Why use commercial radios on Ham bands

[N7QQU]

Good Day-

I am working on a list of reasons why hams should use commercial radios on ham bands especially VHF and UHF. My focus is on emergency comms but also daily operations.
I have started the list but want to develop it a bit more:

More rugged
Longer battery life
Better filtering
More rugged accessories
Can be used as a Part 90 radio and on the ham bands

Any more ideas?

Thanks....
Ken - N7QQU

 

[Thayne]

Your last reason is good, and my only reason is I have a lot of them sitting around. :lol:

 

[CalebATC]

1- They will become available on the surplus market with the 2012 Narrowbanding
I'll add more as I come up with them.

 

[n5ims]

Good Day-

I am working on a list of reasons why hams should use commercial radios on ham bands especially VHF and UHF. My focus is on emergency comms but also daily operations.
I have started the list but want to develop it a bit more:

More rugged
Longer battery life
Better filtering
More rugged accessories
Can be used as a Part 90 radio and on the ham bands

Any more ideas?

Thanks....
Ken - N7QQU

You should also include a Con list as well as a Pro list so a good comparison can be made. If you ignore all disadvantages, it's pretty easy to justify something that may not work very well (e.g. using an old 6 MHz clock speed IBM PC AT for your every day computer - they're very inexpensive, they can be used with the old Motorola RSS software, ...).

Cons:
* Inflexible (generally can only be used on already programmed channels)
* Difficult and often expensive to program (legal software isn't cheap!)
* Not always the best choice for appliance operators that travel often ("They use 146.92 here but my radio moves from 146.88 to 146.94 and I can't get it to switch to 146.92", or "They're on 146.92 but when I switch to that channel I can't talk with them. I asked somebody who said something about the PL being different.")
* For emergency "grab and go" operation where destination could be anywhere, more equipment may be required (laptop, RIB, cables, programming software - "We've set up a temporary repeater for your tasks during this emergency so please use this frequency pair with these tones", oops, I didn't program that combination into the radio!)

 

[canav844]

It's currently the only way to Tx many digital modes such as P25, MotoTrbo, Nexden, iDas. If you want to use those repeaters in your area then you have to get Part90 approved gear.

 

[n2ops]

Less Intimidating

We have 16 kids taking tech classes. On April 2 they will take their exams. We received a donation of UHF Motorola MT1000's from an agency that went to P25. These solid radios have many years left in them.

They will each be issued an MT1000 with speaker mic and fast charger. It is a simple radio that can't have the programming messed up by new hams. We have our own 70 cm repeater and a cross band repeater to the local 2 meter repeater.

To learn more please visit our website KC2RHY Amateur Radio Club > Home

We need clips for the MT1000's. 501 C 3 tax receipts will be issued for the full value of any ham equipment donations.

 

[N7QQU]

All good ideas.......

I was looking at using commercial radios on ham bands as a way of making things a little easier for folks. During events we could use pre-programmed radios and direct folks to channel numbers. We all have experianced folks having programming problems with their ham radios.. frequency, offset, TX tone and RX tone setting are wrong and lots of air time spent sorting out the problems. Also using MDC1200 can make IDing a breeze. Checkins go VERY fast!

Any more thoughts?
Thanks for all the input.
Ken

 

[w8fsm]

Cons:
* Inflexible (generally can only be used on already programmed channels)

You list that as a Con yet I see it as a pro. A good many years ago we started putting commercial gear in all of our county EM ham spots. We had pre-planning of freqs not only for our county but surrounding counties and simplex channels.. we had too many people farting around with the radios... somebody would stick there fingers in something and when the radio was needed it didn't work.. or people where digging manuals out rather then pass traffic.. Now operator shows up.. turns the radio on and can operate.. there is a channel list posted and we now are using alpha tagged radios so that makes the paper list not even used. One of our neighboring counties just got a grant for all new hammie type gear.. and they have monthly test nets and there biggest issue is... Settings on the radios matching from one month to the next.. That's not to say we don't have some freq agile radios.. but the first radios to go into our installations are commercial..

 

[kayn1n32008]

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry9630/4.7.1.57 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/109)

Pros:

1. Durability. I have used a lot of ham stuff. I always break it. The ham stuff up untill recently has been cheaply made.

2. Audio power. I can remember my first portable had 180mw output. Any noise would made it very hard to hear what was being said.

While needing to have a computer to program could be a hindrance, I have found that my tk280 with 250 channels is more than enough for all the analog Vhf amateur repeaters in Alberta, all my work channels and some PS monitor only channels with room left over.

 

[LtDoc]

Part of responding to 'emergencies' is to know the equipment that you will be using. That means reviewing it's operation from time to time, and is about as common as anything you can think of, and doesn't just apply to radios. You can't make allowances for everything and there's no sense in trying, you can't cover it all.
Nothing wrong with using 'commercial' equipment if it fills the need. If it doesn't then don't use it. Same holds for amateur equipment. Amateur equipment isn't very usable as a hammer? Then I'd suggest not using it for a hammer, simple. Not weather proof? Try plastic bagging it. Or don't get it wet. Same for 'commercial' equipment. There are solutions for most things, you just have to find them.
- 'Doc

 

[zz0468]

Can be used as a Part 90 radio and on the ham bands

Be careful with that one. Radios that may currently be Part 90 legal today, may not be so tomorrow.

 

[N7QQU]

Be careful with that one. Radios that may currently be Part 90 legal today, may not be so tomorrow.

YES- You are 100% correct. Narrow banding requirements are just around the corner. We all need to make sure that wide band is OK for ham bands but most everything else is narrow band.

Set the ham frequencies to wide and everyting else to narrow.

Ken

 

[RodStrong]

Cons:
* Inflexible (generally can only be used on already programmed channels)

You list that as a Con yet I see it as a pro. A good many years ago we started putting commercial gear in all of our county EM ham spots. We had pre-planning of freqs not only for our county but surrounding counties and simplex channels.. we had too many people farting around with the radios... somebody would stick there fingers in something and when the radio was needed it didn't work.. or people where digging manuals out rather then pass traffic.. Now operator shows up.. turns the radio on and can operate.. there is a channel list posted and we now are using alpha tagged radios so that makes the paper list not even used. One of our neighboring counties just got a grant for all new hammie type gear.. and they have monthly test nets and there biggest issue is... Settings on the radios matching from one month to the next.. That's not to say we don't have some freq agile radios.. but the first radios to go into our installations are commercial..

+1

We have a mixture of both ham and commercial radios we use for ham during SAR incidents. The problem is we also have a mixture of radio operators with varying skills at field programming. Ideally, everyone should be an expert at field programming. Realistically, very few are. Probably less than 20% of our group could efficiently add a repeater pair quickly by hand. Most of our guys use software to program their ham radios too, and their hand programming skills suffer enough as it is.

We have a few folks who can program the commercial radios on the fly, although this is rarely, if ever, necessary.

Having commerical, idiot proof radios (as we use them) is far more valuable in the long run than having field programmable radios constantly being messed with or having accidental changes made to them.

 

[SGMPhil]

Voice quality is a factor as well - the MotoTRBO radios/system does a great job in this area. My $0.02 worth.

Phil

 

[stevelton]

Yeah, my county ARES is going UHF Icom IDAS. SMS is a nice feature.
When we get the GPS mics, AVL will get used. If the Next county over goes the same way, multi site conventional will be nice also.

 

[DaveNF2G]

Any Part 90 certified radio that requires a physical modification to operate on the ham bands will not be certified after said modification is made. IOW, you can't just put it back onto Part 90 channels and use it legally without undoing the modification and having it re-inspected and tagged by an appropriately authorized radio technician.

 

[N7QQU]

David-
That MAY be true but in most cases it does not require the replacement of parts (physical modification) to get commercial radios to operate in the ham bands. The band splits are very friendly to the the hams bands especially in the 70cm band.

Ken

Any Part 90 certified radio that requires a physical modification to operate on the ham bands will not be certified after said modification is made. IOW, you can't just put it back onto Part 90 channels and use it legally without undoing the modification and having it re-inspected and tagged by an appropriately authorized radio technician.

 

[N7QQU]

I will compile the list and publish here in the next few days.
Thanks for the ideas and comments.

Many counties and cities have radio shops that can program the radios. The city or county emergency manager can help out with making the contact.

Any more thoughts?

Ken

 

[ramal121]

Our county EOCs are equipped with commercial radios. Also the health care companies have purchased a cache of commercial radios to enable a net in case of an emergency (many of their employees are hams). The ability to turn on the radio and have just a volume control, a mic and a channel knob with a nice alpha-numeric display to tell you how you are communicating is a big plus. How many times did an operator need to fiddly-fart around a ham radio to get it up and going when they weren't used to the make/model. I give this a big plus in this situation. The idea in an emergency is to get on the air and get operating.

Many counties and cities have radio shops that can program the radios. The city or county emergency manager can help out with making the contact.

I work for a radio shop, and to be honest, programming is included into the price of a purchased radio. If the need arises to reprogram, we will do that at shop rates and on our time schedule depending on work load. Now if there is an emergency situation locally, we will have bigger fish to fry than to help an individual add a missing channel in their radio.

If your emergency communications group utilizes commercial radios, it is good foresight to appoint someone who has the necessary software and hardware to make changes to said radios if necessary because you may not be able to rely on a third party to do that in a timely manner when the need arises.

 

[pickles37]

Agree on the fiddly-farting problem. It only takes an accidental switch to VFO mode or holding down a button for 2 seconds instead of 1 putting it in some state that requires pressing F + 2 + third menu option + Enter to recover from. The utility of field programming of ham radios is reduced when you take into account you cannot (legally) program for the non-ham bands ("everybody go to VTAC11") and it's very hard to reprogram a radio in the field without instructions. For me the best radios are the commercial field programmable versions of the the EF Johnson 5100's or Motorola XTS's, although even on eBay you have to fork out some serious money for these. The field programming on these radios is extremely easy and intuitive. I'm not sure why programming of ham radios has to be so cumbersome.