Anyone here use APCO25?

 

No P25 repeaters or activity in my area.

I do at work.  Not so much on the ham band though I am into DMR.

Just curious to see how big the P25 community here is for amateur radio. Variable amount of activity within a 75 mile radius where I live, lots of activity down south of Portland, OR and in the Seattle Metropolitan area.

I own one field-programmable P25 radio, and use them at work, but have never had the occasion to make a ham QSO with any of them.

 

We have a p25 dual mode repeater here which has been sold but is still up.  When its gone it will be replaced with a kenwood 750.

Several years ago a local guy purchased a pallet of surplus p25 handhelds and resold them for $200 each to hams in the area.  These were racal\thales p25 radios with fpp.  Great radios.

I am a pretty big Motorola whore on the ham band.  All my VHF/UHF rigs are XTS/XTL5000s and if I am on them, I am doing P25.  I split my time between DC and Richmond, VA and there are P25 repeaters on the air in both cities with a decent amount of participation in both places.  Richmond is growing quickly as the P25 Machine there has a huge footprint.

I am a support guy for Motorola ASTRO 25 systems so I have a soft spot for it. We have a Quantar up here configured as a P25 ham repeater. We also have an Astrotac 3000 digital voter and a couple more stations. The end goal is to set up a little 3 tower simulcast cell with voted receivers. The problem is that since I do radio all day I don't always have the energy to do ham projects after hours and these things end up dragging on for way longer than they should. For Ham P25 I have a personally owned Astro Saber (the cheapest Moto way to get into ham P25) as well as a pile of work provided radios of almost every currently supported Motorola model and a few that are off support. APX, XTS, XTL, ect...

Also on the ham back burner... A ham Centracom console...

Currently in the process of acquiring a couple Astro Saber III's. I would love to pick up an XTS5000 flashed with FPP.

The FPP 5000s make their way onto flebay from time to time so you can always chase one down there. I have an FPP 5000 and 4 APX's with FPP all work owned by work and I can tell you that the APX FPP is vastly superior to the XTS FPP. They pretty much got it perfect with the APX. The thing is damn near a ham radio. IF you can snag an APX I'd direct you there however approach most of the 'deals' on ebay with extreme caution. Most of those APX radios are ALT radios. ALT means Accelerated Life Testing where they subject the radio to every extreme condition you can imagine to test to failure. These are NOT a good investment despite the good price.

I wish you luck acquiring your FPP radio they make you the envy of the HAM world!

I try to stay away from flebay. I frequent the p25 forums @ communications.support, tons of good information on that website. I just totally lol'd at a ham conversation I was listening to earlier today about APCO25. They didn't know what they were talking about.

As for myself acquiring an APX, it's a nice radio but the price is just too high. I'm interested in acquiring a Thales Liberty (multiband) in the future. Thales recently discontinued the Liberty line and I will wait for the prices to drop which shouldn't be very long. Someone was selling a Liberty on the P25 forums, however he was asking too much for "used" radio. Great condition, came with your basic accessories, however it's "used" once it leaves the lot.

Now I just need to find the money to fund a 5000!

Only use it at work…VHF though. None of that 800 MHz stuff.

Anyone by chance know the going price on a XTS5000, mod III, VHF conv. & digital? Trying to get some figures to use as bargaining tools. I know Moto recently discontinued support for the XTS5000 so some value is lost there.

Moto didn't discontinue support for the 5000, they just canceled them, meaning they are no longer accepting orders for new radios.  However they will still continue to support them for the next several years...firmware and CPS updates are still coming out regularly.  Many agencies who just put in orders at the deadline would be non too happy if their new radios were unsupported before they were even shipped.

As far as the second hand market for a Mod 3 VHF 5k...The price point is coming down from a couple years ago but can vary quite a bit for that specific radio depending on a few things...1) what firmware/DSP is in the radio  2)are matching tags important to you?  ie. do you want a factory radio that has the same flash and model number as the tags show and only had legit service performed on it or is a model one converted to a model 3 acceptable?  3) do you want crypto?  4)who do you know in the Motorola hobbyist community?

If you know the right people you might be able to score a legit 5K with crypto for $500, but that is "friends and family" pricing.  The same radio on ebay or the various FS/W/T boards would go for about $800 + 100 for DES-OFB.  if the firmware is old then subtract $85 which will be your cost to bump it up to current.  A model 1 conversion is minus $200 or so.  If FPP is a requirement then you will have to either be prepared to pay big $$ for matching tags or buy a radio that has already been whored out...unless you know someone who dabbles in MOTO-Voodoo

What ever you buy, plan on spending another $80 to have the local MSS tune it up unless it comes from a seller who you know has had it on a service monitor recently.

Woops I mean't Motorola discontinued production of the 5000's. I 'll keep the figures in my mind.

Only P25 repeater is 25 miles from my location. However, I understand that the state ARES amateur group has changed their minds about D-Star and are going to put up Mototrbo repeaters. It is a logical choice since their are multiple vendors for TRBO vs D-Star.  I will probably make a purchase to support that.

RS

I don't like P25 because it uses a proprietary codec...

That is the spirit. OP25 FTW.

Just got into P25 stuff myself with "surplus" Racal/Thales P25's... Very nice rigs for what they are, and there will be a P25 repeater up in a few weeks in my area to play around with.