Batboard

Folks, some low life(s) ransacked a radio shack housing our repeater serving the Southwest sector of Bastrop County, TX. The repeater, a Motorola Quantar (serial # 509CHF1625), 125 W, VHF with cabinet was taken. They left the 6 can duplexer. Also taken was a desktop Motorola repeater and Henry PA (Don't have serials on this yet). This equipment is owned by the Bastrop County Firefighters Association. As fate would have it this unit was not on the insurance list so we are out the $12k. We were able to go back in operation with a loaned Midland repeater so at least we can be operational.

Please watch local swap meets and online sales. Any and all help is appreciated.

FYI: If anyone has recently upgraded or migrated to 800mhz and has a VHF repeater in surplus that would care to help us out with, send me a PM.

Thanks for your assistance.

I had three MTR's disappear in the last year. Painful.

Stickied.

Here's a couple of things to consider:

Are there any other tenants, especially NexTel, or someone that might have sold their license/frequencies to NexTel?
Have you called ALL the radio shops within a 100 mile radius to let them know what happened?
Are there any new 2M repeaters on the air, or have you heard a change in the audio on one of the established repeaters?

It's REALLY tough to move a Quantar without a bunch of questions being raised.

Had this happen to more than one customer of mine as well- very frustrating. I kept my eye on Ebay and Panik Electronics for months with no joy. Seems once they have it it's GONE.JJ

WOW, it amazes me how these criminals can simply get away taking such a LARGE item such as an entire repeater ??
Oh well, I'll definitely keep my eyes out for it here in CT, as well as E-bay, etc.
Good luck, and hopefully something will turn up !

Mike

Thanks

Well, I didn't see anything that looked like a Quantar at Belton last weekend.

Either someone knew exactly what they were looking for and what to do with it, or it was a completely random crime.

Thanks for watching out, we greatly appreciate it. I found out there is a swap meet coming up in Smithville, TX, I believe May 8. I will try to make that and look around. You never know!

OK we have the opportunity to pick up 4 Quantars in range 2 from the State. Will all Quantars do Narrow Band or what flash code do I need to look for?

Someone might want to check Dayton. Kind of a long distance, but you never know..

as for EBAY, you can set up automatic saved searches for different ways and wordings someone could list a quantar. ebay will search all your requests every day and email you if theres a hit. that way you dont have to search each day.

you can get creative and use a - in your search, example lets say you want to search motorola quantar, because someone may not know its a repeater and only be putting down what the cover says, but by putting that in, you get alllllll kinds of quantar accys you may not care abt or know they werent part of your repeater, so you type for your search motorola quantar -900 because someone may be selling a bunch of 900mhz PAs or whatever and yours was a VHF (the -900 was just an example of how it looks, insert your own restrictions after the - )

the cool thing is you can make up to 100 different saved searches with different combinations of do's and don'ts. you can also select search "Include title and description" and save that search...where people may also put more information that you want to know like exact model number, alot of peeps wouldnt put a model number in the main serch title.

reply with questions i will try to answer.

wazz

Our amateur radio club hosts a Swapmeet (aka TRW Swapmeet) in the Los Angeles area each month . I will forward the info to the rest of the crew as a watch item just in case it migrates to California.

Regards, Duane N6DSP

Thanks for all the posts. We were lucky to obtain 6 Quantars from recent State Surplus. Good news they are also NB & P25. So we will be back on the air with a Quantar once it is programmed (nice to have spares as well).

STILL want to find the persons responsible for "borrowing" a public safety repeater.

I appreciate all the eyes and ears out there.

Did they take coax too?

I would check your local scrap yards.

The thieves in my neck of the woods take equipment like that (especially coax), cut it up and sell it for scrap to buy more meth.

We've had to harden all our sites because of exterior copper grounding theft, but never had them break in to steal a radio. Yet.

Sorry to hear of your loss. I assume no video surveillance was at the site? This is something a lot of guys are doing now just in case. I wish you luck in getting it back.

Where did you get the 6 quantars? I saw 3 at state surplus, but they weren't p25 or narrowband..

jban wrote:Thanks for all the posts. We were lucky to obtain 6 Quantars from recent State Surplus. Good news they are also NB & P25. So we will be back on the air with a Quantar once it is programmed (nice to have spares as well).

STILL want to find the persons responsible for "borrowing" a public safety repeater.

I appreciate all the eyes and ears out there.