Hey, Before we get started, be sure to head over to ham Radio
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over nineteen thousand subscribers, where I like to send emails about upcoming events,
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videos. Once that list reaches twenty thousand, I will be doing a giveaway
of another HF radio sign up today and thank you for the support. This
is an Apex eight thousand Motorola clone by ham Geek. I found this on
eBay. It is not nearly the price of a Motorola Apex radio. It's
a dual band radio that's made in China right there, and I've been tinkering
around with it for the last, you know, the last couple hours today
just kind of get ready for the video. And I think it's got some
cool features to it. But if you're frustrated because Motorola radios are so expensive,
I'm gonna show this to you, which might be an alternative, but
I'm also going to tell you why I think it's probably worth maybe worth it
is not the right word, why motorolas are so expensive, and what value
you get over something like this stay tuned. So this is the Apex eight
thousand. This is really cool. I like the fact that it comes with
this device here that go on your belt clip and then this just drops down
in side of it like that and you can wear that on your belt clip
and then easily pull that out like that, easy access if you're you know,
if you've got a belt clip going on. So that was a cool
feature to it. Here, it's got the look of an Apex eight thousand
because it's got the screen here which you can turn it off and on like
that. So that's the screen there. Obviously, that's the buttons. It's
got an extra screen on top here like the Apex radios do, so that's
kind of fun. It's got a microphone right here so you can talk in
from this side, and it's got a microphone right here so you can talk
in from that side. And it's got dual PTT buttons right here. This
one will key the radio up and then this one will keep the same band
up. So I thought maybe one of them would control the top band and
one of them control the bottom band, but no, they're both. You
can see it says Maine right there on the bottom band, so they're both
controlling the bottom band. And that just means you can you can hold it
like that and look at this screen, or you can hold it like that
and look at this screen. This screen goes off after like two or three
seconds. You can't adjust the timeout on that. And I'll show you that
here in a second. It has a USB C programming port right here,
and it has a USB C port on the back of the battery to charge
the battery directly. I'm not sure if this programming port will charge the radio
or not. I kind of think it won't, but I haven't tried it
yet. Oh you're gonna have to get a wow that it did come with
the USB C cable. This white cable right there. I wonder if that'll
fit in there. Yeah, that does the fit. So the head of
this cable's too large to go in there. So let's see. Let's plug
this up and see if it might just be for programming. I don't know
why I else it would have two USB ports on it, so we turn
that on. It doesn't really show a charging indicator on the face of the
radio, so I'm guessing no, that's not going to charge it. But
if you plug it in back here. This will charge it and you'll have
a little indicator light right there that tows you it's charging. So no charging
indicator on the screen, nothing like that. But you can charge the battery
itself via USB C the cable that comes with it at least or makes me
a cable with a smaller head on it than that one. This is somewhat
waterproof because it comes with a small screwdriver that you can use right here to
take this battery off. This battery drops out. There's not an EFCC number
behind it, so I'm sure this thing's not really legit for sale. But
since Part ninety seven doesn't require a certified radio, you know, I can
use it if I want to. I programmed a few frequencies in it,
and quite frankly, I was surprised at how easy it was to program.
I was wondering if it would be something difficult to program, but honestly,
I thought it was pretty darn easy to program. But these are programmable buttons.
You can go into the menu here. Wow, that's loud. Okay,
So it's got forty six presets in here. SETP is your step,
so it'll go down to five Killer hurt steps. It will do the twelve
point five killer hurt steps, so that's good. It will not do two
point five killer hurt steps though I think I set mine at five. There
we go, squelch save transmit power. It claims that it will do twelve
watts. Here is the eBay page that I got it from. Ham Geek
Apex eighty twelve watt walkie talkie radio with dual PTT duplex working mode. That
means it works repeaters. I've yet to see a radio that is newer design
that won't work duplex offsets. That means when you key up, it keys
up an offset of plus or minus six hundred killer hurts for the two meter
band, or plus or minus five mega hurts for the full forty band,
or plus or plus five mega hurt for the GMRS band. I don't know.
I think that's just kind of a marketing gimmick there, But they do
advertise it as a twelve wat ht that's the little green screwdriver right there that
it comes with, and for one hundred bucks. One hundred bucks. And
I found this, and I'm like, you know, I'm poking around on
eBay looking at other stuff. I found this, and I'm like, okay,
I gotta try that. That just kind of looks really cool, So
we're going to give that a shot here in just a second and go through
the rest of the menu and transmit power. It does have a Roger b
p Hey, there you go, time out timer, VOX wide narrow voice.
You can turn this voice off, frequency and channel you can go in
here. I programmed this button on the side over here to change back between
a VFO and memory channels, so channel MDF. I don't know what that
does. You press that and it doesn't go anywhere. I didn't look at
the manual yet. Transmit and receive both CTCSS and dcs, so it's got
all that there. Offset direction for a repeater, offset direction, offset frequency
display setting. You can change it to single or double so you can display
both bands at the same time or one. Let's see language, it'll do
Chinese or English. It came in English. This is pretty cool. You
can turn the beep off right there. This is pretty cool. Display mode.
You can turn it to white so to do a white display. And
that's really bright right there. Most people these days like this night time.
They call it nighttime display. So I'm just planning on leaving mind right there.
But you have that option if you want it for whatever. Busy channel
lockout, vox delay s see revision lock mode auto auto lock the screen tone.
It'll do four different tones one hundred hertz, fourteen fifty, seventeen fifty
and twenty one hurts for subautible tones. PF one long press. That's this
button right here. It doesn't have a PF one short press menu. I
thought that was strange, but I didn't find that one in the menu at
all. PF two short press, which is the bottom button on the side
of it here. This is PF one. This is PF two, and
then PF two long press. So you can set all those there memory channel.
You can write to the memory channel from there, delete the channel,
repeater, switch repeater, RCT, scramble a compander, Okay. Frequency scan
of version version is one dot two dot two four three three zero this time
by time of this recording, and then you can reset the whole thing.
So I changed this one as a long press to go. We're in uh,
yeah, I think that's VAFO mode right there. Oh we're on the
bottom band. Yeah, so we're in VFO mode. So I can long
press this and go to channel mode. This channel one, two, three,
and four that I programmed in here myself. These are local two meter
repeaters to me, I can hold this down again, tell me the channel
number. I don't know some people might like to see that. I don't
find that useful myself. Hold it down again, and it changes back to
a channel mode again, and I'm like, I don't know the difference.
Maybe if you were to put there's not a way to put a name into
the radio unless it's done via software. There's not a way to do it
in the menu that I've found yet. And then if you go to this
one, it changes to channel mode and it has the menu down here at
the bottom has the frequency display just like right there next to it. So
I guess it tells you you can tell which band it on. And it's
kind of main right there that'll tell you which band it on. But I
don't know why it would list it down there again. Maybe if you have
a name right here, then it'll tell you what the frequency is right there.
So this is a different display option, which is kind of fun,
but that's what it is. What it looks like right there. I want
to put it on the meter and put it on the tiny SA and see
what it looks like. Okay, I have this hooked up to my MFJ
eight four to nine meter. Probably going to be changing this meter out soon
for one of the intelletron meters. This was donated to me by a NFJ
a long time ago. So I've got five to two and four four six
dot zero. I tried to transmit on on the two twenty band. This
radio is locked out of the two twenty bands, so it won't transmit there,
but it will transmit on gmrs. It's advertised as twelve blats. It's
not quite doing that much. We're gonna go with the one five twenty band
at first two meters simplex, so it's doing about seven and a half watts
right there. SWR looks good going into a dummy load and no problem there.
You can see it fluctuating. That's fine. It's only got two power
settings, low and high. And if I go in here to transmit power
and that's high and that's low there back there, transmit here there, it's
about three and a half watts on low power and about seven and a half
watts on high power. That's not bad. Seven and a half watts.
Most hts will do five to five to eight watts something like that, So
seven and a half to eight watts is not bad, but it's not the
advertised twelve watts that it says it is. However, on the four forty
band, I got much better results. Here's what we're doing on four forty
six dot three dot zero, all right, so we're gonna do about nine
and a half watts there. Okay, I found this out the hard way.
If I go down to four to three six and key up, it's
there's your twelve watts right there, almost thirteen watts. Twelve and a half,
almost thirteen watts on four thirty six, which is inside of the ham
radio band, and that's where a lot of data transmissions go. A lot
of times your hot spots, maybe your Sherry All Star or your PI Star
stuff will go down there or something like that. So okay, that's still
inside the amateur radio band. I'm gonna go to four six two five five
zero and uh right there, and I'm gonna key that up, and it
does ten and a half almost eleven watts, well, just over ten watts.
In the GMRS section of the band, So it does lower power on
the four forty six or four forty one. I tested both for forty six
and forty four four forty one. It does lower power on both of those
bands than it does And that's where the FM. The FM portion of the
four forty amateur radio band is four four zero to four five zero four four
zero to four four nine nine nine five or something like that. Most of
your repeaters are in that range. You can do FM down around four three
seven four to three eight four three six something like that. My own personal
Shehrry note is on four to three seven five five simplex, So you can
do FM down there, especially if it's low power and whatnot. But you
know, most of your repeaters are going to be four forty or higher.
So it's actually doing less power in that section of the band than it is
elsewhere. Okay, so that's that it does not do the advertised twelve watts,
but well, it doesn't do the advertised twelve wats on two meters for
sure, But I don't know, man, I mean, I think that's
pretty still pretty darn good because it's seven and a half watts on two meters
and uh ten ish watts on four forty and then of course you can.
You can do tennish watts on GMRS if you want to. I'm not saying
you should. I'm not saying I advise it, but you know that's yeah,
you can you if you did it, I'm not gonna come back.
I'm not gonna come knocking on your door saying, hey, you shouldn't be
doing that. I don't really care. All right, let's put it on
the tiny essay and see what happens. While I get this set up,
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current situation. If you can only run some like five inch coacts, then
do that or five five millimeters coactres shou'd say Messi emplomies from Italy. That's
how they're measured in millimeters. They have airborne five and the five means five
millimeter. They have ultraflex and hyperflex seven and ten. I think the ten
milimeter is a little bit harder to come by, but the five millimeter is
easier to run in like a vehicle application. The seven milimeter is a little
bit larger, a little bit thicker, a little bit lower loss in longer
runs. And that's what typically I would recommend for somebody setting up a base
station. Set it up one time and you don't have to mess with it
anymore. Mezzimplombe comacs. You can always get a twenty percent discount with the
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thank you Mezi Emplomenting for supporting this channel. What I'm have to do is
make sure this thing is on low power. I don't want to push ten
or twelve watts into this tiny essay. So we're on the uh, we're
on the bottom band right now. Let's now, let's start on the top
bandle start on twos two meters is where most of these radios are dirty,
and then on two twenty and four for the ones that will do two twenty
they're usually a lot cleaner on those bands. Than the R and two meters.
So I suspect this one is going to be Okay, it's on low
power already. I suspect this one is going to be dirty on two meters
like the rest of them are. So let's go to measure harmonic dot five
to two megahurts mega hurts, and then we'll go over here and we'll go
to level minus forty times one. Okay, there we go, and now
we're going to key up and let it do its thing. Yeah, so
you can see three harmonics already four uh number one there, that's where it
should be, and that's that's it's doing exactly what it should do. On
that first harmonic right there, which is one forty six top five, it's
raving one forty six top five right there. The third and the fourth harmonic
kind of went away after a couple of seconds, after maybe four or five
seconds, the second harmonic is down here at negative just over negative twenty,
maybe like negative eighteen. That's not terrible. FCC regulations dictate that it should
be around negative forty, so that is not terrible to do. So after
holding it down for you know, probably thirty forty seconds, now it's still
down there. So that's not terrible. That's one of the cleaner signals I've
seen coming out of an HT from China. So not where it should be,
but not horrible either. So I feel what I feel, okay,
transmitting with that on one forty six top five to two. I mean,
it's only like seven watts like we saw. It's not like we're transmitting several
hundred watts. All right, let's go down here to the bottom band and
four to sixty two dot five to five, which is the inside of the
GMRS band, And again we're going into a dummy low guys, we're not
actually transmitting outside of the of the of the of the shack really two dot
five five megahertz. And then we'll go back over here to level minus forty
times one. Okay, and I'm going to make sure I'm on low power
here. I'm on high power, so I don't want that low power on
four to forty and there we go right there. Actually four sixty two.
Technically it's not even supposed to be transmitting on this band because it's not a
GMRS radio. Since it's from out overseas and outside of the USA, it
does not have an FCC stamp on it. We can use this stuff in
amateur radio because we have experimenter's license, but GMRS is more stringent than that.
Okay, so we got the first harminic there. That's that's where it
should be. That's what we should be seeing over there. Number one on
the right or on the left weather Number two is around negative ten, and
then number four is around negative about almost negative ten also, okay, number
two went away. Number four is at like one point four eighty six gigahertz
right now it's transmitting. It's a negative ten, so it's got a little
bit of spurs in there. It's not terrible. It's not the cleanest signal
I've seen on GMRS. Though. Let's go to for forty one zero zero
zero. I'm gonna go back here, measure harmonic, and we're gonna key
up on that. We're still on low power, so we're fine there.
Now I expect to see it's probably not gonna be a huge difference between four
for one and four six two. See a little bit of spur over here,
that's not a big deal. Number two spurs coming way up there.
Number two spurs almost it's zero that's dropping down now negative ten again, it
should be at negative forty way down here, way down there, way down
there. Okay, it dropped off after a few seconds, maybe ten or
twelve seconds. It dropped off. It's got this little itty bitty one over
here, which is might not even be accurate two point nine to eight gigahertz.
Okay, Now overall that that's a fairly clean signal. Really, I
mean for one hundred dollars Chinese radio, that's not bad. So I was
honestly expecting to see a lot worse than that, because this is a total
knockoff of a Motorola APEX eight thousand radio. Actually, the Apex eight thousand,
if I'm not mistaken, will also transmit on the seven to eight hundred
megahertz band for public safety, so it'll do. There's several different versions of
it, and I don't have all the Apex you got. You Motorola guys
can comment on and make a comment in the chat if you want to,
in the video if you want to. There's several different versions of handheld Moltorolas.
Some of them will do VHF and seven eight hundred megahertz. Some of
them will do UHF and seven hundred and eight meg hurts, and I think
the eight thousand series is actually triband it'll do vhf uhf and seven eight hundred
megahertz. And those radios are full open transmitter on all bands because they're part
ninety. But the thing you're gonna notice with this radio is the rejection what
they call d sense, what they call front end overload. Here a little
bit of static in that. That's the UIs repeater for four to two dot
nine hundred and I can hit that repeater from low power pretty much anywhere around
my house, so it's got a little bit of static. In case five
HBB testing, it didn't even come back to me that time, So the
received sensitivity is not as good, and it's picking up a lot of noise
outside noise. I was walking around the house and it would break the squelch
every now and then from just walking around picking up RFI from various sources,
which I have some RIFI in my house, But if I use my Yazu
icon kinwood or my any tone hts out here in the shack, I don't
really notice any of that. Some of the lower end hts, the lower
end fangs or the lower end tied radios or something like that. Some of
those kind of squawk every now and then because they have not as good of
what's called de sense rejection or harmonics rejection on their receiver. And that's where
you're going to find a top notch radio in a moltorolok. Granted, most
people don't want to pay several thousand dollars for a five to ten watt handheld
radio. I don't blame you. I don't own an APEX. If I
ever find one for a really good price, I might pick one up,
but I've never bought one because they're really expensive. They're good radios, some
of the best radios as far as clean signal, receiver sensitivity and distance,
because you can talk farther if you can hear farther, so you transmit a
cleaner signal farther and you receive a cleaner signal because of the sensitivity of these
radios. But you know, for a hundred bucks, that's not bad.
I might have this on my belt walking around Daytonham Vention, which is next
week at the time of this recording. This video won't post beforehand vention.
But if you see this and you're curious about it, put a comment below
let me know that you came up to me and says what is that?
I don't even know what that is. Thanks for watching today, Guys seventy three