This came as part of an e-mail from our local ham club.  Any ideas about this? 

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This was received from AAA4RD regarding drivers accompanying those
inexpensive Chinese import VHF/UHF handy-talkies:

A Dangerous Bargain

Gary Geissler, a Colorado-based IT specialist and high-tech advisor to
Army MARS, sends this caution about a dangerous bargain in the ham radio
marketplace.

The best buy these days in handheld transceivers are the ones from Hong
Kong. The HTs are being purchased by amateurs, public service providers,
and others in government organizations. Some versions have FCC and
other type acceptance.

The transceivers sell for a fraction of the price of comparable units
from the big three yet can work all the amateur and public service
frequencies from the civil aircraft band to the top of the public
service UHF band. They have many memories and features and can be
programmed from a PC. Powered by big lithium ion batteries (included)
they are a steal for $55.00.

Or so it would seem.

I work for Digital Globe Incorporated. As our corporation is an
important government contractor we are working with the USG to resolve
issued as they appear with regard to computer and Internet security.
The software tools we use are among the strongest available anywhere
(and as a result, the most intrusive and painful!)

So when I put the tiny driver CD that came with my [Chinese] handheld
transceiver's programming cable into a machine to scan it I had no idea
that the disk would pull an immediate alert. The alert was so strong
that I could not go any further and determine contents, files, names of
virus, and so forth.

The CD was given to our computer security department. They will process
it and forward the results to their USG contact. This is only the second
time I have seen an alert this strong. The other time (last week
actually) was while downloading a .pdf research paper from a university
researcher's site.

Lest anyone think otherwise, we are under attack. One might suspect
that the "real" object of the exercise with regard to the very low cost
of the Hong Kong HTs is the unseen present on the CDs. I'm not a
conspiracy theory sort of guy; we can talk more about this at some
point.



I might suggest a neutrally worded warning to destroy any driver CDs
that come with Hong Kong HTs; the Prolific USB/RS-232 drivers are
available at no charge from US sites and the public domain open source
CHIRP software is more than adequate for programming the radios in any
event.


Gary AAR8GI

Man I am glad it's not just me..I was really looking forward to this one, and I am not entirely sure it is the band conditions.  I hear several beacons most of the time,  but as for contacts..nada.  Nothing heard..no replies to CQs and overall it is like everyone just gave up!

Went down a little to the CB bands and those guys are a hoot.  They are actually having fun.  What's happened to our hobby?

Sad.

What exactly does this mean?

"...the end of the line for these radio happens at 0000 hours on 1 January 2013..."

I am hearing that the old Motorola HTs and mobiles are becoming more scarce.  Is this because of the upcoming narrowbanding requirement?  Folks are snapping them up.  they are really solid radios and would be great to repurpose into the amateur field.

Fellas.  The RSS software is no longer supported by Motorola.  You can usually find a copy of it floating arund somewhere..don't know that I would trust the "Russian" site..but it might be worth a try.  I do have the RSS on a machine formerly owned by a Moto service tech.  He tossed it, and I got it..now...question IS it imperative to have a separate RIB box to get the software to pass the COM port test?  I could find a "ribless" version that has a battery connector on a wire coming from the serial plug..but it doesn't seem to work.  I can successfully program an HT1000 with this computer so I know the serial port works.  Do I. Need to get the RIB cable for the HT600 and attach that to the external RIB box for this to work?  I have a nice slow Toshiba 286 running MSDOS 6.2

Okay I hae a 2m rig that can decode CTCSS tones..but if one is travelling around the country..it's not as easy to scan for nearby repeaters to talk with som e locals..at least not as easy as it used to be.  Repeaters that use CTCSS seem closed.  Do they not want me to check in and say howdy?  Is there a setting on a radio that would recieve the tone, then TRANSMIT it back in order to use the repeater?  OR do I have to carry a repeater guide with me everywhere?

If there is such a rig..can you let me know what it would be, and how to program it?  OR do they all do that, but must be programmed to do so?

jeff@jefflaurence.com
KB4RIZ