APX7000 ... M's shot across the bow of Thales...

Post by **batdude** » Sun Aug 03, 2008 3:07 am

link from RR.com:

http://www.radioreference.com/forums/at ... 1217734934

looks like they broght the proverbial knife to a gun fight....

http://business.motorola.com/publicsafe ... index.html

d

TJP249 · Post by **TJP249** » Sun Aug 03, 2008 3:36 am

It's real.

Tom in D.C. · Post by **Tom in D.C.** » Sun Aug 03, 2008 3:41 am

I'm dumbfounded by their two-band-only approach. While
VHF analog will be with us forever, I know of only one large
jurisdiction that's now setting up for VHF P25 trunked radio
and that's Virginia. There are probably others but the question
of why ignore UHF is still a hard one to figure out.

tvsjr · Post by **tvsjr** » Sun Aug 03, 2008 5:18 am

It's real...

Post by **alex** » Sun Aug 03, 2008 5:56 am

It'll be tri-band - VHF/700/800. WHY they left UHF out will always be a mystery!

Monday at APCO it will be released, but I don't think they have it FCC certified for sale as of yet - so you may not see it on "store" shelves for some time.

-Alex

(edit, BTW - that's not a model 1 and model 3.... that's the back and front of the radio.)

Batwings21 · Post by **Batwings21** » Sun Aug 03, 2008 7:00 am

Web site is up now, looks good...
But if it did t-band it would be awesome, that we could sell.

Post by **alex** » Sun Aug 03, 2008 7:30 am

I love the fact that they use NYC vehicle paint jobs on all the vehicles in that demo flash video....

yet...

99.8% of NYC is on UHF T-Band.

Oh wait.

The radio doesn't do that.

That may be useful to some fire department operations where they are using the DOITT system (which all city agencies on DOITT 800 are transferring to the new "Channel 16" trunked system being developed and built in the UHF 16 TV Channel space.)

In the end, I could see the city of new york not purchasing any of these radio's. Pretty funny.

-Alex

Batwings21 · Post by **Batwings21** » Sun Aug 03, 2008 8:59 am

I think they are really missing the boat by not including t-band. As Alex said most of NY is uhf, Chicago PD and Suburbs are the same. That's 2 of the top 3 markets in the US...

Tom in D.C. · Post by **Tom in D.C.** » Sun Aug 03, 2008 10:10 am

Just to add fuel to the fire, DC Police use a simultaneous 460/800 mHz digital P25
trunked system with the 460 being the "carry" channel for HTs and vehicles. The
NYPD t-band channels are, AFAIK, still analog. Either way Motorola is missing a good
bet by leaving out the UHF coverage on the APX.

Jason · Post by **Jason** » Sun Aug 03, 2008 10:25 am

Yeah, and dont forget southern cali, ALL UHF, so is a good majority of houston metro, for the time being anyway, which accounts for the 4 largest cities/population centers in the US, I also believe a lack of UHF will hurt a bit.

If the Liberty can do it all, this one sure could.. It's about time we knockoff the whole range/bandsplit deal on UHF too. Bendix King/BK has been building a 403-512 radio for years, cmon /\/\ !!!

I think we will see a companion U/7/8 radio before a V/U/7/8 radio out of M. This is definately a start in the right direction!

ScannerDan · Post by **ScannerDan** » Sun Aug 03, 2008 10:48 am

Batwings21 wrote:I think they are really missing the boat by not including t-band. As Alex said most of NY is uhf, Chicago PD and Suburbs are the same. That's 2 of the top 3 markets in the US...

Don't forget that MOST of LA County is also on the UHF-T band..

Hightower · Post by **Hightower** » Sun Aug 03, 2008 11:13 am

Looks like RayRay was right on the money about a year ago about the Mackinaw radios. Lots of people called BS. Time to "eat crow" for some people - you know who you are

http://forums.hamsexy.com/viewtopic.php ... 08#p156908

There is a nice PDF with lots of information on the APX7000/7500 in the above link.

Doug......It's for real!!

WCHija · Post by **WCHija** » Sun Aug 03, 2008 1:35 pm

Despite the obvious cool factor, I am not impressed. Motorola is still behind the power curve and other than one County in Ca who is giong to use a radio that does 150/800? Oh well, maybe someday they will get it right.

Post by **batdude** » Sun Aug 03, 2008 2:27 pm

i agree.

day late and waaaay behind the thales

what this radio appears to be (to me) is the marriage of two RF decks that have onboard vocons.

i.e. - S.O.S.

i.e. 2 XTS4000 single board radios back to back.

if they are truly SDR, i'll be impressed.

what makes me laugh is ----

soooo many FD's have problems on astro/astro25 trunking in digital mode.... so what's the solution?

bungie cord another radio to the 800 portable (aka APX) ... wa-la! instant VHF interop.

(shakes head)

doug

Post by **xmo** » Sun Aug 03, 2008 3:29 pm

"...other than one County in Ca who is giong to use a radio that does 150/800? "
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You might be surprised. There are numerous large VHF systems - often covering wide geography - entire States - where VHF was chosen because the number of tower sites required for 700/800 would be cost prohibitive.

Often these systems use vehicular repeaters for portable coverage. In many cases the portables operate on 800. This lets the same portable operate natively on metro 700/800 systems within the larger geography as well as crossband through the DVRS.

Having the full features of the main P25 trunked system available on the portable is what drove the development of the DVRS. This was primarily done for Commonwealth of Virginia. The STARS system project is a $330M deal.

No other radio company has anything remotely close to the DVRS. Tyco is developing one but it is years away and feature set limited compared to the joint Motorola / Futurecom offering.

With this new product, one radio will serve three capabilities: native operation on the State VHF system when within coverage, crossband through the DVRS when ouside of VHF portable coverage, and interoperate on the metro 700/800 networks.

BTW, regarding UHF - don't you expect that the product offering will include both VHF+700/800 AND UHF+700/800? Those two models will meet the majority of the sales requirements Motorola sees on a regular basis [hobbyist desires notwithstanding]. Oh, and wouldn't you also expect the same in mobile offerings?

And, regarding: "...waaaay behind the thales..."

Put them side by side, compare performance, weight, size, and system features before you make that decision.

Post by **batdude** » Sun Aug 03, 2008 3:42 pm

"...waaaay behind the thales..."

i stand behind that comment.

with the thales, i can interop on VHF innercity, UHF and 700/800

no bungie cords required.

and the radio doesn't have to be "flipped over" to make it work.

man, CAN YOU IMAGINE the training for this creature?

"oops, wrong channel... i was talking into the wrong side of the radio....."

(sigh)

my main interest in this radio is whether or not it's a Software Defined Radio...

d

Post by Pj » Sun Aug 03, 2008 4:21 pm

Moto:

VHF, 700/800
Conventional, analog, digital, smartzone, APCO25 trunking

Thales:
VHF, UHF, 700/800
Conventional, analog, digital, APCO25 trunking

So, currently, the trade off is UHF if you need SN/SZ trunking between the APX vs Liberty so far.

However, the 10-20hr Liberty batteries are nice, and maintains a radio's look and feel.

This year should be pretty interesting.

Post by **batdude** » Sun Aug 03, 2008 4:25 pm

found this lingering about in cyberspace

sorry, u have to type in a code and deal with 1 popup to get it:

http://www.filefactory.com/file/0aa344/n/APX_pdf

credit DJ Cipher for the above link

Rayjk110 · Post by **Rayjk110** » Sun Aug 03, 2008 4:32 pm

It's here! Named the APX series.

Here's a link to a PDF I received a while ago via email. Page 22 Quote " Double Sided Radio "

http://rapidshare.com/files/134577753/M ... 0.pdf.html

Here's a picture

The Pager Geek · Post by **The Pager Geek** » Sun Aug 03, 2008 4:39 pm

We have a Macom State-wide 800 being forced upon us, and we run VHF, simplex, analog.

Sounds good, right? Not really....

The trick is, even IF we wanted the 800 statewide to be usefull, our genius lawmakers approved a "mobile coverage" system. IE: Our >600 sq mile county is going to be covered by a whole TWO 800Mhz sites. (Good luck with that...) Thus, 800Mhz portables are pretty useless.

VHF/UHF would have been the cat's ass for here. FD/EMS on VHF, PD on UHF.

I love my hell...

(1 Vote = Thales for me)

tpg

carbineone · Post by **carbineone** » Mon Aug 04, 2008 3:33 am

And here is the Harris entry into this market http://www.rfcomm.harris.com/talkasone/default.asp

Sorry Moto you dropped the ball again I need UHF and will be buying from Harris.

Tom in D.C. · Post by **Tom in D.C.** » Mon Aug 04, 2008 6:43 am

This site is probably a bit clearer than the Harris press release. Nowhere is there a clear photo of the new radio, and a couple of writeups state in plain language that field trials are set for later this year with delivery in 2009.

http://public.cq.com/docs/hs/hsnews110- ... 32872.html

MTS2000des · Post by **MTS2000des** » Mon Aug 04, 2008 8:26 am

They will sell a ton of these in Metro Atlanta where our outer rural counties are VHF, but everyone in town is on 800 (mostly digital now with the exception of the city of Atlanta and Fulton county, still using Smartnet analog). UHF is all but forgotten around here as far as public safety, only one small agency in Metro Atlanta (Union City) on UHF.

It looks like a downright awesome radio, but without UHF, it lags behind the Thales. Only 8 hours of battery life isn't that great. As Batdude said, if it is a true SDR, than it has promise. We shall see...

mikegilbert · Post by **mikegilbert** » Mon Aug 04, 2008 10:50 am

Well isn't this something

Time to start saving for a new toy. The music in the flash vid seems very- er, softcore if you catch my drift.

maelv · Post by **maelv** » Mon Aug 04, 2008 11:06 am

Is it just me.... or did no one se this in the APX 7000 portable brochure... on the new moto apx site...

In the APX portable pdf brochure under resources that must be UHF they are referring to...
Anyway thats just my thought...
The question is now will it be...? V/U/7/8 or V/U or U/7/8 or something else

Maelv...

Dan562 · Post by **Dan562** » Mon Aug 04, 2008 12:05 pm

Twenty five years late and MOTOROLA's Subscriber Marketing Group continues to be aimlessly wandering around in a FOG! These MOTOROLA personnel have no clue what the Public Safety & DoD Markets want and need! MOTOROLA continues to be a "follower" rather than an "intovative leader" in the Land Mobile Radio Industry.

Wicho · Post by **Wicho** » Mon Aug 04, 2008 12:16 pm

Looks like a pimped out AS3.

Rayjk110 · Post by **Rayjk110** » Mon Aug 04, 2008 1:13 pm

In metro areas I think U/700/800 would obviously be the best solution, and I'm sure they'll come out with it....

Hightower · Post by **Hightower** » Mon Aug 04, 2008 11:00 pm

Pj wrote:Moto:

VHF, 700/800
Conventional, analog, digital, smartzone, APCO25 trunking

Thales:
VHF, UHF, 700/800
Conventional, analog, digital, APCO25 trunking

So, currently, the trade off is UHF if you need SN/SZ trunking between the APX vs Liberty so far.

However, the 10-20hr Liberty batteries are nice, and maintains a radio's look and feel.

This year should be pretty interesting.

Wasn't there something about the Thales NOT doing MDC?

Post by **xmo** » Tue Aug 05, 2008 6:21 am

http://www.motorola.com/apx

JAYMZ · Post by **JAYMZ** » Tue Aug 05, 2008 7:03 am

Hightower wrote:
Wasn't there something about the Thales NOT doing MDC?

Meh. If you are getting the THALES radio for the triband config... I think MDC is an ok tradeoff.

rangerfourever · Post by **rangerfourever** » Tue Aug 05, 2008 7:37 am

have had one in hand the two sided thing is funcky

where was I?? on the data side or the top display real world side..... Has the Thales been accepted and a current sales product....

In this part of the world we have 700/800 trunking systems going up with P25 VHF as fire backups. As I recall M reps said UHF is in the future..........

rangerfourever · Post by **rangerfourever** » Tue Aug 05, 2008 10:56 am

followup question for batdude have you gotten your hands on a Liberty? and will it do TDMA as that standard evolves? What WE need here is a TDMA portable that will also do P25 VHF/UHF conventional and scan across platforms without a hitch..... In a metro area of 7 million plus people, you gots lots of public safety RF systems and someday the hope is we can all talk to each other seemlessly oh well

jbella · Post by **jbella** » Tue Aug 05, 2008 11:48 am

My FD just got a sizable grant for a complete UHF radio system, migrating from VHF. It would have been nice to have an option to go with these had they been designed with the real world of fire operations in mind: VHF, UHF, 700/800. It's unbelievable to me that they'd design these with no UHF option.

mikegilbert · Post by **mikegilbert** » Tue Aug 05, 2008 12:11 pm

Reading is a wonderful thing. From what I've read, Motorola WILL be releasing more band combintations once the product gets out there. Rember when the 5000 came out? What bands were available at that time? VHF and only VHF. Give it some time and the magic combo will be released.

JAYMZ · Post by **JAYMZ** » Tue Aug 05, 2008 2:04 pm

mikegilbert wrote:Reading is a wonderful thing. From what I've read, Motorola WILL be releasing more band combintations once the product gets out there. Rember when the 5000 came out? What bands were available at that time? VHF and only VHF. Give it some time and the magic combo will be released.

<GASP> But what will they complain about then?!

I'm glad I'm not the only one that picked up on that.

Post by **batdude** » Tue Aug 05, 2008 5:34 pm

sorry... i just "had to".

Post by **xmo** » Tue Aug 05, 2008 7:33 pm

With a microphone on each side - how do you talk into the "wrong" side?

As far as the Thales Liberty - remember that it is a one year "proof of concept" experiment funded by DHS. Is Thales taking real orders for real customers yet?

Which company do you suppose will be shipping in quantity first?

I'd wait to see real radios and real prices before making a judgement here .

Oh, and where is Thales built in GPS and TDMA capability???

Astro Spectra · Post by **Astro Spectra** » Tue Aug 05, 2008 7:53 pm

Actually there is a mic and a speaker on both sides. The big speaker does the heavy duty audio, with a smaller speaker on the data side. The two speakers are on separate audio amps and can have separate audio levels. The big speaker is loud, audio is easily back to Saber quality in analog.

Oh, naturally the two mics work together for noise canceling.

Don’t forget that a key applciaton for the radio is as a data terminal in IV&D systems, it’s not just a dual band talky.

ArmsonOeg · Post by **ArmsonOeg** » Wed Aug 06, 2008 5:09 am

So, where's the belt clip go?

Post by Pj » Wed Aug 06, 2008 6:07 am

On one of the pages in the pdf or flash file is a picture of the rectangular holder..

Thales has been marketing to some major municpalities, and I don't think they will have much of a problem going to production. They have had the MITBR radios out in the military for some time, and the civilian version also has been around for those who want to pay $$ for a 30-512 radio. I don't know if those are software defined or not, but I can't see Thales having much of a problem with the Liberty production.

Post by **alex** » Wed Aug 06, 2008 7:05 am

xmo wrote:TDMA capability???

From what I understand (and have said a few times) that the radio is going to be a "standards" radio. It's my understanding that TDMA isn't an APCO standard as of yet, Motorola is pushing VERY hard to make it one, but the decision hasn't been made as of yet to actually go that direction. Motorola is putting so much faith into that being the standard that they have started to sell their own version of "Phase2" which is the new fancy pants TDMA/AMBE type trunk systems.

Someone do correct me if I'm wrong, but that's my understanding of it.

Anyone who is at/was at APCO this week want to clarify and let us all know?

-Alex

Dan562 · Post by **Dan562** » Wed Aug 06, 2008 9:37 am

Alex wrote

From what I understand (and have said a few times) that the radio is going to be a "standards" radio. It's my understanding that TDMA isn't an APCO standard as of yet, Motorola is pushing VERY hard to make it one, but the decision hasn't been made as of yet to actually go that direction. Motorola is putting so much faith into that being the standard that they have started to sell their own version of "Phase II" which is the new fancy pants TDMA/AMBE type trunk systems.

Hmmm, I was wondering what MOTOROLA was intemding to do with the iDEN-TETRA technology since the Sprint-Nextel systems are headed into reorganized bankruptcy.

Dan

Post by **alex** » Wed Aug 06, 2008 9:45 am

Well, you could almost say that Apco25 Phase 2 is starting to push public safety in the direction of an iden type system... just the protocol will be an open standard....

aaknitt · Post by **aaknitt** » Wed Aug 06, 2008 12:33 pm

I have to give Motorola credit for quickly and directly responding to the P25 vocoder problem by introducing a dual-mic noise canceling portable. I think this will go along way towards solving the digital background noise problems, but only testing will tell for sure. No one else has anything like this on the market, and I doubt they will in the near future.

On the downside, it appears that even future versions will be "dual band" (VHF and 700/800 or UHF and 700/800) rather than multiband/continuous coverage, which makes me think that if you need VHF/UHF/700/800 you'll still need Thales or Harris, but I could be wrong.

Andy

Post by **escomm** » Wed Aug 06, 2008 1:05 pm

If a noise canceling mic resolved the fatal flaw of IMBE not being able to handle loud noises, I doubt the IAFC would have invested the time and effort in producing a report finding that using IMBE on the fireground is not wise....

aaknitt · Post by **aaknitt** » Wed Aug 06, 2008 1:16 pm

To my knowledge, none of the IAFC/NTIA testing was performed with noise canceling microphones, although again, I could be wrong. The report doesn't mention this being tried. If it was, the results haven't been published.

http://www.its.bldrdoc.gov/pub/ntia-rpt ... 08-453.pdf

Even if it doesn't completely solve the problem, at least they're trying to do something about it.

Andy

Tom in D.C. · Post by **Tom in D.C.** » Wed Aug 06, 2008 1:42 pm

The singletone alert on the local trunked digital system that I monitor
always sounds like crap, with a major breakup in the middle of the
transmission every time it's transmitted. It really looks to me as if
a vocoder is meant to do voice and that's all, period.

radioinstl · Post by **radioinstl** » Wed Aug 06, 2008 2:38 pm

xmo wrote:With a microphone on each side - how do you talk into the "wrong" side?

As far as the Thales Liberty - remember that it is a one year "proof of concept" experiment funded by DHS. Is Thales taking real orders for real customers yet?

Yes, we are taking orders. Radio and all options are on GSA price list. Full production shipping in spring

xmo wrote:Which company do you suppose will be shipping in quantity first?

I'd wait to see real radios and real prices before making a judgement here .

Oh, and where is Thales built in GPS and TDMA capability???

We went with a GPS speaker mic for a few reasons. One of which is that you will get better sat views when the antenna is on your shoulder reather than on your hip.

As for APCO P25 Phase II, when a standard (TDMA or ?) is decided on, we will put it in the radio. No hardware in the Liberty will have to be changed, software refresh only.

dbusse · Post by **dbusse** » Wed Aug 06, 2008 2:46 pm

I was at the APCO2008 yesterday, and tried the radio first hand, talking to another portable and the new mobile (can't remember the number of that thing).

For normal voice, the audio was booming and clear. The voice audio was admittedly better than current XTS5000 / P25, but when I whistled into the APX, it still came out warbly and a bit choppy at the other radio (same APX).

They tell me that the thing is sealed inside-- the components are molded. If I am conjuring the right mental image, are the guts one solid block that you can't service?

The radio is fancy pants, but I am not sure how well it will be accepted.

The salesman said a "quad band" (reading 700 and 800 are two separate bands in vernacular) was an "imminent future release".

Yes, the intelligibility of the current P25 technology was the overall complaint of most users in the booth. Above comment is correct that the "back" mic is used to "listen" to surrounding background noise and attempt to discern voice before it hits the digital conversion. When asked about a speakermic, they have not seen one yet, other than the model fireman in the poster who was wearing one. I still pity anyone in the fire service that has to use current digital technology.

Dan