Batboard

for you history GURUs where did motorola make the MX series? and to break down the question further, did they make the older crystal radios somewhere and the newer programable ones somewhere else?
i know the crystal V and U were made from 76 til 82ish ( i have an 82 VHF that is programmable) and those were made until 87ish and i know the 800 trunked crystal models were made up til 87 aswell.

and what about the MT500? i always look at them at hamfests wondering where they were made, i have seen dates on them from 77 til 84.

I've got a pair of low band MT500 former Red Cross radios made in July of 1988. IIRC, they were phased out as the HT600/MT1000 Genesis and Saber analog portables were coming into production.

If memory seves me correctly there were both produced at the Plantation facility in South Florida.
Only recently did they phase out all production there with the relocation of the iDEN lines.

They still do a lot of R&D and engineering at the facility and recently relocated their regional sales force to the plant.

I am also pretty sure they were made in Plantation, I kmew a coulpe of laddies that worked there and I remember them working on portables..
Steve

They absolutely were! Plantation was the home of the MT500 and the MX. Some of the people that worked on those radios are still at it.

Several JEDI and IDEN lines ran there up until '03 or so. Its all in Malaysia now.

The very first MX radios came out of Schaumburg, I'm talking like late 1974 into 1975. Then they moved everything down south.