AnyTone (The TERMN-8R manufacturer) is awaiting final details from FCC before releasing more TERMN-8Rs to sales/distribution channels. They expect this to be resolved very soon. If you have a TERMN-8R(s) ordered, we'll ship them as soon as they hit our shop.
Grenadier1 sent over his review of the radio, posted below. We appreciate gear reviews from serious Patriots.
~~
The Three Percent
society kindly provided me with a sample of the Termn-8r to do a review. I have
had the device for a couple of weeks now and this is my thoughts on the general
impression of the device and its performance.
Initial impression
Out of the box the unit is impressive. Its construction
seems solid and rugged. You can feel that while this device is plastic it is a
thick resistant plastic and I suspect it will sustain heavy use and treatment.
It is not a water proof unit so keep that in mind. I think that would be the
next step for Any Tone and one area I think they could improve on. The unit
includes a battery, charger, antenna of the short rubber ducky style and a
cheap ear piece. The battery and charger are pretty straight forward although
one feature not normally found, is that you can obtain a second battery and it
will rest and charge in the charger without the radio attached. This allows you
to charge one while operating with the other. That’s a little touch but I like
it.
Lay out of the controls is well thought out. The keypad is
easy to operate and I found it large enough to work with a pair of gloves on.
Drawing from other radio designs the Termn-8r places channel select, volume and
power on pot switches arranged on the top of the unit. This allows for easy
operations while the unit is in a pouch or clipped to a belt. Very much in line
with the commercial or industrial use this unit may find itself in. There is
also on the top of the radio a small “emergency” button. This can be configured
via software to transmit an emergency message to other devices in the same talk
groups. Again a nice little feature that could prove useful.
The PTT button is large and easy to key and slightly below
it lie two additional push buttons that are user programmable. This is a good
feature and the configurations are pretty wide. You can set one up to be a PTT
for your second channel allowing you to monitor and talk on two different
channels without fear of inadvertent cross talk.
The headset and mike cable are the Kenwood type two pin
connector. This was a good choice as it is consistent with other low cost units
on the market and many users will already own accessories that will mate up
with the Termn-8r.
Operation
After unpacking and assembling the unit I powered it up. The
display is clear and well lit. The key pad is back-lit as well so this will
facilitate operation in low light conditions. You can configure the unit to
display in a number of different ways. I set up the display to show the alphanumeric
designations from the memory banks so that I could see the repeater
designations. The display can show frequency, or alphanumeric names of the
channels. Since this unit is capable of operating in various transmission modes
the configurations can also be set to lock out changes to settings. This means
that if you configure the unit as a commercial radio on a commercial license
that it can be locked to only function on the set frequency and settings that
you configure via software and cannot be modified in the field. While this
might seem silly to the average operator, it's vital for commercial operations.
This could be useful in a grid down setting to keep the units configured to a
set range so that inexperienced users cannot inadvertently “brick” the radio.
Most non radio people can understand “turn it on and push the talk button to
call”. They don’t have a clue when you start to get into picking new
frequencies and tones.
The TERMN-8R is capable of multiple frequency bands
including Short wave. Air bands AM/FM commercial radio, 2M and 70cm amateur
bands and weather radio. These are all set from the main keypad with normal
power up operation.
The other modes of transmission are selected at power up so
that you can chose to operate on the GMRS and MURS bands with the required
limitations of those modes hard coded into the unit. This is different than
other low cost units on the market and prevents you from doing scans of all the
bands in long continuous sweeps. That could be a problem for some users but I
think the other benefits of the device offset that configuration. As I
mentioned the scanning of channels I will touch on that here. Its fast, at
least faster than my other handheld. The speed can be adjusted so that you can
set it to the level you want.
Transmission and reception is good. I had no issues hitting
my local repeater. I have been able to reach a few other repeaters that were
not accessible using my other low cost handheld. I currently lack equipment to
really give the transmission and reception capabilities a good test so I can
only speak from practical application but its to be expected that given similar
set ups that a little more output power will be a benefit.
Programing
The software for the device is available from the Any Tone
website so I downloaded it to a laptop. I have a programing cable for another
radio that will work with this unit so I attempted to program a configuration.
I had issues with this. I could not get the radio to talk to the software even
following the instructions in the user manual. I intend to keep working with
this and trying different options, however I wanted to get the local repeaters
programed into the radio so I downloaded the latest version of CHIRP which has
upgraded to work with the Any Tone units. Very quickly I was up and working and
had the radio talking and uploading a configuration. Now CHIRP does not seem to
control the vast number of options that the Any Tone software is set up to
configure so I would recommend getting the manufacturer package to function if
you can.
At this point I will touch on the big potential of this
radio when we first read the spec sheets. FHSS. For those who are not aware
FHSS or Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum is a technique to prevent unwanted
surveillance of your conversation. Essentially it has the radio hopping across
a spectrum of frequencies in a pattern controlled by a mathematical algorithm.
Unless your radio has the same code set as a transmitting radio you will not be
able to pick up the conversation. It takes very sophisticated gear, as in
military grade SIGINT gear to pick up on the hopping. So this is a potentially
good thing and something that had me really looking into this radio. Well
unfortunately I can't find the information in the otherwise very good user
manual on how to configure this option. There are mentions of it and options in
the menus to enable it but it is not clear if this is actually taking place or
what frequencies the radio is utilizing. The manual says the frequencies are set
via the software although I have yet to see where this option is at. Reading around on the internet tells me that
this FHSS option is not really functioning like the name would imply and that
something else is going on. The jury is still out on this and I am still
working on getting it configured.
Conclusions
So out of the box the Termn-8R is a very fine radio. I think
it is in the top of the class for the inexpensive Chinese handhelds. The
inclusion of multiple bands and dual monitoring along with a host of other
features are worth the additional costs associated with purchase. While I do
think that there is work to be done by Any Tone I think over all the unit is
solid. I would like to see the issue with the FHSS cleared up and corrected. I
would like to see water and dust protection on the device and I would like to
see the cost drop down to sub $100.00 on this unit. I think that would position
the radio at a very good spot in the market. The radio is easy to use and while
I did experience some issues programing the unit via software I was able to do
set ups manually and with a non OEM software as a workaround. I fully expect to
clear up the software issues since it very well could be my machine or some
step I am missing. Your experience may be better in that regard.
So is this unit a must have? No I think there are other
units out there that will do the job, however I think cost and complexity of
the units matter with first time buyers. I would have no issue recommending
this unit to a new Ham or a preparedness group looking to standardize. It has a
group of features that I think are good to have in a single unit. It’s a rather
straight forward unit to operate and it will interface with other lower cost
radios like GMRS and MURS.
On a 1 to 10 scale I would rate it a solid 8.
- Grenadier1
~~
