450-480 ASTRO SPECTRAS WORK ON HAM? easily?

[wazzzzzzzzup]

i have noticed that there's a lot of 450-480 astro Spectras out there, and im thinking about buying one, but i was wondering what others experience has been with getting them to take the HAM freqs and or RX tuning if needed to get them to work on ham.

thanks,
wazz

[N4KVE]

The ones I have seen will RX at the bottom of 440 MHZ OK, but not great. A VCO mod will probably have to be done & the local rptrs should be acceptable, but not to spec. The Spectra & Astro Spectra have a tight front end & the coils just aren't tuned for 440, hence you might not hear a rptr 2 counties over. Also the radio probably won't xmit Imbe below 450 MHZ. While there are 438-470 MHZ radios, they are hard to find. Also people have combined 438-470 Spectras with 403-433 Astro Spectras & been successful. It took me a few years to find a couple of 438-470 Spectras, & the wait was well worth it. I can talk to friends 2 counties south of me, & the RX is superb. The Astro Spectra is very similar. Speak to Will. He knows these radios like the back of his hand. GARY N4KVE

[motorola_otaku]

They definitely won't do P25 TX below 450 as-is, but will do P25 RX and analog RX/TX no problem. My experience has been that older white-tag analog Spectras needed the VCO mod more frequently whereas more recent black-tag analog Spectras and Astros would almost always do 441 RX/446 TX with no mods required. The loss of RX sensitivity (.35 around 443/444 measured versus .16 or better in the rated bandsplit typically) is sometimes noticeable but not insurmountable.

If you're buying from a certain nameless eBay seller out of Arizona who always has tons of Motorola stuff up, make sure you're not getting one with the VOCON removed from it. He lists them that way, but not really obviously; "some parts may have been removed, may not power up, blah blah.." I also got one once that arrived DOA, but luckily resolved to a popped picofuse on the command board.

[mancow]

The 450 spectras work great if you shove a range 2 codeplug in them and put a dab of conductive pen stuff on the vco tuning stripline. Also, the front end (preselector) works fine from 440 to 480 (verified with a service monitor).