[Motorola] Was Encoder, Now MICOR and Channel Elements....

[Eric Lemmon]

Walter,

Part of the problem is that most state agencies don't dispose of their
surplus radios through an Amateur Radio club- they just dump them into an
electronic recycler's scrap bin.  Government agencies, the military in
particular, actually "de-mil" such equipment by crushing with a bulldozer or
beating it with a sledgehammer until it has no intact parts.  Unless there
is a person with screening authority to divert the radios where they can be
converted to Amateur use, many if not most of them are not salvageable after
being reduced to broken scrap.

Does your agency make any attempt to let Ham clubs and MARS units acquire
surplus radio equipment?  What happened to the 20 radios you just excessed?

73, Eric Lemmon WB6FLY
 

-----Original Message-----
From: motorola-bounces at mailman.qth.net
[mailto:motorola-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of Walter Howard
Sent: Friday, January 02, 2009 1:20 PM
To: Discussion of equipment manufactured by Motorola
Subject: Re: [Motorola] Was Encoder, Now MICOR and Channel Elements....

Spectra's are NOT capable of narrowband.
AstroSpectra's are.
 
And 'narrowbanded' MICOR's will not be on the NTIA acceptable equipment
list.
 
John; I don't understand your comment about the MastrII's being hard to
find.
There are TONs of perfectly usable MII's coming out of commercial service.
 
My agency just sent 20 to surplus, and we'll be sending over 100 more from
various state agencies in the next 3 years.
And I know we're not the only ones. 
 
WalterH


2009/1/1 K0DAN <k0dan at comcast.net>


	Hi John...
	 
	Well, I feel you pain. Didn't know MARS was madated to do the
narrowbanding...at least (so far?) you haven't also been forced to go to
P25.
	 
	Well I don't know if those MICRos are gonna be any good to you for
narrowbanding. And they sure won't take you down a P25 path. Kind of a shame
the old "boatcanchor" land mobile stuff is being forced out of service, but
it has certainly paid its dues and been around for 20-30 years. Must have
been similar when they shifted from 50 khz to 25 khz FM.
	 
	Still, there's plenty of programmable MAXTRAC, RADIUS, SPECTRA,
etc., which can do narrowband. Maybe not as cheap (free) as a pile of old
junked out MICORs, but at least is prety easy to work on and has a decent
future life expectancy.
	 
	Good luck with your project!
	 
	73
	k0dan
	
	 

		----- Original Message ----- 
		From: Johnjewkes at aol.com 
		To: motorola at mailman.qth.net 
		Sent: Thursday, January 01, 2009 10:33 PM
		Subject: Re: [Motorola] Was Encoder, Now MICOR and Channel
Elements....

		
		Howdy Dan,
		    We in MARS can use pretty much any piece of Ham or
commercial 
		gear that will tune into the bands. I know what you mean
about money 
		pit, had a Micor working as a repeater for 10 years. About
every 4 months, 
		there was always some part that failed and took it down for
a few days at a time. 
		     I can even build a Ramsey kit if need be. Now in 2013
when MARS exemption 
		to NTIA Federal Frequencies bandwidth reqs (See the red book
of NTIA for details),
		we will have to have equipment that can do the 12.5 instead
of 25 KHz step and 
		3.5 instead of 5 KHz width on VHF. 
		    Some of the new Yaesu and Kenwood rigs will do the
narrow splits and transmission, BUT
		have gone back to having to do a hardware modification to do
MARS/CAP operations. And 
		many also have added those Torx security screws to the cases
so you can't just 'open them up'
		and they charge about $250 to do the mod for you... 
		    I used to really love building repeaters from GE MASTR
II's But those are rare finds these days...
		73 John W6HNC/AAR0MI OR