What was your first /\/\otorola radio?

[giguchan]

I remember these little guys... great for hunting and camping..

[jusbuc2k]

I still have a pair of those Talkabout 250's in black exactly like the picture and they still work great. They rarely get used anymore since I'm mostly using full power GMRS now.

[Majorkc]

My first radio was an Astro Saber III 1meg with an amazing flash with the ava setup.

[w9jy]

My first Motorola radio is an XPR5550. After researching digital modes for a long time I decided to go DMR. This is my first post on this board as well. I'm hoping to learn as much as I can from the Motorola experts here.

[MattSR]

Heh, mine was nothing special, just an XTS3000 R split.

[escomm]

Heh, mine was nothing special, just an XTS3000 R split.

I bet it was pretty special at the time

[Astro Spectra]

Mine was a parts built MX300 UHF converted to VHF with a single 2M amateur repeater channel kindly programed by a local police radio tech with the then mighty R1801 suitcase of power. At that time most hams thought a Wilson or Kenpro was pretty cool.

[radomon]

my first Motorola radio was an FMTRU5V MOBILE UNIT. it required a six volt supply to operate. they don't make them like that anymore. june, 1956

[Satelite]

My first m base was a mocom 50 on low band 35.180
Eventualy years later did move up to uhf with a ht90 4 watt uhf portable.
Presently today I have moved up into the newer rigs but stayed with the gm300 16 ch portables and gm300 16ch mobiles and yes they are factory 12.5 narrow banders legal for use today.
Do have wide banders for the ham freqs as well in the gm300 line.
Was happy with the 300 line so just didn't get the itch to get newer.
I do have a few M1225 mobiles and P1225 portables but like the 300s better so just grab it when I need one.
Just me nothing really wrong with the newer soooo there ya go.
Satelite

[tsunami_australia]

MT1000 16channel (I think it was 16) which still works now but the charger needs a new powerpack.
MTXxx (not sure of model but same series and case as the MT1000 and purchased as a pair from flea market cough Wyong) was for parts.
GP300 at work and gave me an appreciation for the 300s as they worked well in the environment they were in.
GP328 at another workplace.. ok radio... crap batteries thanks to fish bums at head office.
MCS2000 M2 R .... and the rest from there is history and a long list. This was probably 10 years after the MT1000 was obtained and end up with quite a few of these I was so happy with them. Only just retired them for XTLs and they will make great repeater projects. Until the MCS I was a heavy user of Philips PRM80s.

[JRUTA]

Damn! I'm old, and I *think* I might have replied to this thread years ago. But a few wives and many radios later; here we go... I think I joined this great site some 15 years ago? At some point I lost touch and then re-joined as my current user name. My first Moto was a "shadow bronze" Minitor (the very first one). I had a full color Firehouse magazine ad that I drooled over. It was available in "shadow bronze", white or red. I was a volley "junior" firefighter. At the time a few older guys personally purchased pagers - as we were issued Plectrons. So.... Instead of buying a high school class ring I wanted the Minitor. I worked for what seemed like forever to buy it, and I did. Wish I still had it, leather case and all. Fast forward: got a paid job "in the business" I BADLY wanted a Saber but couldn't afford it, got a GP300, sold it for an HT1000. I have since had an MTS2000, Systems Saber; Astro Saber, Visars (cooooll!!) HT-1250, HT1550, I now own and use an XTS2500i for work, and have since bought a NOS Saber 1 (for the love) and still have my Visar. All my radios were bought NIB. Oh yeah- almost forgot, I had a high power APCOR that I wanted to convert into a repeater, mostly built out of new parts. Another radio I wish I still owned...

[KC9MDQ]

My first Moto was a 110 Watt Micor on Lo-Band. When I keyed it up, it would dim the headlights of my 79 Nova at idle. Second was either an SP-10 or a MaxTrac 50 on UHF, I don't remember which came first. Several varieties of MaxTrac and Radius later, I'm finally moving up to the big boys with a VHF Spectra. I also have a bunch of Vertex Standard stuff (pre-/\/\) and I have a Kenwood TK-5210 V2 that was given to me by the Department after it became deaf. Gotta play with that and rig an antenna up. . . .

[motorola_otaku]

Nice 13-year old thread bump... <expletive> I feel old now.

The veeeeery first Moto radio I owned was a trunked MTX900 that a guy gave to me because it was "useless." The first Moto radio I owned that I could actually talk to people on was a UHF M120 on GMRS, which I quickly traded up to a 16-channel Radius M216. The first usable portable was a UHF HT1000, which I had for about two months before I traded up to an Astro Saber III... this was in 2001, mind you, when no one in the hobbyist world really knew what they were. My first Astro Spectra followed shortly thereafter, and the rest is history... looking back now I've probably blown enough money on "play" radios over the years to buy a house outright. But hey, at least I'm in good company.

[kb2crk]

My first Motorola radio was a Maxtrac UHF 6 channel I picked up off flea bay dirt cheap. With a little work and help from here it is 32 channels now. I still have and use it long with quite a few others.

[ASRM]

New here, doing GMRS but I jumped in with 2 Astro Saber 1E's and 3 PM400's, both are great units and the Sabers just feel solid.

The wife being a retired LEO complained though that the Sabers reminded her of her days in the streets, so had to get a little Vertex to make her happy.

I hope to learn lots here. Thanks for a great site.

[MattSR]

Hehe, you're spot on Jeff - it was a long time ago now, and it cost a fortune as well

Heh, mine was nothing special, just an XTS3000 R split.

I bet it was pretty special at the time

[DJP126]

Back in the 70's I had joined a local Civil Defense agency (today they call it FEMA). I purchased a portable (HT200) and mobile (Mocom 35). Later on I discovered that I was the factory tech that originally tested that Mocom 35!

[35-K9-1]

Started with a HT1250 for work about a year ago. Now I have 2 APX 7000s, plus a whole bunch of other goodies. Who would've guessed?

[JRUTA]

Haha wow! A thread this old? Damn, glad im still around! Xts2500i in use here today. Saber and Visar for the collection.. Too many goodies long gone... Sad

[PATHman89]

My first was MT2000 that my railroad was getting rid of. I held onto it so I never had to sign one out. Now when ever they dump radio gear, it goes to me first so I can collect spare parts.

[Andy Corbin]

My first Motorola radio (owned by me) was an old "T" model lowband mobile used for the fire dept. The first Motorola radio I used at work was an HT200 at Clark AB in the Philippines.

Andy

[Jim202]

If you have ever been to the Motorola museum at their headquarters, there were some radios in the display cases that went from old to new. The oldest radio was installed in a really old automobile. It was an am receiver to be able to listen to the broadcast stations of the day.

Then there were the mobile radios and portables designed for public safety. The gentleman that was giving the tour asked if anyone knew what the name was of the first radio in the case. It consisted of 2 gray cabinets with rounded tops and cables going between them. I piped up and said the name the radio shops gave them was the "Dog House" radios. Told him they used loctal tubes and dynamotor power for the transmitter and a vibrator supply for the receiver. Told him I had a set of them that I had spent many hours on converting it to a 6 meter radio. Yup, back then you only had crystals for the frequency determining elements. No such thing as a VCO and computer programming.

After that, a Motrac low band came my way and I managed to get a whole 4 frequency operation. Then found a GE Prog Line, vibrator power, on VHF with 4 channels, crystal controlled. Used the vibrator Prog Line for several years until a T Powered supply showed up. Converted the vibrator radio to a T Powered radio. About that time GE came out with their Delta and shortly after that came out with the Delta SX model. That was the first computer controlled radio I had. Managed to pick up a scan control head and now thought I was on top of the world with a whole 16 channels and able to scan them to boot. Not too long later, I found an S950 scan head to work with the Delta SX radios. This new scan head could have 16 channels and a whole 8 zones of the 16 channels each. You could even program the head to do 2 tone paging on selected channels and burst tone encode on each PTT. Back in those days some repeaters used the 1750 Hz. burst tone to keep noise and interference out of the repeater. Most of the repeaters in those days were carrier squelch. Some did use the Motorola PL decode that required each user to generate the required CTCSS tone to trip open the repeater.

Along about this time frame, the Motorola Syntor X9000 mobiles started to become available. They came in mostly low band, some VHF and a few were made for UHF. These made fine radios for both 10 meters and 6 meters FM operation. No tuning of the radio, just an antenna change was required. Plus as they were originally either 16 or 32 channels, they gave a good ability to program them on many ham repeaters. But that didn't satisfy some of the hams and they soon found out that by changing the EEPROM in the radio, you could get it to go to 255 channel. But you also needed to scrounge up the modified software to be able to add all those additional channels.

Then came the Spectra series of radios. They are still work horses of mine along with the Syntor X9000 radios. I still enjoy them almost every day.

Those where the good solid radios that you could work with and they didn't break if they slipped out of your hands while walking.

Jim

[Andy Corbin]

Jim, you never did say what the tour guy at the museum said to your response.

We had Syntor 800mhz trunked radios in our police cars in the mid 1980's. Can't say enough BAD about them. They were junk. I am surprised no one died from them. They had a nasty habit of locking up and going dead with no warning, no indication. The lights were on in the control head but no one was home in the radio. I got into the habit of leaving my portable radio turned on but the volume low enough to avoid feedback. One night I was arresting a drunk and fortunately he didn't give me any trouble. I called for my backup unit initially because you never know when trouble will start or what you are getting into. No answer. Dispatch called. No answer. She kept calling no answer. I saw him drive by about the next street up and shined and blinked my flashlight at him. THAT was how I got a backup unit that night. His radio had locked up and he never heard a thing. Our units were sent not only to the local shop but to Schaumburg with no improvement until we went to the MCS2000s.

Now with the P25 stuff, you have to deal with the latency delay and echo effect. If several officers are close to each other dealing with a call, either the others have to move away or turn their radios down or off. Very annoying. Looks to me like the technology is going backwards.
Just my humble opinion.

Andy

[motorola_otaku]

Jim, you never did say what the tour guy at the museum said to your response.

If it's the same guy that was giving the tours when I went in 2013 he's a young-ish guy and pretty knowledgeable about the stuff in the collection but not to the level of some of the "experts" here. The whole thing is part of a larger LOOK UPON OUR WORKS customer showcase that had a whole section dedicated to the Symbol stuff when I was there. I wonder what will become of it since they seem hell-bent on closing Schaumburg down entirely and relocating to Chicago proper.

We had Syntor 800mhz trunked radios in our police cars in the mid 1980's. Can't say enough BAD about them. They were junk. I am surprised no one died from them... Our units were sent not only to the local shop but to Schaumburg with no improvement until we went to the MCS2000s.

Just curious, Arkansas state system? They were one of the earliest Type 1 trunking public safety adopters that I know of.

Now with the P25 stuff, you have to deal with the latency delay and echo effect. If several officers are close to each other dealing with a call, either the others have to move away or turn their radios down or off. Very annoying. Looks to me like the technology is going backwards.
Just my humble opinion.

The noise cancellation in the APX radios has largely dealt with that when/if it's configured properly (i.e. don't just use the out-of-the-box settings) but of course that does nothing for the thousands of XTS users out there.

[Andy Corbin]

We had Syntor 800mhz trunked radios in our police cars in the mid 1980's. Can't say enough BAD about them. They were junk. I am surprised no one died from them... Our units were sent not only to the local shop but to Schaumburg with no improvement until we went to the MCS2000s.


Just curious, Arkansas state system? They were one of the earliest Type 1 trunking public safety adopters that I know of.

Nope....Regional trunking system in Roanoke, Va. Started of the Syntors in the vehicles and STX on the belt. No problems with the STX.


Now with the P25 stuff, you have to deal with the latency delay and echo effect. If several officers are close to each other dealing with a call, either the others have to move away or turn their radios down or off. Very annoying. Looks to me like the technology is going backwards.
Just my humble opinion.


The noise cancellation in the APX radios has largely dealt with that when/if it's configured properly (i.e. don't just use the out-of-the-box settings) but of course that does nothing for the thousands of XTS users out there.

I have been away from the stuff for 3 years and am now fully retired, but listening to the scanner, I occasionally hear the ....echo...echo....echo....