Batboard

Can someone give me a reason why people remove these? So what if the flash code doesn’t match and it was depot’ed? I don’t get the reasoning of taking it off.

There are usually on three reasons to remove a tag:

Stolen, recased or reframed, or never had one (ALT radios) to begin with. MOST APX on eBay are the latter.

I just see so many and it seems silly to me and if you break mother M doesn’t like a tagless radio

I've often thought about this. When I was at APCO in ORLANDO in the summer of 2016, while my friend was talking to the gal at the Moto booth, I was looking at the 8000's on the counter. With the title of this thread on my mind, & being curious, I decided to remove the batteries, & check out the tags. Guess what? None of the APX8000's that Motorola had on display had tags. I counted 6 radios before I quit removing batteries. So I am curious why Motorola radios that Motorola has on display at trade shows are "Tagless". Makes me go hhhmmmmmm. One explanation which is purely speculation by a large dealer was while these radios are made in Malaysia, the tags are put on the radios when they get to Chicago. The story is some of these radios, brand new in the box somehow slip out the back door at the factory in Malaysia. Since they never get to Chicago, they don't get tags, but are brand new, & not ALT radios. Again, this is what was told to me, but is pure speculation. But it sounds reasonable. There are way too many tagless 8000's around for them to have all been ALT radios. GARY.

All floor and trade show radios are tagless and usually 123ABC1234 serial. Only when a new radio is being delivered to a customer is it given a s/n and tag.

sjxts3000 wrote:All floor and trade show radios are tagless and usually 123ABC1234 serial. Only when a new radio is being delivered to a customer is it given a s/n and tag.

This is correct. A tagless radio from Malaysia, new or not, has not had final QC and a legit SN installed. It is still junk, suitable only for the ham bands. You can trace every single APX from the factory to its original sale point. The radios that have had SNs 'magically' installed don't pass the smell test when you run them through the system. As always, caveat emptor.

The other topic of "demo" radios often comes up. When a sales person is working a multi-million dollar deal with a large government agency, they'll surely flip a demo unit or two or three to the agency (mobile or portable). Usually, the demo units are tagged, legit radios... because let's face it, if it's going to be used in a production system environment in hopes of closing that "bring home the large bacon" sale, you better bet your last paycheck it had better work during that "demo"!

ALT and DEV are junk and ALWAYS tag-less. Factory trade show units aren't ALT/DEV and don't need to have every feature working or programmed...they just need to power up and maybe talk on a TAC frequency to others in the demo/show pool. Trade shows are mostly about the "touch and feel" and "set the hook"....schedule a customer visit, a more in-depth sales pitch with other stakeholders in the room. Your typical sales cycle.

If you look on Flea Bay, there's a half a dozen seller's with plenty of them. Most have no tags, & are priced from $4k, to $5k. The few with tags are $8k. Where do all of these tagless radios come from? Way too many to all be ALT radios. And you'd think Moto would have learned a lesson, & destroy them in house, rather than sell them to a scrapper, who flips them to Panther in China, & they work their way back here. GARY

Ok so hypothetical. I have an APX3k without tags and it breaks. I know M doesn't like taggless radios. Mine you can still see the sticky glue where they pealed the label off. will they even fix it?

OCSD117 wrote:Ok so hypothetical. I have an APX3k without tags and it breaks. I know M doesn't like taggless radios. Mine you can still see the sticky glue where they pealed the label off. will they even fix it?

There can only be one reason why a radio that had tags no longer does. GARY.

That is why you can run the non-volatile radio ID on the board to determine the shipped serial number and sold-to customer.

Run where?

N4KVE wrote:

OCSD117 wrote:Ok so hypothetical. I have an APX3k without tags and it breaks. I know M doesn't like taggless radios. Mine you can still see the sticky glue where they pealed the label off. will they even fix it?

There can only be one reason why a radio that had tags no longer does. GARY.

I've heard of some agencies removing the tag during the decommissioning process before sending them to surplus auction/electronics recycling/asset recovery. I have acquired a APX6000, that still has the tags on each side of the battery cavity, and has sticky residue where the main one used to be.

So while on the topic, I have a question. I have noticed 8000 serial numbers start with 579, & 581. I am trying to establish if factory built XE's start with 581, & factory built non XE's start with 579. Or if it's a roll of the dice. GARY.

So if someone sent one In For repair what would M do with it??

Probably fix it