Batboard

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 0117385075

Looks pretty SP-ish to me. Not my auction, BTW... just something I stumbled upon and have been driven mad trying to decipher. (Best I can tell is that it's Spectra-based[?])

Says he's from Canada, so I did a search of the frequency he has in the radio (140.970) on radio reference, and it comes back to "Ontario Provincial Police". Not sure if that helps. Might be a special order. Still has the plastic, so it's probably fairly new.

Sort of reminds me of the old CHP special control heads.

That's an OPP head. It has been covered here before.

Previous threads that might be handy...

http://batboard.batlabs.com/viewtopic.php?t=30258
http://batboard.batlabs.com/viewtopic.php?t=60903

Those poor Ontario cops... I wonder how many "you down with OPP?" jokes they've had to endure.

Tom in D.C. wrote:Sort of reminds me of the old CHP special control heads.

Tom, How would you know this? you are way back east!

BTW, the OPP head looks does very much like the current GE head made for the CHP.

Will,

Somewhere on the web is a tremendously long and
detailed history of the CHP's radios, frequencies, and
related stuff. To the average (uninteresting, non-techie)
person it would be deadly boring, but to any one of us
it's just plain fascinating.

Of course, I read it several times, so that's how I know
about it. It's so interesting it would make a great
Motorola historical Sticky for this Board.

To me, the strangest unit in the site I read was the
Uniden scanner that CHP once used. I've never come
across one except for that reference.

Tom in D.C. wrote:Will,

Somewhere on the web is a tremendously long and
detailed history of the CHP's radios, frequencies, and
related stuff. To the average (uninteresting, non-techie)
person it would be deadly boring, but to any one of us
it's just plain fascinating.

Of course, I read it several times, so that's how I know
about it. It's so interesting it would make a great
Motorola historical Sticky for this Board.

Also, the CHP weird control heads used to show on
eBay every so often but I haven't seen one in years.

Regards,

Nothing super weird about it, just a GE S82505 control head with some custom firmware in it...

The S820/S825 series was pretty popular in its days... I've got one in each of my vehicles... On lowband of course

I misspoke. The unit I was actually referring to was the
Uniden scanner that CHP once used. I've corrected my
previous post to correct this.

Yes, the MR8100. That was definitely a specialized product and very strange... Occasionally they are available on the used market, as I believe CHP is no longer using them.

That is a Motorola Spectra NOR Radio, made by Motorola for The Ontario Provincial Police Radio System... as stated above, and in the linked threads

I used to have one of the MR8100 scanners. Very interesting unit for sure.

I've got a MR8100

[hijack]

Funny you should mention vintage CHP stuff... This is one of our restorations...



We basically have the right radios in it, with a RANGR, a MASTR II, and a standard S825 head. We have looked for the "correct" head, with the correct CHP-specific overlay, but have not found one yet. We have the three-button microphone, and we would like to be able to use it as intended. We have it tied to a F-S SS2000GE, which isn't exactly the right one, but it lets us control the lights and siren with the S825. Unfortunately, the CHP specific pieces aren't easy to find. I'm not sure if the regular S825 software would work with it, either.

We also have an MR8100 installed. We have purchased several on ebay. The bigger problem, for us, seems to be getting the speakers and brackets. It is interesting that the MR8100 does not have the cellular region blocked. Of course, that is getting pretty useless these days.

[/hijack]

Do you have any hi-res pics of that car? I can shoot my e-mail if you do.

Yes... Let me know what you'd like to see via PM or whatever.

You likely will not find the CHP-specific firmware for th S825 until the CHP surpluses some of that stuff out if/when they ever upgrade their radio system.

There are undoubtedly hardware mods in addition to the firmware to do what CHP is doing with those radios.

d119 wrote:You likely will not find the CHP-specific firmware for th S825 until the CHP surpluses some of that stuff out if/when they ever upgrade their radio system.

It's already in motion... the bids for the 700/800MHz portables are out... gonna be alot of Pyramid mobile repeaters hitting the market soon...

I used to have two MR8100's, one in the house and one in the mobile, dumped them when i wanted PL on receive.

I still have some of the stuff laying around somewhere, i know i have the software on the old programming laptop and i even have a copy of the manual lurking.

<ctrl>p ECPA1986

escomm wrote:

d119 wrote:You likely will not find the CHP-specific firmware for th S825 until the CHP surpluses some of that stuff out if/when they ever upgrade their radio system.

It's already in motion... the bids for the 700/800MHz portables are out... gonna be alot of Pyramid mobile repeaters hitting the market soon...

Right, but those are specific to the CHP configuration as well, and require the S825/RANGR combo to properly operate.

As I hear it the portables are going 700/800 with 700/800 mobile repeaters, but the core infrastructure is staying on lowband.

escomm - confirm? You would know on this one.