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Current selection of dual band commercial radios

Posted: Wed May 02, 2018 7:37 am
by escomm
Seems only Puxing/Wouxon/Baofeng/Chingchong have dual band radios readily available. ICOM got out of the game and decided selling 2 radios was better than 1? What's good out there nowadays?

Re: Current selection of dual band commercial radios

Posted: Wed May 02, 2018 9:29 am
by W3AXL
I suppose you could technically consider the APX8000 to be "dual band" but it's more of a full spectrum radio. Speaking of which, Harris still has their XG-100P/M series which is also full spectrum. EFwood has the VP900 which is a true dual band radio, similar to the APX7000. Those are the three big ones I know about and I'm sure people with more experience in the industry can give you more options.

Also the NX5000 mobile series from Kenwood can do multi-brick operation on a single head, so I suppose that's dual-band ish?

Re: Current selection of dual band commercial radios

Posted: Wed May 02, 2018 2:51 pm
by C17LVFD
On th commercial side the Anytone 868 UV seems from my standpoint to be a decent VHF/UHF unit. I had hoped the Alience HD-1 would be decent but I haven't been impressed. If anyone has a better analog/DMR option please put it out there.

Seth

Re: Current selection of dual band commercial radios

Posted: Wed May 02, 2018 9:48 pm
by escomm
W3AXL wrote:I suppose you could technically consider the APX8000 to be "dual band" but it's more of a full spectrum radio. Speaking of which, Harris still has their XG-100P/M series which is also full spectrum. EFwood has the VP900 which is a true dual band radio, similar to the APX7000.
Okay but certainly not a commercial radio!

Re: Current selection of dual band commercial radios

Posted: Thu May 03, 2018 6:28 am
by RFguy
I don't see a market for a "commercial" (non public safety) dual band radio. It just never comes up as an issue.

I suppose if there was one at the same or close to the price as a single band, some might buy it "just in case".

With such low demand, I don't see any of the major manufactures producing one.

Re: Current selection of dual band commercial radios

Posted: Sat May 05, 2018 4:25 am
by Jim202
One of the key points you need to consider is that the commercial multi band radios generally only have one receiver. They say it's a dual band radio in all their hyped up literature, but in reality it's just a high priced scanner type receiver. The first signal it hears locks up the receiver to that frequency. You won't hear anything from the other band until the receiver squelch closes and the scan starts up again.

If you can live with this deficiency in your receiver, then go for it. If you need to be able to monitor both bands at the same time, a dual band radio on the commercial side is not a good choice. To counter this, some of the ham dual band radios do in fact have 2 separate receivers and can hear both bands at the same time. So this might effect which radio you are looking to obtain.

Jim