XTS FPP models being shipped from China?

[dmh77yy]

Whats with these all these XTS FPP models being sold on Ebay but shipped from China? Price seems low for a VHF FPP XTS. The linked example is engraved "City of Tempe". Is there really someone in China refurbishing these and then selling them back into the US? Anyone have specific experience buying one?

Ive also seen some used EF Johnson (all FPP models) being sold into the US from China.

MOTOROLA XTS5000 III VHF FPP Digital Portable Handheld Radio, Model H18KEH9PW7AN | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for MOTOROLA XTS5000 III VHF FPP Digital Portable Handheld Radio, Model H18KEH9PW7AN at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!

www.ebay.com

 

[MTS2000des]

Not really a low price. Being that these radios are legacy, no longer supported, and are often tossed out as E-Waste, it figures it makes it to China, and someone using well known proprietary pirated software slamming FPP codeplugs in them to make them appealing. Nothing wrong with them, but remember, if you buy from China and have a problem, return shipping can be costly. Buy the SELLER not the item.

 

[ElroyJetson]

As I have heard, but have not been able to confirm, they almost all can be traced to a batch that got rained on in the Motorola factory in Malaysia a number of years ago due to a fire suppression sprinkler going off. All that stuff ended up in the hands of a Chinese seller going by Panter88 or Panter888 who then apparently did a good job of salvaging them, cranking the flashcode up to maximum overdrive, and started selling them. He his most likely the primary source for those radios, though they may now be sold by other vendors or at least the same vendors with different working names.

If the radio factory had been within the USA, odds are that they would have gone to the grinder, but being in Malaysia, the rules for handling the products must apparently be a bit more relaxed and so someone was allowed to acquire the radio parts in usable/repairable condition.

 

[MTS2000des]

Those radios vanished decades ago. Most of the XTS radios on Fraudbay in China are e-waste recovery hence why they have tags, agency markings even old programming.

The "going to the grinder" is an old wives tale. XTS and XTL radios are two decades old. Two decades. Think about how long ago that was, people were carrying flip phones, the Moto RAZR hadn't been released (until 04) when the XTS was two years in production. The radios are long off support from MSI, long in the tooth, and are being dumped by the bushel.

There is no reason to overpay for one.

 

[N4KVE]

Yeah, those guys are burning the candle at both ends. They get paid to destroy the radios, but don’t. And then they sell the radios on flea bay. OTOH years ago a friend did buy a UHF 2500 from Panter, & it was perfect in every way, so it’s a roll of the dice.

 

[wa8pyr]

The radios are long off support from MSI, long in the tooth, and are being dumped by the bushel.

There is no reason to overpay for one.

Long off support, not so much. They were still in support until the end of either 2019 or 2020 (I forget which); we ordered some flash updates for some of ours just under the wire.

Concur with not being worth overpaying.... I just bought a really clean 700/800 MHz XTS5000 Model 3 just to play with at work, paid about $75 for it (which is worth it). VHF or UHF Model 3 in good shape would be worth a bit more (maybe $150 tops).

 

[MTS2000des]

Long off support, not so much. They were still in support until the end of either 2019 or 2020 (I forget which); we ordered some flash updates for some of ours just under the wires.

The MTNs I recall, last date of depot support for the 5000 was Dec of 2016, the 2500 lived until 2018. Thats over 5 years. We were told we could not order flash updates 1Q 2017. We had an ISSI overlay being deployed in the region and were told "sorry, buy APX if you want ISSI on your subs"

The last CPS was released in 2018. F/W 20.50.10 came out in late 2018. Nothing since.

 

[ElroyJetson]

I know a guy who worked at Motorola, Plantation FL factory, and he did tell me that yes indeed, they did crush radios that were not to be sold. However that was a long time ago and may not apply to any other Motorola facility. (STX time period.)

I do remember going through some boxes of scrap from Motorola, back in the early 90s, that had such interesting items in them as prototype Saber housings that didn't have the textured finished. Those would have been mold proof pieces, with the next step being to send the molds off to a specialist company to get the texturing applied. I wish I'd kept one of those as a curiosity. A business acquaintance of mine had acquired a fairly large load of this scrap/salvage material, and the contract stipulated "scrap for materials value, do not release any intact or repairable item under penalty of death!!!!!". Or close to it...

 

[N4KVE]

There was a guy years ago [I forgot his name] who was caught, & arrested for dumpster diving at the Plantation factory. He did this many times before being caught, & some of the stuff he took home was amazing. Good radios, prototypes, & even Labtool discs. I do remember he lived in Oakland Park.

 

[wa8pyr]

The MTNs I recall, last date of depot support for the 5000 was Dec of 2016, the 2500 lived until 2018. Thats over 5 years. We were told we could not order flash updates 1Q 2017. We had an ISSI overlay being deployed in the region and were told "sorry, buy APX if you want ISSI on your subs"

The last CPS was released in 2018. F/W 20.50.10 came out in late 2018. Nothing since.

Guess we got lucky then; support ended here December 2019 or 2020 (pretty sure it was 2020).

 

[KE4ZNR]

Those radios vanished decades ago. Most of the XTS radios on Fraudbay in China are e-waste recovery hence why they have tags, agency markings even old programming.

The "going to the grinder" is an old wives tale. XTS and XTL radios are two decades old. Two decades. Think about how long ago that was, people were carrying flip phones, the Moto RAZR hadn't been released (until 04) when the XTS was two years in production. The radios are long off support from MSI, long in the tooth, and are being dumped by the bushel.

There is no reason to overpay for one.

Yep. I have a few boxes full of XTS 5Ks Model 3s retired from our PD/FD that we use for our public works folks. Years ago when we upgraded from XTS-APX we promised our city council overlords that we would continue to use decent 5000s for public works folks and the like to extend their lives a little longer. I have a bunch here in my office fulfilling a bunch of needs (monitoring emergency revert TGs, monitoring Failsoft conv, monitoring various tgs that don't get used much, etc).

 

[MTS2000des]

Guess we got lucky then; support ended here December 2019 or 2020 (pretty sure it was 2020).

Interesting, because this is what everyone else (including us) were told:
From: ASTRO Subscriber Product Group
Sent: Tuesday, May 14, 2013 6:24 AM
To: Sales and Support Teams
Subject: Notification of Intent To Cancel - XTS 5000 and XTL 5000 Mobile Radio

This email serves as the Intent to cancel notification for the XTS 5000 & XTL 5000 ASTRO Subscriber Radios.
XTS 5000 PORTABLE RADIOS XTL 5000 MOBILE RADIO

XTS/XTL 5000 Last Order Entry: October 31, 2013
All XTS/XTL 5000 ECAT (Electronic Price Pages) will be pulled from visibility no later than the second week of November 2013.
XTS/XTL 5000 Last Customer Scheduled Ship Date: November 30, 2013
(Schaumburg factory (SCOG))
No customer ship dates will be scheduled after this date.
XTS/XTL 5000 Last Field Service 5 years Support to conclude: December 31, 2018.
XTS 5000 portable cancellation memo
XTL 5000 mobile cancellation memo
Join the XTS/XTL 5000 cancellation discussion on InSite
If you are unable to access the cancellation memos on InSite, please visit the P25 ASTRO Subscribers Wiki
Note: There are no cancellation dates set for XTS 2500 & XTL 2500 at this time.

So the 5000s died in 2013, and the 2500s died in 2014. 5 years of "support" would mean 2018 for the 5K and 2019 for the 2500s. Guess that jives.

 

[ElroyJetson]

Forgive me for putting on my English Teacher hat for a moment, but I feel that I must correct that COMMON usage of the wrong word.

It's not "jive", it's "jibe".



Jive means either a type of music or loose, meaningless chatter. Jibe means to be in accord; agree. To confuse matters, jibe also means to shift your sail from one side of the vessel to the other (sometimes spelled gybe). And gibe, which means to make taunting, heckling remarks, can also be spelled jibe.

This is one of my language pet peeves. As is the incorrect "I seen" rather than the correct "I have seen" or "I saw". And "voila" being misspelled as "walla" by people who have heard it but never seen it written down correctly.


I now return you to the radio related discussion.

 

[TGuelker]

English Teacher

My mother was an English teacher before she got married, so I grew up learning perfect diction, and knowing what a dangling participle was before I could walk. 🙄

Apostrophe abuse is my biggest peeve. Just because a word ends in s does not mean it automatically gets an apostrophe. The ARCPatrol software uses ‘Tgid’s’ which means belonging to the tgid. That doesn’t make sense. Had a boss with a last name similar to Jones. Yep, he would put an apostrophe like Jone’s. Saw a BILLBOARD on the highway that read Denture’s In One Hour. It stayed like that for months. How many people approved that before it went up? What is even worse is that someone who doesn’t know if an apostrophe belongs or not sees that, and it reinforces the mistake.

A local tshirt shop is Custom T’s. I emailed them 2 years ago which did nothing. They have trailers, signs, letterhead, etc. with the blatant mistake so it would be expensive to correct the name. Probably registered in the county as Custom T’s

A vape shop opened nearby. Guess they had an extra B. Still waiting for it to be corrected.

As ElroyJetson said, back to radio talk.

 

[wa8pyr]

Interesting, because this is what everyone else (including us) were told:
From: ASTRO Subscriber Product Group
Sent: Tuesday, May 14, 2013 6:24 AM
To: Sales and Support Teams
Subject: Notification of Intent To Cancel - XTS 5000 and XTL 5000 Mobile Radio

This email serves as the Intent to cancel notification for the XTS 5000 & XTL 5000 ASTRO Subscriber Radios.
XTS 5000 PORTABLE RADIOS XTL 5000 MOBILE RADIO

XTS/XTL 5000 Last Order Entry: October 31, 2013
All XTS/XTL 5000 ECAT (Electronic Price Pages) will be pulled from visibility no later than the second week of November 2013.
XTS/XTL 5000 Last Customer Scheduled Ship Date: November 30, 2013
(Schaumburg factory (SCOG))
No customer ship dates will be scheduled after this date.
XTS/XTL 5000 Last Field Service 5 years Support to conclude: December 31, 2018.
XTS 5000 portable cancellation memo
XTL 5000 mobile cancellation memo
Join the XTS/XTL 5000 cancellation discussion on InSite
If you are unable to access the cancellation memos on InSite, please visit the P25 ASTRO Subscribers Wiki
Note: There are no cancellation dates set for XTS 2500 & XTL 2500 at this time.

So the 5000s died in 2013, and the 2500s died in 2014. 5 years of "support" would mean 2018 for the 5K and 2019 for the 2500s. Guess that jives.

We got the same notification (I probably still have a copy of it around here somewhere), except we were told "5 to 7 years of support depending on the product." The fact that I was able to order flash upgrades for two dozen radios in late 2020 makes me think it could have had something to do with Ohio state term contracts holding Motorola to a slightly longer period. There are still have thousands of the things in daily service around the state, and there would be (and are) squeals of outrage every time someone is told "no longer in support."

 

[ElroyJetson]

You may also presume that they won't be quick to retire a system that is generating revenue, has low maintenance and operating commitments, and works well. Just as you can get many parts for radios that support officially ended for many years ago, as long as they have remaining stock, if the flashcode feature generator system is still a good revenue generator, why would they bother to shut it down?

I've heard of Motorola having new parts made after support offically ended because the order demand was great enough to justify it.

That's why you can still get Saber/Astro Saber batteries from Motorola, or at least you could last time I checked.

 

[Giddyuptd]

I have yet to see anything come with ucms that way minus occasional ucm on its own but they must go fast.

Being the pepper movement is picking up again the fpp is a thing and fast sell and they noticed apparently.

 

[Giddyuptd]

I recall somewhere on a private board seeing Panter having handful of APX stuff ways back. Don't recall specifics but I recall seeing his name. Can't say I've seen much of him around these days on the bay.

As I have heard, but have not been able to confirm, they almost all can be traced to a batch that got rained on in the Motorola factory in Malaysia a number of years ago due to a fire suppression sprinkler going off. All that stuff ended up in the hands of a Chinese seller going by Panter88 or Panter888 who then apparently did a good job of salvaging them, cranking the flashcode up to maximum overdrive, and started selling them. He his most likely the primary source for those radios, though they may now be sold by other vendors or at least the same vendors with different working names.

If the radio factory had been within the USA, odds are that they would have gone to the grinder, but being in Malaysia, the rules for handling the products must apparently be a bit more relaxed and so someone was allowed to acquire the radio parts in usable/repairable condition.