astro spectra on e pay

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williamh
Posts: 418
Joined: Sat Dec 15, 2001 4:00 pm

astro spectra on e pay

Post by williamh »

there have been a lot of astro spectras on e-pay ... please modrators i know its not my auciton ... but i think this is a valid question !!

they are said to be 403-437 , can they be tuned up to the 440-460 band ...

here is the link


http://cgi.ebay.com/Motorola-Astro-FM-T ... dZViewItem


i know that there the regular spectras are not worth trying to tune up but how about these ???
Rule #35
"That which does not kill you,
has made a huge tactical error"
CTAMontrose
was grem467
Posts: 1145
Joined: Mon Jul 21, 2003 12:46 pm

Post by CTAMontrose »

nope...

well let me expand on that.. the amount of crap that would have to be changed out tends to make it better to just buy the right split.

these are ex govt radios and in alot of cases are not even flashed for IMBE. So if you could get them into the hammy band, you would most likely need a flash upgrade (along with a firmware refresh) just to talk digital. Did i mention that just that upgrade 'aint cheap?
Hartley
Batboard $upporter
Posts: 338
Joined: Mon Sep 03, 2001 4:00 pm

eBay Spectras

Post by Hartley »

Hi,

I bought a couple of those and as near as I can tell, they're all VSLEP radios with DES-XL installed. The VCO will drop out of lock around 438 or so, so you would have to change both that and the RX filter (and mebbe some PA components) to get much higher - figure on buying a high-split radio and swapping. As for the CP, you could either push in another CP (tricky) or mod the band limits in the CPS (fairly easy - see Batlabs) - but you WILL have to do some retuning to make it work right - and it STILL won't be IMBE..

73 DE Hartley
motorola_otaku
Posts: 1854
Joined: Tue Jan 13, 2004 7:03 am

Post by motorola_otaku »

Even if you can get all the hardware in place, the 403-437 codeplug won't like it. Before I bit the bullet and labbed a R-split codeplug in mine, I tried playing around with bandsplit-hacking the Q-split codeplug. I dropped a RX prefilter, VCO, and PA from a known good working Range 3 analog Spectra in it and hacked my upper edge to 490, but it pretty much wouldn't work right anywhere. First off, it won't lock in the rated bandsplit since the Range 3 VCO is only good down to 440, so you can't align anything in the Service menu. And on top of that, even though it was good for 440 in the analog Spectra, it would unlock below 448 with the hacked codeplug. Secondly, while the VCO may lock up to 450+, the receive sensitivity is absolutely horrible. We're talking .32 - .35 mV squelch break in the 450 - 470 range. And the TX deviation goes way off. The most I could get was 1.5 kHz in narrowband and 3 kHz in wideband.

If you can get one that's flashed for IMBE and you already have a Range 2 or 3 analog Spectra to rob parts from AND a R-split S-record with all the options you want, you're getting a pretty good deal. Otherwise, you're just throwing away money.
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