VX-900 review (ongoing with time)

[radio259]

I work for a radio shop, and I also use both the vhf and uhf vx 900 in firefighting. I have sold quite a lot of the 900;s to police and fire.

I have one fire chief who want to place the radio somewhere on me the sun does not frequent. His complaint, when he gets hit by a charged hand line, the speaker mike get garbles and other fire fighters cannot under stand him.

Problem is, when we did the same thing to a HT1000, HT1250, and TK 290, they did the same thing. One mike ended up in the trash.

My fire company has 4 vx900's, looking to buy more. We have gotten them soaked, and no problem.

But the chief mentioned above, likes to run the speaker mike over and around his head to have it hang down by the cord.

Any thoughts???


PB

[firephoto39]

The VX-900 is still performing well here. It's been dropped, got wet, been thru a typical life as a volunteer fire dept. radio that goes everywhere with you. It does page off randomly when a certain voice of a dispatcher comes over, guess she "speaks our tone" lol.

I had a programming key built for it, apparently the programming key for the federal model (USFS) is wired different that what a regular VX-900 needs for programming. It's just a normal accessory connector with a small push button where the cable would normally come out. It came in quite usefull when I needed to add a freq on a recent incident.

We're waiting to see if we recieve a federal grant for more radios, and if we get it we're planning on buying a combination of VX-900's and VX-180's or maybe the new 32 channel model (VX-420 ?).

We've also bough some VX-3200 mobiles too and they're working great too.

[radio259]

We sold two VX 4200 UHf to a police department who only spokeof the big "M". Now all of the syntor xx900's are being swapped out for 4200"'s.

Personnally, I beleive most of todays' equipment has its quirks. We see and hear problems will all brands.

The three year warenty, and cost of the Vertex has been a huge asset to our sales.

With the average life around here of a portable being 4-5 years for police and fire, why not have 2/3rd's of its life under warenty??

Plus they are reasonablly easy to program. ( Except that paging stuff).

PBN

[firephoto39]

I put some pics up of my programming key here.
* page isn't on my site anymore. here's the pics. *20080117*


VX900 key


VX900 key


VX900 key


I believe it was the one you can order for the USFS model VX900 but it didn't have one of the needed pins so my dealer moved a pin and made it so the button connects pin 3 & 7 when it is pushed. He might have used a replacement data cable end but I'm not sure or don't remember. It had long brass thumb screws in it when I got it but I replaced those with the short thumb screws out of my speaker mic.

You push the button and hold the PTT and LAMP (bottom button) when you turn it on to get into field programming mode.

*edit 2007-06-07, saw some hits on the old page that doesn't exist anymore.
*edit 20080117 pics...

[Tom in D.C.]

I haven't posted here for a long time and in that time I've managed to convert both of my VX900s to touchpad operation. I had gotten both units from a dealer as demos and they were the plain-front radios, which are a pain because you really need easy-to-operate front programmable buttons which you get with the touchpad addition.

The cost of two conversion kits was a bit more than $60.00 total for both, and the job took about fifteen minutes on each radio. Remember to also order replacement speakers for each radio because you probably won't be able to reuse the existing speakers. The only touchy part was installing each speaker, which you have to line up and then glue in place. All of the internal pads, lamps, etc. are already on the radio. When you're done, go to the RSS and reset/reassign the button controls and you're in business.

After almost two years of VX900 (V and U) use I swear by these radios.

Tom in D.C.
W2NJS