@Mando since you have a good headset don’t cheap out and get a poor radio like a buttfang

Let me get started on the comms faq. Entry #1, buttfangs are shite.

I’m happier with the APX 4k than I thought I would be. I used to have a 7000XE and loved it.

All but one of those has AES-256 encryption. 4th from left has NVG compatible display and its too dark to see on camera.

> @redbeard I've been looking at the APX series, but I've always held off because I have 25 licensed UHF channels from the FCC and most of the people I work with use standard UHF channels.
@EDDSkitz nothing about an APX limits you from operating on an analog uhf channel if the radio is a uhf model or multiband model.

> Getting even business band channels licensed is expensive, and P25 digital even more so. If you're just talking with your crew, the FRS bands tend to be fine for most.
@EDDSkitz itinerant channel licensing is cheap and easy, and you can specify what emissions mode you want for no extra charge at all. We have all of our set up for all emissions modes just because.

Yeah the APX is available in vhf, uhf in two ranges, 700/800 in one radio, and 900. Then there are dual band models, and multi band models. Mine is an APX 4000 in vhf

APX 7000 with vhf and uhf range 1 and the FPP option is ideal. Or an APX 8000 with vhf/uhf full/and 7/800.

I traded an XPR 5550 vhf mobile for it, so I’d say about $500ish

My 7000 xe was $2400, brand new sold out the back door of the federal depot haha

Software is all online so pirate copies are easily obtained

And I have depot level software so I can activate all required features without paying for them

You can use it on any freq the radio is capable of. We run aes 256 on FRS all the time lol

There’s a lot of surplus XTS 5000 out there worth grabbing

Yeah and that

...

That’s nice because these radios are meant to work with all that hot shit operator gear like peltors

So adapters are easy to find and work properly

:barf

So do Hi-Points but nobody is telling people to buy them in the armory lol

Cp200 has been a workhorse for awhile in the business world

But even Motorola makes the distinctions between business radio and mission critical radio

I don’t think ‘work’ means what you think it does haha. How’s the desense from nearby transmitters? How’s the spurious emissions that are wasting your output power?

That two pin mic connector is no where near water resistant, it’s a funnel to pour water straight onto the internal pc board

“The more you know”

People don’t know what they don’t know and everyone skipping by all those major defects doesn’t teach anyone

Well you can’t conformal coat any of the button pads or inside the volume pot and that stuff WILL corrode

‘Most people’ will say that then spend 2k on an AR

So they just have a poor idea of what radio is and how much proper radio comms cost and act accordingly because of everyone acting like a buttfang is the holy grail

True FPP is a nice asset but when you put it in the hands of the unwashed you end up with paint ballers all talking shit unknowing on the local sheriff frequency

That’s a wide brush you’re painting with. My locals here are all vhf and uhf analog except for the state police

It’s different everywhere

Case in point, i found some local band crew members using shitfangs and they were on the local vhf Sheriff’s freq since they have no idea what freq is what.

Luckily the sheriff just switched to 800 p25 and they weren’t running any PL tone so if there was any backup radios on they wouldn’t have heard them.

NYPD is all analog and non-encrypted fyi...

That’s just the nature of itinerants

But they give you a legal place to run encryption

You can run encryption anywhere it’s not specifically excluded

Like ham, MURS, FRS all exclude it

Like i mentioned, we licensed a bunch of itinerants across low band, vhf, and uhf. We specified analog narrowband emissions, p25 emissions, trbo, and NXDN. Once you go to digital modulation adding encryption is easy.

Encryption on analog used to be hard and sounded like dogshit so not many places used it, and only for special situations. Now with digital it’s all bits anyway so re-ordering them per an algorithm is peanuts

That’s why so much public safety is going enc, because nobody wants to be heard and it’s easy of not free these days with new gear.

Yeah you can do it now, file an amendment to the license to add the right designators

Just like with phones and apps, you never want to say something without using encryption. And that’s why the boojfengs aren’t going to cut it.

Nah fcc don’t ask for business license or nothing

Also, all this talk about what freqs to use, ham or FRS/MURS etc...that’s the last place you’d find me. When the shtf those will all be full of dipshits with walmart radios and hams trying to hold nets and dumb shit. For real ops, you need to get away from the public areas that can be easily jammed. Those are good places to practice and learn radio, but are the first place I’d look for fuckers if i was a fed.

I prefer to hide in plain sight. Slip between a couple of normal police channels, or modify the radio for out of band and slip just outside the accepted band limits.

I am a long time cb’er

Channel 19

Yep thats the trucker channel

@EDDSkitz yeah APX 8000 or 8500 are pretty new and not as many out there. 7000 and 7500 are a little easier to find

@[LA] Zoomer Medi/k/ that is the usual channel but be aware that many new drivers are foreigners that don’ta speaka the eeenglish and don’t even have radios. I’ve heard some companies don’t allow them to be installed any more either due to dumb ass drivers fucking up the wiring

> Oh, so those are the multiband models and not the cheap 4k?
@EDDSkitz yeah 7000 is dual band and 8000 is multi. 7500 and 8500 are the matching mobiles. All others are single band

I don’t hear much on the cb where i am but there are some dedicated guys that still hang on 38 LSB around here. A little south of me a bunch still hang out on there like the redneck internet CB used to be.

I fried a whole gas station talking on my 400W radio in the car while pulling in. Fried the controllers and blew all the fuses. Looked like Chinese on the gas pump screens.

One of my friends to the south knows a particular business that his cb will set off the burg alarm, so he uses that when he needs the cops to be at one end of town while he is up to no good elsewhere

I have radio related antics stories for days...

I emptied a walmart of it’s employees one time. I had a covert vhf radio that looked like a nextel flip phone. Used it on MURS to talk to them, told them i found one of their radios in the store and was out in the lot about to smash it on the ground.

They came out and kept talking to me trying to find me, and i was walking right past them with my ‘flip phone’ open and talking to them and waving at them and still had no clue

Yes they are all capable, to a certain extent

They can all do software ADP encryption. But to do hardware AES the algo needs to be bought and loaded into the hardware. You can find some that have it already and will say like KG1 AES-256, KG2 DES-OFB, KG3 ADP etc.

As far as audio adapters just find the APX accy catalog. They have all the right shit to adapt direct to headsets with no interface needed

Hang on let me be clear

All the encryption I’m recommending is digital based

Nobody does analog anymore

P25 is a form of digital modulation, as is DMR/MotoTRBO/Nexedge-NXDN-IDAS

P25 does not mean trunking

Ok when you were talking about requiring infrastructure and what not, i wanted to make sure you knew p25 could be used simplex radio-to-radio or via a digital capable repeater too. As well as trunking can also be analog like my local power station.

Sure it is technically

I have a vhf p25 repeater sitting here I’m trying to decide what to do with

Oh there are two 4000 models too, a one-knob and a two-knob. I have the single and can’t decide if i like it better or not.

Oh yeah simplex portable to portable or mobile to portable is the most likely use in this crowd

Or god help us a couple of buttfungs cabled together so they can interfere with each other

That’s a bad idea for 10 reasons

Yeah gotta get your friends in on it

I meant 10 bad reasons to make a repeater out of baofucks

First and foremost above all else is one thing most people have never heard about. Duty Cycle.

I’d never bet my life on a piece of shit with less quality than a kids toy

It’s literally the ‘only wrong answers’ meme if you asked someone to design a radio

If you’re poor and that’s all you can do then so be it.

But if you can spend $$$thousands on a gun, and the radio you buy is a bingbong, that’s just out of ignorance

I’m proud to say I’ve never owned one. But the couple i programmed for a guy i hated the whole time.

I’d like to think I’d never buy one, but if i was given a couple i would keep them for random shit.

The fact they are dual band is nice, until recently that was an advantage only hams had. I tend to stick to vhf mostly for it’s range. But most of my sneaky small team shit tends to happen on uhf for various reasons. So really this 4000 for me is a holdover until i can get an 8000

Sure happy to share

👍

Is this all just song recommendations or are any of you music production/band members?

@[VA] JediComms @EDDSkitz FYI besides the hardware keyloader there is a new device called kfd tool that is a usb dongle and software package for $250.

It is not Motorola only, it’s anything that follows the standard.

It will def do those xl200.

It was meant to be a cheap open source way to keyload without needing to buy the expensive hardware based unit.

@[CA] SoyBoi you are configuring what frequency your channels are on and other settings like power output and channel names.

Yeah knowledge and experience. It’s not a beginners task, and why a lot of people start with ham radio to learn how things work.

I need a couple of those Harris xl200 to fall off a truck near me lol

But the software isn’t as cooperative as the Motorolas I guess

On the fcc stuff, I don’t have a step by step but I can tell you what you are doing is filing an update to the license. Just like would have happened for everyone in 2012 for narrowbanding. You want to add p25 emissions so you need to add 8K10F1E.

https://www.apcointl.org/spectrum-management/spectrum-management-resources/licensing/emission-designators/

Yeah so you probably only have 11k2F1E emissions on each frequency right now.

If you want trbo too you will want 7k60F1E