Batboard

Gentlemen

My department is considering purchasing several new handhelds to replace a dozen or so Mt 1000's and for stock to issue to new officers. Our radio shop sent us a demo (ht1250 LSplus) as a "replacement radio for the no longer available ht1000. Our communication's manager asked me for my opinion on the professional series, seing that i am the inhouse radio-geek. I told him the few good points on the pro series, but in my opinion i don't think the pro series is really meant for use by public saftey. In my opinion I would rather see us stay with the jedi platform IE: MT/mts2000's. I think it is a more rugged platform for those users who dont want and will never use all the bells and whistles that a ht1250/1550 may offer. I further explained that there would be a significant savings in that rack chargers speaker mics and batteries are all interchangeable between an ht1000 amd am mt/mts 2000.

I am hoping i could get some independant feedback on these two types of radios. Our system is in a very highly congested RF enviorment (metro -boston) and we have a significant amount of co-channel due to our crappy frequency pair. The infrastructure consists of a quantar and 3 spectra-tac recievers, and a Micor backup main. I think anything "astro" is way out of our budjet so if you folks can offer up any pros and cons i will give our comm center manager a link to the board. Also if any of you folks have any ideas what a top display Mt 2000 may be worth that would be great, I am guessing in the 1000+ category. Thanks fellas


take care

Wow, this has been cussed and discussed many times. What you'll find out is: Jedi all the way!

I work with 1250*LS radios as the tech for my job. Its fine for what we do with them. But out in the rough streets and weather taking a wear and tear beating every day? MTS2000/MT2000 hands down!! Much more rugged, reliable (Public Safety Emergency Functionality) built in. Ths LS is not built for that kind of environment believe me.
Are you VHF or UHF? You might consider UHF 460 to 480MHz trunking pairs using Type II mode. 800MHZ might be out of the question with nexsmell gobbling it all up.

As far as I know the HT1000 is still available for around $800.00. The top display MT2000 would as so be a good replacement for the HT1000. Also if you are replacing HT1000, the HT750 is a more reasonable replacement if you don't need all the "bells and whistles" that the HT1250 has. Also take a look at the Vertex V-600 as a good replacement.

Cam

Your sales guy is pushing a product that isn't selling. The HT1000 is still available and it is head and shoulders a better portable than the HT1250, which even Motorola says is not qualified for public safety use.

Pro series has no place in frontline public safety. The main reason would be audio or lack there of.
The sales guy might be "pushing" the Pro series for the higher profit. The Jedi series will work dry, wet, dropped whatever. But be advise that the MTS2000 is slated to be canceled by the end of 2004.

Also be advised that Motorola is currently offering a "Trade-in" instatnt discount.($40, $80 or $120.00) This is available thru the DEALERS ONLY. So if your buying from Motorola DIRECT sorry.

MT pricing if to follow.

Hope your UHF...

MT2000 450-520 MHZ 48 CH 1-4W <H01SDD9AA4> $1,505.00 MSRP
OPT: FM NIMH ULTRA CAPACITY BATTERY (C,D,E,F,G) <WPNN4037> $73.00 MSRP
Del: Charger <H951> -$12.00 MSRP
CHARGER, 110V MULTI UNIT RAPID <NTN1177> $675.00 MSRP

I've read all the previous posts regarding Waris vs. Jedi. I agree the Waris portables (i.e.: HT1250 et al) look and feel cheap & toylike and I did not think much of them at first. But I must admit, after operating a fleet of (75) HT1250's for 18 months now (in a frontline public safety application - police department), they have been 100% reliable. Some of my officers are very hard on their equipment, and yet, NOT A SINGLE FAILURE OF ANY KIND on ANY of these 75 radios thus far (knock on wood). I think it helps that we are using 100% leather cases, instead of belt clips - and I'm using full coverage cases (the type meant for the HT750 instead of HT1250 - you can't read the display when it's on your belt anyway, so who needs a cutout for the display - right?).

Before these HT1250's, we had (70) MT2000's (UHF, 48F top display) for 6 years. During the first 2 years (1996-97) EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM was back to the depot at least twice. More than one-half of them went back 3 or more times. 10 or so of them were constant bouncers the entire six years and never did get satisfactorily repaired. The problem, in almost all cases, was a terrible case of crackly noise on the transmitted audio. The depot kept replacing the controls flex and also installed a microphonics kit, which was intended to improve the shield integrity, but very few of the depot "fixes" ever lasted longer than 6 months or so. They'd get noisy again after awhile and would have to go back. All in all, I was very disappointed in the performance of our MT2000's (H01SDD9AA4AN).

Like many others here on the board, I much prefer the look and feel of the Jedi vs. the Waris, but damn, I sure had a lot of trouble with those MT2000's. I've heard that this problem (noisy transmit audio), which I experienced SO OFTEN with the (UHF) "A" series MT2000's, has since been corrected in subsequent versions, but you should make sure of this before committing to this radio. It is otherwise a very good radio, and its receive and scan performance is superior to the HT1250, although the 1250's RF performance and durability has been adequate for us. The officers also like that the 1250 is smaller and lighter (we are using Lithium-Ion batteries, which reduces the radio's size & weight quite a bit) - and we've had no problems with battery capacity, even though we are on 12-hour shifts).

Overall, I still prefer the Jedi over the Waris, but I felt I had to share my negative experiences with the MT2000 and let everyone know the Waris portables (at least the more recent releases), do not seem nearly as bad as some are making them out to be.

Just my 2 cents worth.

guys

Thanks for the replys for such an already well discussed topic!! I just introduced our comm Manager to the board yesterday when he posed the question to me about "what i thought about the ht1250". So i posed the question to you all with details about our specific situation.
To answer some of your questions, We are on UHF (464.9***), and we currently (officers) supply any radio cases out of our own pocket, the standard issue is a belt clip.
I appreciate the info and still welcome More comments, being out of the MOTO dealer loop, i took it for granted that "the salesman was right when he said the ht1000 was no more" thanks for the heads up on its continued availability!
Also can anybody give any further info on theat REBATE that was mensioned, is it like they had before trade in any kind of junk radio for the credit? Also is that credit applied to any portable or is it specifically for the "pro series" only.


thanks folks once again the independant corroberation is invalueable!!

$40 OFF with trade-in when you purchase a
new Commercial Series radio

CP100, CP150, CP200, CM200, CM300
PR400, PM400
GTX Portable, GTX Mobile

$80 OFF with trade-in when you purchase a
new Professional Series radio

HT750, HT1250, HT1250 LS, HT1250 LS+, HT1550 XLS
MTX850, MTX850 LS, MTX8250, MTX8250 LS
MTX950, MTX9250
CDM750, CDM1250, CDM1550, CDM1550 LS
CDM1550 LS+

$120 OFF with trade-in when you purchase a
new Professional Series radio

EX500 and EX600 XLS

Which Radios Qualify for Trade-In?
Radios eligible for trade-in must be in working condition. Portables must have batteries and antennas, and the trade-in offer must be applied to a qualifying portable radio purchase. Mobile radios must include the hand- held microphone and antenna, and the trade-in offer must be applied to a qualifying mobile radio purchase.

Radios and equipment NOT eligible for the trade-in promotion:

FRS Radios, ,GMRS, Marine, Cell phones, Avionics, CB radios, Pagers, Repeaters, Amateur, Nextel/Southern Co (iDEN), Scanners, SSB, Cordless Telephones.

There was a fairly recent thread which contains many points of view on this subject. You can check it out here:

http://batboard.batlabs.com/viewtopic.p ... ht=#110972

Todd

I have over 250 HT1250's on the street, in Police, Fire & EMS use. These radios are used 24/7, in almost 4 years I have had to send back 3. All for the same problem. Synth unable to lockup. These radios are used by 4 different towns.

2 years ago, one of the towns insisted that we get them MT2000s. We bought 25 of them. They did not last a year! Within 18 months they were all traded in for HT1250s. Not only do they perform better, but you can buy 2 for the price of 1.

The PD's like them better as they are smaller, and lighter. We even have put ComSpec's digital encryption in them!