• To anyone looking to acquire commercial radio programming software:

    Please do not make requests for copies of radio programming software which is sold (or was sold) by the manufacturer for any monetary value. All requests will be deleted and a forum infraction issued. Making a request such as this is attempting to engage in software piracy and this forum cannot be involved or associated with this activity. The same goes for any private transaction via Private Message. Even if you attempt to engage in this activity in PM's we will still enforce the forum rules. Your PM's are not private and the administration has the right to read them if there's a hint to criminal activity.

    If you are having trouble legally obtaining software please state so. We do not want any hurt feelings when your vague post is mistaken for a free request. It is YOUR responsibility to properly word your request.

    To obtain Motorola software see the Sticky in the Motorola forum.

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    For M/A Com/Harris/GE, etc: there are two software packages that program all current and past radios. One package is for conventional programming and the other for trunked programming. The trunked package is in upwards of $2,500. The conventional package is more reasonable though is still several hundred dollars. The benefit is you do not need multiple versions for each radio (unlike Motorola).

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Meaning?

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rescue161

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MDC has nothing to do with the repeater itself, its generated and decoded in the radios and simply passes through the repeater. I'm not aware of any analog repeater that will not pass MDC.
Correct. Nothing is changed in the repeaters, but that doesn't take away from the fact that I use MDC on my systems.
 

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A local guy just showed up on my friend’s DMR repeater. He was proudly telling us how his radio was $14 on Amazon. The TX audio was very low, & there was no adjustment to make it louder. A few guys politely told him how low his audio was. Now just talking to him was fine, but when other “real radios” joined in the conversation, they were very loud as we all cranked up our receive audio to hear the $14 radio. So I asked the guy [and I’m known for not being PC] “why do we all have to suffer to listen to your $14 radio”? He replied “you won’t anymore”, & he hasn’t been heard from since.

Did anyone advise and educate him that it could be because he had it set to narrow band mode? or was it just better to embarrass him and chase him away?
 

rescue161

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I'm assuming they were using TDMA, since he mentioned that it was a DMR repeater. There were a lot of low audio DMR CCR users on my repeater during the DMR craze.
 

mmckenna

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Is that used on GMRS?

DMR is not permitted on GMRS*.

*There is a GMRS group in Northern California that has an FCC experimental license to test DMR on GMRS. They are the only ones who can -legally- do it.

There are those that do not understand the FCC rules, or don't care about FCC rules that run DMR (or other modes) on GMRS.

If you read the post, he never said it was GMRS. DMR is popular in amateur radio.
The point he was making is that the low buck Chinese trash radios have poor quality control, poor design, and generally poor specs and thus sound like crap on radio systems when working with legit/properly designed radios:

A local guy just showed up on my friend’s DMR repeater. He was proudly telling us how his radio was $14 on Amazon. The TX audio was very low, & there was no adjustment to make it louder. A few guys politely told him how low his audio was. Now just talking to him was fine, but when other “real radios” joined in the conversation, they were very loud as we all cranked up our receive audio to hear the $14 radio. So I asked the guy [and I’m known for not being PC] “why do we all have to suffer to listen to your $14 radio”? He replied “you won’t anymore”, & he hasn’t been heard from since.
 

RFI-EMI-GUY

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Did anyone advise and educate him that it could be because he had it set to narrow band mode? or was it just better to embarrass him and chase him away?
many of these cheap radios have ridiculously small modulation indexes. The FCC grants reveal they have no modulation capability at all.

Edit: analog mode not DMR.
 

MTS2000des

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many of these cheap radios have ridiculously small modulation indexes. The FCC grants reveal they have no modulation capability at all.

Edit: analog mode not DMR.
Yep, and they sound like total crap on most amateur repeaters. The whole point of a transceiver is to transmit effectively and receive a usable signal. These turdpieces fail in those departments miserably.
 

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Thank you all for the explanations.

Just an observation - seems like a lot of ham talk in the GMRS forum.
 

03msc

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I'm not a fan of the 'feng radios, either. But, I do know locally there are a couple of hams who use them and, honestly, on the repeater (analog) you can't really tell any difference between them and the other users who have Icom, Yaesu, Kenwood, etc. There is a slight difference noticeable but I think I notice it mostly because I know they are on a 'feng.

Some of the descriptions here are as if they are drastically different sounding and almost unreadable. That hasn't been the experience around here. Perhaps it's worse on DMR than analog but in my experience, listening to some who are using 'fengs, it's grossly exaggerated here how 'terrible' they are. Spurious junk? Absolutely. But sound as bad as described? Not from what I've heard.
 

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Since this is a GMRS forum and since DMR is not permitted on GMRS, I don't understand why we are talking about sub-par audio quality from Chinese DMR radios being used on amateur radio systems.
 

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One of the most frustrating things about the CCR is that they don't sound bad on analog, but sounding good on one frequency and causing harmful interference on a bunch of others is not good. When users are told that they sound great, it reinforces their use of these awful radios. Even when users are shown the harmful interference that they are causing on a spectrum analyzer, they deny it, because of the great signal reports that they've received. I have offered to shoot as many as folks will send me with a full auto Uzi or MAC10/45, but nobody has taken me up, yet.
 

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One of the most frustrating things about the CCR is that they don't sound bad on analog, but sounding good on one frequency and causing harmful interference on a bunch of others is not good. When users are told that they sound great, it reinforces their use of these awful radios. Even when users are shown the harmful interference that they are causing on a spectrum analyzer, they deny it, because of the great signal reports that they've received. I have offered to shoot as many as folks will send me with a full auto Uzi or MAC10/45, but nobody has taken me up, yet.
Real Military Armament Corporation or Cobray, SWD, RPB copy?
 

rescue161

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Mine is an RPB. It was an original open-bolt semi that was converted at some point by H& H Mfg. The Uzi is an IMI that is a converted registered receiver with full machinegun specs. Even the markings were redone to SMG specs
 

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I'll never understand the obsession with MDC.
I assume at least for me, the obsession with MDC was the squawk before or after the transmission. Of course, I have charged my mind about using MDC signaling on bands that open to the average consumer licensed or licensed by rule, because MDC signaling doesn't really have a purpose on the Amateur Radio or GMRS radio spectrum. With the GMRS PRO tracking and GPS functions, I guess it's similar, not exactly MDC signaling. However, MDC wasn't made for all radio services.
 

mmckenna

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I assume at least for me, the obsession with MDC was the squawk before or after the transmission. Of course, I have charged my mind about using MDC signaling on bands that open to the average consumer licensed or licensed by rule, because MDC signaling doesn't really have a purpose on the Amateur Radio or GMRS radio spectrum. With the GMRS PRO tracking and GPS functions, I guess it's similar, not exactly MDC signaling. However, MDC wasn't made for all radio services.

We use MDC at work. Usually the MDC bursts are filtered by the PL tone, so end users don't often hear it. Scanner listeners that run carrier squelch will.
On the ham bands, many run carrier squelch and will hear it. Most don't know what it is, and that tends to piss off amateurs. They'll usually complain (and loudly). That can be a good reason to run it, or not.

Some have set up their repeaters to require it. That's a handy tool to have to keep most prying users from accessing repeaters you don't want them to.

If you have to listen to it a lot, it gets annoying. It's a cool thing to play with, and figure out how it works. Good knowledge to have. But, yeah, it's got it's place, and FRS/GMRS/MURS/amateur usually isn't it.
 

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But, yeah, it's got it's place, and FRS/GMRS/MURS/amateur usually isn't it.
I still have my elitism theory. The "kool kids" on GMRS with their LMR radios can turn on MDC signalling, but the cheapskates with their Chinese radios can't decode it.
 

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CopSounds™.

On GMRS / FRS / MURS i completely agree that it's nonsensical, but on LMR systems it can be almost essential when implemented correctly.
The clowns on the system to my south, for some reason have a Double squawk on their transmissions !o_O
 
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