Thank you all for your input. I am a 911 Dispatcher and we have a very rural county. I have been programming baofeng for our volunteer firefighters etc. (With Permission from license owner). Was just looking to upgrade and start programming Kenwood, Motorola vhf. etc brands.
I am not trying to blow a hole in your interest to help out with programming the radios for the locals, but there is much more to it than just that.
I have been involved with public safety radios since the late 60's. I had the pleasure to run into a ham radio person who became my best friend. He took me under his wing and taught me all about the public safety radio systems, how to program radios, how to test the radios and about antenna systems and radio installs.
Without some one to be a mentor, your road to success will be a very bumpy and winding road. Take it from some one that has been there and had your interest, it is not easy.
You really need the test equipment that will allow you to fully test the radios after programming them. This includes RF power out, the transmitter is on frequency, the deviation of the transmitter is correct and the receiver is hearing signals at the sensitivity it should. Don't forget a good SWR meter to be able to measure the antenna system.
Back then I had a good job that paid well. I went out and looked for companies that had a good number of vehicles on the road and that I could service in the evening and weekends. I fell into a nice deal with a large asphalt and concrete company that had a fleet of around 50 or 60 vehicles.
The radio dispatcher at this company was an old air force person that understood radios. We hit it off well and I had a job repairing their old dying fleet of radios. I would go there on Monday, Wednesday and Friday nights after I got off my normal job. If there was work that I didn't get done during the week, I would come in on Saturday.
The company loved the night time work as it didn't take a truck off the road and a driver was not sitting around doing nothing. Yes there were spare vehicles, but these were not always available as the maintenance shop was generally overloaded just trying to keep the fleet on the road.
What this turned into was almost a full time second job. I ended up being able to purchase and pay for a brand new IFR 1200 service monitor with my income from the above company.
What you need to understand is that this is not the norm. You will not find a company today like what I did way back then. The coming of the cell phone industry has destroyed the two way radio service market. There have been many radio shops that have gone by the way side due to the cell phone use.
Yes you might find a few locations where the local radio shop is doing a bad job and has unhappy customers. They do crap work and have found ways to do the work so that they get repeat service calls. But companies doing work like this don't last long. Those customers eventually catch on to the type of work being done and go looking for another radio shop.
The down side of the poor work radio shops, is that they generally survive because they are out in the middle of no where. There is no other radio shop to compete with them.. The radio users are not willing to pay another radio shop to drive 2 hours to just get to them and another 2 hours to get home. Plus the time on site to work on the radio problem. Then guess what, the service tech may not have the parts to repair the problem. Now that means another day and another 4 hours your going to pay for the tech to make a second trip out to the customer. It's much better customer relations to get the full details of just what the problem is and bring what ever parts you think your going to need for the repair.
Radio service out in the country is much different than service in the big city. But the big city traffic can cause almost the same long travel times.
You really need the ability to have the radio service test equipment with you when you go on a call. This means it needs to be light enough to carry easily. It also needs to be rugged to stand up to the constant moving around and the banging it will take.
What will the minimum test equipment cost? That depends on how and what you plan to do and where you plan to do it. I set my van up with a power inverter to have 120 volts AC to run my test equipment. Ran an extension cord. I also installed some lighting in the back of the van so I didn't have to keep relying on using a flash light to see what I was doing.
Hope this provides you with some thought on what you will be looking at if you really want to get into the kick of servicing two way radios. But I would suggest looking around to see what your competition is and what the radio market is around you. You need work in order to support your test equipment and the vehicle you will be using. Just the fuel to drive around with is enough to make the average person think again.
I would also look around and ask a bunch of questions about what kind of service a potential customer is getting. How satisfied they are with the service work they are getting. The most important question now is what are they paying for that service. You need to know this before planting your feet on the long road your about to go down.
You will need to commit some funding to your endeavor before you even take the first step. You can't service any radio with out a way to even test it. This is the first hurdle you need to figure out how to get over. This is not ham radio where you can get by with it being off frequency some and the audio doesn't sound very good. Public safety and business radios need to work and work correctly.
I know I have got long winded here, but I have been in your shoes. Only I had someone to take me by the hand and show me the road to take. It took several years before I stepped out on my own to service radios. I don't think you have anyone at this point. This is going to make a whole world of difference to you.
Jim
