Remember the days of pallet loads of cheap FM 900's?

VK3TCX · Post by **VK3TCX** » Fri May 02, 2014 9:34 am

Was speaking to a CFA (Victoria) tech earlier this week; back in the 90's when they moved from FM900's to the Motorola MTS/MCS series radios, many, many very cheap surplus 900's got many a new ham on air. Not so it seems with the surplus Motorolas resulting from the current move to TAIT digital radios.

Appearently holes will be drilled though them in selected spots, the radios crushed, and ???>>> landfill. A shame for such beautifully versatile easily programmable 2m capable radios IF this is in fact to be their fate, and their numbers are in the many thousands, both MCS and MTS series.

I stress I have only just heard this and only from one (appearently well placed) source.

Please someone tell me I am mistaken???? I would love to be in error on this one.

Cheers

Ian
vk3tcx

VK2AAH · Post by **VK2AAH** » Fri May 02, 2014 9:38 am

That was the approach taken in NSW... people also need to bear in mind that some surplus radios present a security risk to the government networks. On that basis you can understand why they are being permanently "disabled".

Cheers

Richard
VK2AAH

VK3LAJ · Post by **VK3LAJ** » Fri May 02, 2014 12:03 pm

I heard they were being shipped overseas to places like Indonesia for use by them ?

VK4TI · Post by **VK4TI** » Fri May 02, 2014 12:26 pm

VK3LAJ wrote:I heard they were being shipped overseas to places like Indonesia for use by them ?

I heard there is no Santa , you have any evidence relating to your assertion ?

VK3LAJ · Post by **VK3LAJ** » Fri May 02, 2014 12:30 pm

My bro-in-law is captain of the local CFA.

VK3NFI · Post by **VK3NFI** » Fri May 02, 2014 1:10 pm

The cost for an employee to sit and program 1000's of radios to remove the frequencies wouldn't be viable for the effort.
So its fully understandable why this would happen.

VK4WDM · Post by **VK4WDM** » Fri May 02, 2014 1:28 pm

Exactly the same happens with military radios, even the stuff that is still analog and have no EPROMs etc to de-bug. To much of a risk of people injuring themselves, or others with it, or it falling into the "wrong hands."

73

Wayne VK4WDM

VK2AVR · Post by **VK2AVR** » Fri May 02, 2014 1:28 pm

VK3NFI wrote:The cost for an employee to sit and program 1000's of radios to remove the frequencies wouldn't be viable for the effort.
So its fully understandable why this would happen.

yep. When we retire "perfectly capable" computers at work, the hard drives get removed and have a drill bit put through them several times. It's just not worth the labour involved in sanitising used goods for reuse. Letting them go with proprietary information still on them is of course completely stupid, so the commercial realities are obvious. Destroy them.

VK5ZD · Post by **VK5ZD** » Fri May 02, 2014 7:24 pm

VK2AVR wrote:Letting them go with proprietary information still on them is of course completely stupid, so the commercial realities are obvious. Destroy them.

I can quite understand why this is done for disk drives, but radios? It's not like the frequencies they operate on are some big secret and, if somebody really wanted to operate illegally on those frequencies, there are plenty of radios available from China that will do the job. Just a symptom of the times we live in, I guess.

VK5KK · Post by **VK5KK** » Sat May 03, 2014 7:10 am

Unfortunately the safety net "better safe than sorry". The previous misuse of surplus trunking/digital radios would have sealed this one. Have seen electronics buried by the tonne (US) simply as the most cost effective way to make sure it never sees the light of day again. It does hurt when it's good RF gear like NEC 40 watt 14 ghz TWT's buried at airfields

Some items like rendered microwave systems do find their way somehow to obscure metal recyclers as they fell out of the system. Keep an eye out .. And auction houses still seem to get older tech radios but usually private lots. On that note Bah humbug on the tech with enough time to cold chisel each and every SMA connector off the modules in a recent find though !!

Cheers

David VK5KK

VK2AAH · Post by **VK2AAH** » Sat May 03, 2014 8:31 am

Can you imagine the front page headline now "Police Jammed by Police Radio sold on EBay"? Can you imagine the recriminations when it becomes known that radios disposed of by a state government are then used to interfere with that government's network? Don't laugh... it already happens. What Motorola has done is the only responsible way to deal with radios that are life expired but still very capable. If someone chooses to bring radios in from overseas and illegally uses them on a trunking network- that is a different story. There will always be a few who think doing things like that is clever...

Cheers

Richard
VK2AAH

VK3ZFS · Post by **VK3ZFS** » Wed May 07, 2014 4:46 pm

some geat might be on lease or managed service, its prob the least headake to scrap the gear unable to be used again, I see the logic.

VK3ZAZ · Post by **VK3ZAZ** » Wed May 07, 2014 5:29 pm

Almost as good as the truck loads of TRPA's bound for simms metals after analog sw off and the silent sentinals lying dormant on mountain tops all aound Australia.
500 sites some transmitters have 30 PAs in them CH0 thru CH11
Mowbullan CH0 PAS
Ulandra CH0
Mawson WA 5A
Other sites dozens of CH1 and CH2 all can work on ham bands.

Ewaste

VK2HRX · Post by **VK2HRX** » Wed May 07, 2014 10:23 pm

Suppers of new equipment rarely want to stimulate, support or otherwise encourage the second hand market. Motorola for example trades this stuff in for this very reason.

Makes perfect commercial sense

VK5HP · Post by **VK5HP** » Thu May 08, 2014 11:44 am

They have just changed us over to the digtal Grn network. Wonder where all the old ones went

VK4TIM · Post by **VK4TIM** » Thu May 08, 2014 12:24 pm

VK5HP wrote:They have just changed us over to the digtal Grn network. Wonder where all the old ones went

Did you guys have the XTL2500s before or are they the new radios?
Earlier this year we just decomissioned a (non Gov) Moto smartnet network following a migration to Tetra.
We sent boxes of Moto XTL2500s back to their original supplier in TSV. I don't know their fate, but they looked like very solid radios. Typical Moto. Brick dunny construction.

VK5HP · Post by **VK5HP** » Thu May 08, 2014 1:06 pm

They have just fitted all the xlt 2500 earlier this year, theyy where the upgrades

, the switch over to digtal was a few weeks ago . These radios do both anoluge and digtal .

Big difference in signal quality now, no noise .

VK5PJ · Post by **VK5PJ** » Thu May 08, 2014 1:19 pm

Hi Richard,
I might be completely off track here but I thought that a digital / trunking radio had to be pre-registered on the network before it would work?

VK2AAH wrote:Can you imagine the front page headline now "Police Jammed by Police Radio sold on EBay"? Can you imagine the recriminations when it becomes known that radios disposed of by a state government are then used to interfere with that government's network? Don't laugh... it already happens. What Motorola has done is the only responsible way to deal with radios that are life expired but still very capable. If someone chooses to bring radios in from overseas and illegally uses them on a trunking network- that is a different story. There will always be a few who think doing things like that is clever...
Cheers Richard VK2AAH

In my ignorance and hence the question about this, that part of the disposal process would be to deregister the radio from the network controller and then it can not participate in the trunking system? Maybe you can set me straight on that as I get asked questions about the S.A network that the local Country Fire use (GRN) and have always answered "I do not know" so am willing to learn a bit.

regards,
Peter, vk5pj

VK3BA · Post by **VK3BA** » Thu May 08, 2014 11:58 pm

VK3LAJ wrote:I heard they were being shipped overseas to places like Indonesia for use by them ?

Yeah, nah. Some went elsewhere back into other commercial service. Otherwise, if you were quick enough in recent times, you would've put your hands on some...

Nice rigs, voting func and especially the front-ends on these things in heavy.busy RF areas...

Cheers,

VK2AAH · Post by **VK2AAH** » Fri May 09, 2014 9:04 pm

Hi Peter,

Current Australian P25 networks only depend on the radio ID number being correctly registered. That ID number can be programmed, dishonestly, into other radios by irresponsible/disreputable persons. Networks currently try to limit the possibility of this by (a) ensuring existing radios are "locked down" using a hardware key that is restricted to authorised persons, and (b) trying to limit the available supply of unlocked radios. The new SA GRN network is, I believe, capable of supporting the next level of security- "Authentication"- but isn't there yet. Authentication looks at the radio's hardware serial number- when that happens it will make it harder for unauthorised radios to be cloned... it is getting there (slowly).

If there are two radios with the same ID number it will be the last radio to register that the network will track and the first radio will appear to work but will be off the network until the other radio is switched off (or it is switched off & then back on)...

Cheers

Richard
VK2AAH

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Remember the days of pallet loads of cheap FM 900's?

Remember the days of pallet loads of cheap FM 900's?

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In the end its all toxic e waste.

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