Info on a Maratrac uhf radio

[racerman1cars]

Can some one tell me what are the cons for a uhf Maratrac? a friend of mine has a couple. He said they are junk and I really don't want one I know they are a Maxtrac/Radius in a big housing with a 100 watt amp.
Steve

[PETNRDX]

Pros, pretty good reciever, very good transmitter.
Will do 100 watts all day, etc.
Cons, not alphanumeric, won't do newer narrow band or splinter channels.
As long as you have the old channels, they are a pretty good old radio.

[racerman1cars]

Thaks for the reply,It should work for me as I will use it for ham and gmrs and PS monitoring.
Steve

[Grog]

Can the maratrac be programmed for a lower power setting? You might want to double check the max power you can run on GMRS if you're one to keep on the right side of things.

[racerman1cars]

Well I never thought of that, I think you can turn the power down
Steve

[Will]

Yes, GMRS has a 50 watt limit, you can turn the TX power down to 50 watts.

Also they will do 440 to 450 for oven band. In 440 to 450 they like to run 50 to 70 watts.

Problems: turn on delay till receiver audio comes on (Maxtrac slow warm up problem).
power control circuit gives no TX, make sure that the green lead goes DIRECT to the battery with the big read lead.

[RKG]

At least on Part 90 channels, the MaraTrac's inability "out of the box" to do 12.5 KHz channel width will preclude its lawful use after 1/1/2013.

That said, I suspect ComSpec or someone else will be selling a filter kit to convert the radio (on a radio wide basis) to narrow band.

[Will]

The Maratrac in my truck, the main UHF radio, has narrower filters in it.

[hooknladder]

The Maratrac is one workhorse of a radio. Sure, there are newer radios with alpha displays, etc. I am currently using Maratracs and MCS 2k's and as far as rx sensitivity and audio quality the Maratrac wins handsdown. The audio from the MCS is crappy at best.