I would need to put thier freqs in. I understand being a steward of the air waves, I wont sell to someone and program to a freq w/o a license, but I sell all the time with no prog, I can't control what they do after that, I just disclaimer it. heck some of these people have alot more s/w than I do! Anywho ol chuck was all crappy about it like I was doing something wrong, so I said never mind. What a yo-yo.

That's odd. The software wasn't an issue for the one I bought (which I have since sent back and got a refund for). In fact, you can program most of the radio without the software. They're really walking the line with Part 90 with these radios. Hold down a button while turning the radio on and it turns into a frequency agile radio...you can punch in anything you want. Please don't sell these to a fire department...they may buy them, but you'll be doing them a disservice.

Andy

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"Just" like an ex-600, but without all those wasteful, annoying internal shields to mitigate EMI, intermod, unintended emissions, etc.....


They're trying, but really, "MilspecFCC" What the hell does that mean?





Will

A lounge topic...