Kenwood NX-5000 dual-mode P25/NXDN radios

[kd4efm]

I heard another rumor a few days ago. That they will join DMR game with NX5K.

did not say they would NOT ever do dmr, just not right now.

 

[RK3AAG]

making this hard on yourself.... I think your trying to make a mountain out of a swimming hole.

why does a cop/medic/fire fighter, sanitation worker, tow truck driver, need to do this?


go into test mode, set the levels and go....

This feature is for qualified personnel anyway. It's needed to use minimum power possible (without quality of communications degradation), to avoid vehicle's battery exhaustion and sometimes to comply your FCC license. Just compare - you write all of your radios with the same data or you're forced to tune every (!) radio on service monitor. Connect every radio to SM and pass through 5 (!) softpots for each power level (15 totally). You cannot clone tuning data from one radio to another, because each tuning partition is unique. And Kenwood warned you!

Just compare - 3 minutes or 1 hour per each radio. For example, your fleet is 500 radios.

Motorola not a kid, they knew what they do (in the most of cases). Features like this are extremely convenient and existing for decades!

No questions, right?

 

[mmckenna]

N3AGG,

Sounds like your expectations for this radio are verging on unrealistic. This isn't a hobby radio, amateur radio, etc. It's designed for professional users in commercial/public safety environments.

Anyone who has ever programmed radios for public safety use knows that the scan function is really dangerous. If you are listening to scan, you are not listening to the primary dispatch channel. Trying to scan too many channels and you are going to miss something important.

Sounds like what you need is a scanner that will do P25, NXDN, DMR and analog all in one radio. We are not there yet, but likely in the future.

I've programmed Motorola, Icom and Kenwood, and I'm not seeing the big issue here with the NX-5K radios.

Also, I'd listen to what KD4EFM is saying, I've hear many of the same things he's saying about the future of this radio. Patience would be wise. Kenwood has already released DMR radios, they did a few weeks back. Kenwood has entered the DMR market in the USA, and I think you'll see their product offering expand pretty soon.

If you are really that unhappy with your radio, I'd be happy to send you my mailing address.....

 

[RK3AAG]

N3AGG,

Sounds like your expectations for this radio are verging on unrealistic. This isn't a hobby radio, amateur radio, etc. It's designed for professional users in commercial/public safety environments.

Wow! Really? It's good that you told it to me. I've never know it. For a 15 years in LMR business and for 23 years in communications.

Anyone who has ever programmed radios for public safety use knows that the scan function is really dangerous. If you are listening to scan, you are not listening to the primary dispatch channel. Trying to scan too many channels and you are going to miss something important.

Again wow! Really? LOOOL. Why you cannot use your brain when you program something? Also you can program radio properly and avoid these situations. Also you can use PRIO to avoid this.

Also, if scan is dangerous, maybe it's time to prohibit it? Hey, Motorola and Kenwood, scan is dangerous, please remove it from your radios! It was told by mmckenna!

Sounds like what you need is a scanner that will do P25, NXDN, DMR and analog all in one radio. We are not there yet, but likely in the future.

Sounds like you see only things you want see. But actually a lot of new projects in DMR. So it's about interoperability between different services. And this is the point used by Motorola and Kenwood - when you have multi-band or multi-standard radios, you can communicate with other services just by changing zone/channel or pressing Scan (Yes, again scan!). It's sad, but NEXEDGE is less developed in US than DMR. And DMR is growing dramatically fast and aggressive. NX is well developed only on railways, but weak in others. So, agencies need P25 and DMR more that P25 + NX.

I've programmed Motorola, Icom and Kenwood, and I'm not seeing the big issue here with the NX-5K radios.

Just re-read what I wrote recently. There is new scan method and I like it, because It’s more native, more convenient and more flexible. But I want to have limitation removed. Why not? It's my choice. I am customer and I pay money to Kenwood. It's easy, because it's simple SW limitation. Kenwood is not responsible for bad/non-optimal radio programming anyway.

Also, I'd listen to what KD4EFM is saying, I've hear many of the same things he's saying about the future of this radio. Patience would be wise. Kenwood has already released DMR radios, they did a few weeks back. Kenwood has entered the DMR market in the USA, and I think you'll see their product offering expand pretty soon.

I am talking about single multi-mode platform. Not about Kenwood DMR radios. I already have Motorola, Vertex, Icom & Hytera DMR radios. And I no need one more radio with just DMR. I need multi-mode radio for commercial, govt and ham use. One perfect radio I will promote together with conpmany I worked for.

If you are really that unhappy with your radio, I'd be happy to send you my mailing address.....

This radio is pretty good, but it could become more attractive after some enhancements. Very minor, and most of them don't require some big and costly R&D.

Now LMR is not on peak on its form and Chinese guys are very aggressive. Some manufactures able to listen to their customers, but some are not. We all remember companies like 3Com, Kodak, RIM (Blackberry), Nokia and many others. In LMR business it's Alinco, Bendix King, EFJohnson, Maxon, Midland, Tyco, Standard, Transcrypt, Trident, Zetron. Where they are now? Were sold off, bankrupted, closed or just surviving. Ohhh, I forgot, some of them produce garbage or/and just apply their tags on Chinese stuff.

JVC-Kenwood have a choice. This is the point.

 

[KevinC]

It's Christmas Eve and I really don't feel like going through all the posts to clean up the reports...so I'm closing it for now. Maybe Santa will clean this up for me.