[Motorola] Surplus Syntor X's on eBay

[Geoff Fors]

Scott,

It must be how you are searching eBay !  eBay discussions are off-topic for
this list so I don't want to get into the subject too deeply or more than
this one time, but I bought a VHF X9000 T73 drawer about two weeks ago from
a company which had a large quantity of them, for the minimum bid of $ 25,
and many of them went without bids !  This was just the drawer without the
baseplate, and the eproms were missing on the personality board (as usual.)
I could have had at least 5 or 6 more at that price.  He also had UHF X9000
drawers at the same opening bid.  There was no range stated on the UHF
drawers and I was afraid they were the 406-420 range FBI versions, so I
didn't bid on those.  If you want to contact me off-list I can rummage up
the seller's ID; I know he has a stack of unsold VHF T73 X9000 drawers
because I just talked to him on the phone last Friday morning.

I can't recall which frequency split VHF Range 2 is, and my manuals are at
work.  If range 2 is 130-150, those seem to be very rare.  A 150-174 range
works fine on 2 meters, but you have to retune the receiver front end
slightly, and sometimes the VCO won't lock that far down in frequency
without adding some pads to the stripline (see conversion reference on the
BatLabs website.)  This isn't that much work, I have converted many Syntor
X's to 2 meters and they work just fine.  On the X9000, I am not sure what
the RSS does when you try to enter 2 meter frequencies; it depends upon
which version you have, as I recall.

Which reminds me...tip of the day for Syntor X and 9000 radios.  If you have
a buzzing, high pitched sound superimposed on the audio when signals are
being received, tighten the torx screws with the plastic insulators under
their heads, in the vicinity of the front connector on the personality
board. When they work loose, they apparently cause the bypass capacitor
block on the data lines to lose ground contact.

Geoff Fors
WB6NVH