Batboard

I am looking for software that will allow me to use my PC in place of a service monitor and or any other piece of test equipment

Not happening, it's a lot more than software. In fact it's mostly hardware.

bummer

Ok, then how about $10 service monitors? Just as likely?

To get an idea of what's "out there" in service monitors, I suggest you
do an eBay search of the term. There are usually between 20 and 40
units of various types listed, most of them definitely not cheap, even
in the older versions. When and if you get down to nitty gritty of
buying one be sure it'll do 12.5 kHz splits; some of the older ones only
do 25 kHz. It's a great tool to have on the bench.

There are a lot of HP 8924C on Ebay for a song. They do everything you could really need (except P25, which is NOT tuned in P25 mode anyway) for anywhere form $750 to $1750. You'll pay more for a recent calibration date. They will take up to 60 watts of continuous input which is damn handy for mobiles.

Keep in mind a brand new bottom of the line Aeroflex runs about $10-15k.

Wow, thanks for all the info.

Eek, 8924. Great monitors... but they need to live on a bench. Those suckers are heavy!

Just for reference, we sold an 8921 for $1750, 8935 for about $2K, and an IFR 500S for about $1K at Dayton. And those prices were pretty cheap.

Anything that can take 50 watts or more of continuous power is going to weigh a ton

escomm wrote:Anything that can take 50 watts or more of continuous power is going to weigh a ton

Yup... on the 8924, they packaged all the CDMA junk inside as well. The 8920s/21s are capable of CDMA, but with an external box, so you can detach it (it's pretty much worthless for the average ham).

We took an 8921, 8935, 8924, and 500S to Dayton. Guess which one came home? Pretty much the only complaint we heard about it (it was a beautiful monitor otherwise - no burnin, good keypad, etc.) was "gawd damn that thing's heavy!"

It's almost as heavy as an IFR 1900. <ducks>

escomm wrote:Anything that can take 50 watts or more of continuous power is going to weigh a ton

Except for the old R2200/R2400 series from Motorola. They are fairly light compared to todays models. But then they don't have all the bells and whistles of todays models either and parts are getting REAL hard to find (1970's technology).

Just in case anyone's wondering why the 8924C's are so cheap, note that they are CDMA and only go up to 1GHz. Sprint probably tossed a veritable f-ton of them onto the market since they are now useless to them. Yet it's pretty much everything you could want in a bench monitor. But yeah, like Terry said, they are heavy as hell, and are really only good on the bench in the shop. Although I did bring it out into the field once and it wasn't that bad!