Could Icom Ever Offer An Amateur Radio With BOTH P-25 AND D-Star?

[JASII]

As posted above, I am just wondering if we might ever see Icom offer an amateur radio transceiver with BOTH P-25 AND D-Star? I had originally had hope for Yaesu to offer P25, but then they offered something that is non-standard.

With regards to Icom, I know that they make P25 land mobile transceivers and D-STAR amateur transceivers. Also, they have the Icom IC-R2500 receiver, which is capable of P25 or D-STAR, so it would seem reasonable that they might offer an amateur rig that would do both D-STAR and P25. Even if it just received P25 out of band, that would interest me.

Does anybody here recall the Icom IC-2SRA and IC-4SRA? Something like that where it would do analog and D-STAR on amateur and then P25 receive out of band would be pretty sweet. Oh well, maybe the days of using an amateur rig for BOTH hamming AND Scanning are long since gone in the areas that have gone P25, but I can dream, can't I?

I think what I would like would be an Icom IC-2820H that would be able to take the optional UT-122 APCO25 digital voice decoder. That would be an amateur radio that would interest me right now!

 

[gewecke]

Pretty much, no. :roll:

73,
n9zas

 

[W2GLD]

Definitely no; they are two completely different protocols and require two different DSP's and programming code. You're more likely to see NXDN and P25 in one radio as they are both FDMA and can coexisti within on DSP.

 

[MTS2000des]

P25 will never make it to the ham world, mainly due to the licensing costs and quite frankly the inflated prices the manufacturers get selling $2000 plus single band walkie talkies to government agencies with deep pockets.

Not trying to be funny, but many hams whine and complain about a quality dual band analog HT costing more than $50 thanks to the influx of cheap disposable radios from China.

I was around when a decent dual band HT or mobile ran $500 or more in the late 1980s and early 1990s. But then the radios of that era were designed to last 20 years.

A low end P25 radio would be at the $750-1000 price point, and how many would Icom, Kenwood or Yaesu sell. Not many, especially when recently discarded P25 high end radios selling for $100-250 on the surplus market.

The way governments are in a race to waste with our tax money buying the latest greatest has at least a small benefit for us hams. When these radios hit the market, they offer superior (to any ham gear) quality stuff at affordable prices.

My county hearts waste and it already scrapping their barely 6 year old phase 1 P25 radios (close to 4,000 of them) for phase 2. Too bad they are 700/800MHz.