[Motorola] Awful radios

[Glen Zook]

The GE "TPL" was well known as the "toilet paper line"
within the two-way radio industry.  They worked fine
until you had to make a repair.  The boards were
connected together (and there were several layers of
printed circuit boards used in the TPL) with very
small gauge wire and those wires had a tendency to
break just as soon as the hardware that held the
circuit boards in place was loosened.  Usually you had
to replace all of the wires with a heavier gauge in
order to get the radio back together.

The Pacer was a tube type radio built on a single
circuit board that was supported on the edges only. 
Because of the weight of the various tubes and
transformers this board was very likely to break in
the middle the first time the vehicle went over a
large "bump".  After repairing all of the breaks in
the circuits, if one wedged some cardboard under the
center of the circuit board, then the units would
survive in a mobile.  However, unless you immediately
added cardboard to support the board you could expect
these units to come back in with a broken board within
less than 3 months after first being installed.

I worked for the Motorola Service Station in Atlanta,
Georgia, my junior year at Georgia Tech (April 1965 -
April 1966).  Atlanta Communications was located right
on the edge of campus.  Went to work directly for
Motorola my senior year and then owned the Motorola
reconditioned equipment center for the south-central
U.S. in the Dallas, Texas, area from 1970 until they
went out of that "end" of the business in 1979. 
Whenever we got a TPL in for service the procedure was
to ship it down to the Macon, Georgia, shop which was
owned by Atlanta Communications where the shop manager
had been with General Electric for a number of years. 
Every time we did this the manager would threaten to
quit!  He had quit General Electric because of all of
the TPL units that he had to work on!  However, the
manager would repair the unit and send it back to Atlanta.

Glen, K9STH

Website:  http://k9sth.com



 
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