Baofeng and others sold as scanners.

[ogppc]

What are peoples thoughts on people programming and selling the Baofeng and Quansheng radios as scanners?

I recently came across a local news social media page and found the administrator selling Baofeng handhelds as scanners. I never did find out what kind of pricing was set on them and politely informed the person selling them they were not scanners and not appropriate to be sold as such. You could tell they were not really familiar with the radios or programming them, but they did have a few frequencies listed. I also told him that the radios he was selling to people are not going to work in a few months once the new P25 system going into my county comes online. The seller doesn't seem to be a supporter of law enforcement at all and chases the PD in his city from call to call.

The person selling them asked me "codes" to get them to work on a Motorola Type II system and how to make them continue to work when the new system arrives. I kind of got a little bit of a laugh out of it all. He messaged me earlier this week asking if I had found a solution for when the new system comes online and I said I didn't know of one in his price range.

IMHO it's people like this who make the jump to digital make sense. Not going to discuss the E stuff here, but I also have to wonder how many times he has purposely keyed that radio or other agencies. I have no issue with people scanning to find out what is going on and fully admit for many of us it's more a function of being nosy without interfering with whatever is going on with a particular agency or incident.

Any thoughts?

 

[RaleighGuy]

Buyer Beware! This practice has been going on for years, on EBay, Amazon, Tik Tok and many other places that sell the CCRs, there is nothing new to this deceptive practice. Every so often it pops up here in the forums.

Honestly, thoughts or not, lies and misrepresentations about the CCRs will continue, so I have just started ignoring it. How can you talk to someone who is convinced the $10 radio sold on Tik Tok will work as good as a $400+ scanner from Whistler or Uniden?

 

[UTE-GE]

Stupid people doing stupid things. It's what makes the world go around....

Speaking of stupid. I bought a Quansheng last year when it was "all the rage". Updated it with Egzumer and it's really not a bad air frequency scanner! Perfect for beating around with and not having to worry about.

 

[mmckenna]

What are peoples thoughts on people programming and selling the Baofeng and Quansheng radios as scanners?

If they are programmed for receive only, then there's nothing illegal about that. No, they are not great scanners, but they are a low buck option for those that just want to listen to a few local frequencies.

If they are programmed to allow transmitting, then that is another issue.

A lot of people will never be anything but a consumer. They don't know how radios work. They wouldn't know how to program one. They are perfectly comfortable paying someone to do the hard work for them in exchange for a box that lets them listen.

IMHO it's people like this who make the jump to digital make sense. Not going to discuss the E stuff here, but I also have to wonder how many times he has purposely keyed that radio or other agencies. I have no issue with people scanning to find out what is going on and fully admit for many of us it's more a function of being nosy without interfering with whatever is going on with a particular agency or incident.

Any thoughts?

Well, yeah. Digital on it's own will not fix that.
But let's talk about encryption...
People transmitting where they do not belong is -exactly- one of the reasons that agencies like encryption and like trunked systems that have good access control and security.
We've had that issue locally where individuals with two way radios have programmed them to transmit on local public safety systems. They see no issue with popping up on the local fire channels during active wildland fires to ask questions or give advice. The FCC has busted people for that and it's well documented.

People that do stupid stuff like this with radios, be it a CCR, MARS/CAP modded ham gear, or an eBay Motorola are part of the problem. Unfortunately they are too stupid to understand the consequences of their actions.

 

[ogppc]

You should try the F4WHN firmware. It works great for aircraft scanning.

Stupid people doing stupid things. It's what makes the world go around....

Speaking of stupid. I bought a Quansheng last year when it was "all the rage". Updated it with Egzumer and it's really not a bad air frequency scanner! Perfect for beating around with and not having to worry about.

 

[rk911]

Yeah...CCC. Cheap Chinese Crap regardless of intended use.

 

[kc2asb]

Yeah...CCC. Cheap Chinese Crap regardless of intended use.

So they are. However, there will always be a place for cheap, entry-level radios. If they get people interested in the hobby, who use them responsibly (ie, not to jam up their local PD), and later graduate to better radios, great.

 

[bob550]

So they are. However, there will always be a place for cheap, entry-level radios. If they get people interested in the hobby, who use them responsibly (ie, not to jam up their local PD), and later graduate to better radios, great.

Absolutely! My first "scanner" was a Realistic Patrolman SW-60 in the early 80's. Didn't own that for long before I got bit by the bug and upgraded to a Regency HX-1200. Then, it was off to the races from there. If it takes a Baofeng to generate interest and bring new members to this hobby, then I'm fine with that. After all, a larger customer base leads to greater interest by radio manufacturers in designing and producing scanners, and that's to everyone's advantage!

 

[kc2asb]

Absolutely! My first "scanner" was a Realistic Patrolman SW-60 in the early 80's. Didn't own that for long before I got bit by the bug and upgraded to a Regency HX-1200. Then, it was off to the races from there. If it takes a Baofeng to generate interest and bring new members to this hobby, then I'm fine with that. After all, a larger customer base leads to greater interest by radio manufacturers in designing and producing scanners, and that's to everyone's advantage!

Agreed! My first new radio was also a Realistic SW-60 in 1986. It was an upgrade from the old Arrow multi-band radio that my father had given me, which only covered AM/FM and VHF high. I was in grade school at the time and didn't have a budget for radios. The SW-60 was a world of difference from the Arrow, and also got me interested in shortwave. For a budget radio, it started me on a life-long hobby.

 

[buddrousa]

I have my Ham License and have been retired from Public Service for 2 years I still have my Personal Kenwood NX-5200 never been keyed in the last 2 years I also have a DM-32UV Programmed for RX only also RT-4D and RT-6D that do not RX DMR very well. I guess I need to learn Chinese as the wording is very different. The reason I play with the CCR is to find a cheap way for the family of the onduty crew to be able to listen.

 

[jazzboypro]

Personally, i always found these radios have a way to low scan speed to be useful as a scanner.

 

[bob550]

Personally, i always found these radios have a way to low scan speed to be useful as a scanner.

Of course the Baofeng radios are not designed as scanners. But then neither are the G-series Unications, and look at how popular they are as scanners rather than Public Safety pagers.

 

[MTS2000des]

Unications will never, ever ever emit RF on a public safety (or any other) programmed frequency. The same is not true for Bowelturds.

 

[EAFrizzle]

While I do enjoy using my CCRs as receivers, selling them pre-programmed as "scanners" is a horrible idea.

Let's start with liability. You can leave out repeater inputs, inhibit transmit, warn the buyer ad absurdum, etc., but you can't guarantee that someone won't figure out how to make the radio transmit on those frequencies. If you put the frequencies in the radio, then you're on the hook if/when(definitely when) someone gets ignorant with it. Some folks might be ok with signing a liability waiver, but they're not the ones that will be the problem, and a waiver isn't the real solution.

Then, you're left with them actually being crappy at scanning. Now that programmable zones are becoming common in them, they have a bit more utility for scanning, as a zone can just be a handful of local channels, overcoming the slow speed somewhat. Someone new that doesn't understand the difference between "scanning" and "monitoring" is liable to begin hating their new "scanner" the first time things get busy, and they realize how much they missed.

I think the place where most of us CCR users/techs/experimenters agree is that they make dandy little receivers for some specific uses. Aside from @buddrousa 's use for PS families monitoring crews, they're great for some of the niche services as well. My Baofeng 5RMs do great for railroad monitoring, put dispatch on one VFO and road on the other. My Radtel RT-860 and RT-880 work great for aeronautical listening, especially together. I can monitor 2 HF and 5 V/UHF simultaneously for well under $200. I don't think I could get 2 name brand rigs to cover that, certainly not without adding an order of magnitude to the price.


I'm all for getting more people into the hobby; affordable equipment and good information about the equipment and proper operations can help more people get in and stay in the hobby. By and large, we do a pretty good job at disseminating correct and useful information here. But we're not the retailers. Are they giving out good info and warnings? Are they making sure the customer has their expectations aligned with what the machine will actually  do?


Just selling pre-programmed transceivers to anyone with some cash is a bad idea in many ways. However, I can see it being a good thing in a local shop where relationships can be built with more experienced users and operators. Didn't we used to have something like that?😉

 

[DeoVindice]

So they are. However, there will always be a place for cheap, entry-level radios. If they get people interested in the hobby, who use them responsibly (ie, not to jam up their local PD), and later graduate to better radios, great.

That is valid. I ended up going the surplus route to start out; that's generally where I point people who have some technical and research knowledge since the performance payoff is better.

My first "real" radio was an Arizona DPS surplus TK-390 that cost a hundred bucks. Durable gear like that is harder to outgrow unless it simply lacks a necessary feature. The older Kenwood spreadsheet-style software is easy for beginners. Locking out transmit on a channel is as easy as omitting a transmit frequency and cannot be bypassed from the radio controls.

 

[jazzboypro]

Of course the Baofeng radios are not designed as scanners. But then neither are the G-series Unications, and look at how popular they are as scanners rather than Public Safety pagers.

Can't speak about the Unication G-series as i never used one. If they are as slow as a Baofeng or other CCR than i would not find them useful as a scanner but i get that they are popular.

 

[ogppc]

The unication is pretty snappy when set up appropriately but as mentioned before it is by no means a replacement for a fully capable receiver and for the average hobbiest can be challenging to configure. Its also a nice unit for big E should you have access to the appropriate information. I know there are firmware options for various uniden modules, but from what I understand you lose some if not all of the factory software functionality.

 

[Golay]

Of course the Baofeng radios are not designed as scanners. But then neither are the G-series Unications, and look at how popular they are as scanners rather than Public Safety pagers.

I think I can honestly say, at least in my neck of the woods, we wouldn't have half the ham radio operators we do now, if not for using CCR's as a first step into the hobby.

 

[K9KLC]

Of course the Baofeng radios are not designed as scanners. But then neither are the G-series Unications, and look at how popular they are as scanners rather than Public Safety pagers.

Because depending on what your monitoring they work better than anything else out there other than a subscriber radio and, I've read in some cases at times, a little better than those. When I sat mine next to a "really expensive morotola" even the officer who's radio it was, was amazed.

 

[D31245]

The unication is pretty snappy when set up appropriately but as mentioned before it is by no means a replacement for a fully capable receiver and for the average hobbiest can be challenging to configure. Its also a nice unit for big E should you have access to the appropriate information. I know there are firmware options for various uniden modules, but from what I understand you lose some if not all of the factory software functionality.

I agree. Although I am a new G5 user (I am still learning the finer details of P25 programming), for my local analog conventional scanning purposes, it is very capable. I feel that it actually responds quicker than my Uniden BC125AT - but then again, I am scanning a smaller subset of frequencies.