If you think digital simplex for farming is overkill, wait until you hear about the farmers using digital trunking. I'm from California and there's a commercial trunked DMR network that offers airtime through a subscription fee. It has a LOT of farming talkgroups on it. With the amount of surplus equipment hitting the market at such a competitive pricepoint, P25 may actually be a cheaper and simpler option compared to the prior alternative. And with many analog portables and DMR portables going for prices not much cheaper than XTS5000s, I don't fault OP in the slightest for paying for a more robust and rugged product. And if they have digital capabilities, why not take advantage of it! I wish OP the best of luck in learning the software and hope they achieve a high ROI on their new purchase
I’m interested to know what you mean by this… as long as OP has a ham license, they can operate P25 simplex with other hams, or run a P25 repeater. Just make sure transmissions are in-band, nothing is encrypted and everyone properly identifies.
Basically there is no license free services that can use p25 digital. All require some form of FCC license.
Using used xts5000 vhf was significantly cheaper than buying 12 XPR7550E's. Plus the xts5000's are much more durable
