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

[tvsjr]

Keep in mind that only some Astro Spectras are capable of the VHF splinter
channels. You have to have the proper firmware revision and a newer RF deck
(higher-stability oscillator to allow tuning of the narrow channels).

 

From: motorola-bounces at mailman.qth.net
[mailto:motorola-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of Walter Howard
Sent: Friday, January 02, 2009 03:20 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

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.qth.net/pipermail/motorola/attachments/20090102/d0395f34/attachment.htm