XG-100p for a civilian

[Synapt]

Not my story to tell but a friend of mine in the FD said one of his FF's told him he would rather use a baofeng than the Motorola radios they were issued because if he dropped or damaged his baofeng then it's a $20 radio and not an expensive one.

You know what they say, you can put lipstick on a pig but it's still a pig.

Yes, and if you're someone who does to-scene calls/duties then often you're up to getting some of your own equipment.

I love it! and when the evacuation alert goes un heard when the baofeng misses it after being dropped a few times or melts. Have them disassemble a baofeng and then ask them to bet their life on one vs a true radio built for public safety operation. Everyone should disassemble a baofeng in their lifetime if they have a chance. Better yet, ask the lawyers what their response is when they find out a department full of baofengs when they get sued for a fataility

Mine/these aren't being used in actual fire scenarios, plus even for the interior guys there are usually air sirens/beacons on the trucks here to signal primarily for a bail out. Nobody should be relying on radios alone for that no matter the brand.

I don't care whose feelings I hurt but if you use a Baofeng for public safety you are a moron of the highest degree. Those cheap kids toys have no business being used in life safety scenarios. Recommending them based soley on price is dumb. If your dept can afford an engine but can't afford a portable radio maybe you need to re-evaluate your budgeting. Most of these people who get these radios are buying them because they 'want' a radio not because they 'need' one. If you really need it the dept should provide it, and it should be something worthy of NFPA/APCO life safety use.

If you wish to donate the like $7000-8000 to my department so I can get a portable APX 8000 primarily for fire police duties, I will 100% point you their way lol. But like most it's easy to say what our departments should be issuing all the while sitting back not helping them afford it. This isn't Pittsburgh, or Philadelphia. This is rural PA where you're lucky if a police department even can afford a vest for their cops let alone fire departments getting decent gear. The equipment costs are largely the reason why so many counties of PA still haven't gone P25.

But I digress. Ultimately that is not an expense I like to place upon them when I can mostly afford my own equipment, but this is also why I took this Harris, or would even be willing to have bought a used Harris, as it is at least a bit more durable, feature-full and will be capable once we go P25. But when you're doing largely more basic duties but also where your radio might get roughed up a bit (like an active road way or scene control), obviously you don't want to constantly risk near 5 figure devices. It's not like Motorola and them (as far as I can tell) replace devices damaged while in duty use.

Also your engine logic is pretty horribly placed also when you consider most rural departments are still using engines that are like 20+ years old. The engine at my station has a couple tires on it still that are almost half my age lol.

 

[Jace1986]

Let’s be real the dude using a Baofeng isn’t going interior and is probably “hitting it hard from the yard”

 

[redbeard]

Yes, and if you're someone who does to-scene calls/duties then often you're up to getting some of your own equipment.



Mine/these aren't being used in actual fire scenarios, plus even for the interior guys there are usually air sirens/beacons on the trucks here to signal primarily for a bail out. Nobody should be relying on radios alone for that no matter the brand.



If you wish to donate the like $7000-8000 to my department so I can get a portable APX 8000 primarily for fire police duties, I will 100% point you their way lol. But like most it's easy to say what our departments should be issuing all the while sitting back not helping them afford it. This isn't Pittsburgh, or Philadelphia. This is rural PA where you're lucky if a police department even can afford a vest for their cops let alone fire departments getting decent gear. The equipment costs are largely the reason why so many counties of PA still haven't gone P25.

But I digress. Ultimately that is not an expense I like to place upon them when I can mostly afford my own equipment, but this is also why I took this Harris, or would even be willing to have bought a used Harris, as it is at least a bit more durable, feature-full and will be capable once we go P25. But when you're doing largely more basic duties but also where your radio might get roughed up a bit (like an active road way or scene control), obviously you don't want to constantly risk near 5 figure devices. It's not like Motorola and them (as far as I can tell) replace devices damaged while in duty use.

Also your engine logic is pretty horribly placed also when you consider most rural departments are still using engines that are like 20+ years old. The engine at my station has a couple tires on it still that are almost half my age lol.

I came from rural PA so I don't need to hear lame excuses why you can't afford it. Use the relief money you get from the state. Apply for grants, use a grant writer if need be. There are ways to do it that don't involve buying garbage and winging it. Rural or City we all have the same rules and standards to follow. If your dept isn't capable then it's time to fold or merge into a fire district to best allocate tax income.

APX 8000s don't cost $7-8000 so I see you are using conjecture to excuse your Baofeng use. Get a real legit quote and exclude all the whacker bells and whistles you want and get a quote for only what you need. Does every individual person need multiband interoperability? Absolutely not, that's what infrastructure is for. No reason you can't use an APX 900/1000 for fire police duties. I don't care if you are on the county line between Beaver and Allegheny so you think you need VHF and UHF both to stand in the street and wave cars around. There are other options that don't require buying a fire police unit all 8000s. My last dept bordered OH where they were (STUPIDLY) using MotoTRBO digital. No multiband was going to save us there and yet we found a way to make it work.

My logic is right on task if you are using 20+ year old apparatus, you realize 25yrs is the limit right? NFPA 1911, annex D...

Why spend all that money on MSA or Scott packs when you could just get some cheap tanks and masks from the dive shop? We can see how obviously stupid that is but apply that logic to radios and suddenly everyone's a cheapo and anything goes just so they can be important with "their own radio".

I am FF1 certified and formerly Fire Police Lieutenant, so your BS excuses aren't going to sway me that what you are doing isn't wrong. Promoting it to other depts and members is wrong, and a disservice to the fire service as a whole by polluting the internet with your excuses.

 

[Synapt]

Let’s be real the dude using a Baofeng isn’t going interior and is probably “hitting it hard from the yard”

I indeed did note in my previous response there is no interior perspective/use of that radio no. And contrary to what redbeard seemingly is claiming, I definitely never condoned or promoted the use of it in any serious duties like that whatsoever.

I came from rural PA so I don't need to hear lame excuses why you can't afford it. Use the relief money you get from the state. Apply for grants, use a grant writer if need be. There are ways to do it that don't involve buying garbage and winging it. Rural or City we all have the same rules and standards to follow. If your dept isn't capable then it's time to fold or merge into a fire district to best allocate tax income.

Can you point me anywhere that does individual grants? Cause I've never encountered that at all.

APX 8000s don't cost $7-8000 so I see you are using conjecture to excuse your Baofeng use. Get a real legit quote and exclude all the whacker bells and whistles you want and get a quote for only what you need. Does every individual person need multiband interoperability? Absolutely not, that's what infrastructure is for. No reason you can't use an APX 900/1000 for fire police duties. I don't care if you are on the county line between Beaver and Allegheny so you think you need VHF and UHF both to stand in the street and wave cars around. There are other options that don't require buying a fire police unit all 8000s. My last dept bordered OH where they were (STUPIDLY) using MotoTRBO digital. No multiband was going to save us there and yet we found a way to make it work.

As of literally a week ago when I consulted with 3 different authorized motorola merchants nearby. A bland plain APX 8000 is $5000 with a fire fighter discount, and includes no firmware according to them. $600 individually for each band (VHF, UHF and 7/800) firmware addition. $220 for P25 Phase2. Another $800 if you get the XE rugged model. And then around another $600 for the full AES+DES encryption package.

The absolute lowest price I was given was $4600 in bulk department deals. I'm not buying bulk, I'm buying individual.

Since you seem to be having issues properly reading what I had said, I'll try to clarify better; My entire point of my comments have surrounded purchasing for myself as an individual, not a department / in bulk, and in fact trying to not be an unnecessary expense to the department. And even at that, looking at current pricing sheets from several authorized sellers, an APX 1000 would still at an individual price cost me at least $2000~ probably (judging by the bulk-discount pricing being $1719~). And those models seem to be single-band specific (with exception of one particular model that does 7/800 and 900), which at minimum I would like UHF+800 w/ P25 Phase 2. So that still isn't a decent recommendation.

Past that at no point did I "promote" getting Baofengs for anything really, especially critical, I get that you clearly dislike Baofeng but perhaps you need to stop letting your dislike cause you to see things never said. I simply corrected a comment about the use/experience of them in general usage from myself and others (at least the one specific model, I can't speak to all models in this use). At no point did I go "Hey yeah run into a fire with this". I explained the reasoning as to why people commonly use them, that you disagree with this reasoning does not remove it from reality as a fact.

 

[apco25]

The various Phase 2 systems floating around in PA won't authorize personal radios. Your agency should be supplying you with a radio. Buy a Uniden SDS100 or 200 and be done with it for "personal use".

 

[Synapt]

The various Phase 2 systems floating around in PA won't authorize personal radios. Your agency should be supplying you with a radio. Buy a Uniden SDS100 or 200 and be done with it for "personal use".

We've otherwise been told we'll be able to 'register' them under our stations for our county at least. But we'll still have to use cross-county provided ones from the station if we have to do any mutual calls over county lines. But since those usually involve a standby order first, we'd usually be at the station first before a staging deployment anyways so that's not a big deal.

 

[BryanTheRed]

We've otherwise been told we'll be able to 'register' them under our stations for our county at least. But we'll still have to use cross-county provided ones from the station if we have to do any mutual calls over county lines. But since those usually involve a standby order first, we'd usually be at the station first before a staging deployment anyways so that's not a big deal.

That's pretty much how it goes here, your agency is basically saying its their radio and they are responsible for what may happen with said radio. What would your budget be for an all band portable?

 

[Synapt]

That's pretty much how it goes here, your agency is basically saying its their radio and they are responsible for what may happen with said radio. What would your budget be for an all band portable?

Well the used XG-100P I got was about $1400, but I just ended up having to send it back as I found out unfortunately it has a hard-programmed squelch you cannot change (why they thought this was a good idea...) and my main county dispatch signals were coming in just under the level to be considered viable broadcasts.

I was told to look at maybe getting a used Motorola XTS but those are only P25 Phase 1 and I would assume our fresh rollout of P25 will almost certainly be Phase 2. So right now I'm actually just thinking of getting a couple of newish but lower-priced single-band P25 radios, preferably ones I can actually accessibly program myself (another caveat I found to the Harris radios being a very hard to obtain programming software).

 

[BryanTheRed]

Well the used XG-100P I got was about $1400, but I just ended up having to send it back as I found out unfortunately it has a hard-programmed squelch you cannot change (why they thought this was a good idea...) and my main county dispatch signals were coming in just under the level to be considered viable broadcasts.

I was told to look at maybe getting a used Motorola XTS but those are only P25 Phase 1 and I would assume our fresh rollout of P25 will almost certainly be Phase 2. So right now I'm actually just thinking of getting a couple of newish but lower-priced single-band P25 radios, preferably ones I can actually accessibly program myself (another caveat I found to the Harris radios being a very hard to obtain programming software).

It may be more economical in the interim to purchase an APX 900/1000/4000 or two, as long as you don't need more than 512 channels per radio. While a little more than your Harris purchase that will give you two Phase 2 radios that you can easily obtain software for. I know a few sellers if you're interested in that route.

 

[Synapt]

It may be more economical in the interim to purchase an APX 900/1000/4000 or two, as long as you don't need more than 512 channels per radio. While a little more than your Harris purchase that will give you two Phase 2 radios that you can easily obtain software for. I know a few sellers if you're interested in that route.

Yeah I got some local-ish dealers but I haven't talked to them since my last inquiries, and while APX's are nice (and newer than the XTS's) the only ones I looked into so far were the 6000's and 8000's which were pretty horrifically priced even with a station discount. What do the 900/1000/4000 models go for?

I think the 4000 was the next one I was gonna look at, or try to find used/refurbished as it had some of the same features as the Harris that interested me, such as bluetooth. I'll check into the APX software as well.

 

[BryanTheRed]

Yeah I got some local-ish dealers but I haven't talked to them since my last inquiries, and while APX's are nice (and newer than the XTS's) the only ones I looked into so far were the 6000's and 8000's which were pretty horrifically priced even with a station discount. What do the 900/1000/4000 models go for?

I think the 4000 was the next one I was gonna look at, or try to find used/refurbished as it had some of the same features as the Harris that interested me, such as bluetooth. I'll check into the APX software as well.

Not sure of prices on the 900 or 1000. I'll PM you...