No Codeplug! Remember these?

[Ra]

Most will not - I used to actually tune these guys up as a boy. They were quite good actually, very loud and had a unique squelch tail. . All you needed was a 0-50 microamp meter and a diddlestick and it was "programmed"!

This is one of the rare AC powered ones!

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 1365080483

[HumHead]

Finally!- A radio that won't be adversly affected by using a DOS window on a PIII! Is it SmartZone capable??

[Monty]

HI:

Anychance you still have the operators or Sercvice
manual for the Receiver?

Monty

[Jim202]

Those were the days. I remember working on those and the loctal tubes that they used. At least they didn't have to worry about voltage spikes. The mobiles of that version made some nice conversations between the techs then.

Jim

[fail999]

Oh Boy! this is the 16V RX half of the first /\/\ mobiles and base stations I ever worked on. And yes the AC versions were quite rare. Too bad he dose not have the 30D TX, inter cabling and coffin covers to go with. Used to have this combination in my '49 Plymouth. Yea, I'm old.

[Tom in D.C.]

Right after WW2 the taxicabs in D.C. had these units, or the GE equivalent 4ER radios, in their trunks, but with vibrator supplies, of course. Trunks were not that large then and the radio stuff took up about a third of the floor space. I wonder, thinking back, if there ever was a Loctal tube rectifier, because the one in the picture is obviously an octal.

...and those volume and squelch pots...? Probably not original, right?

Tom, W2NJS
...in D.C.

P.S. I'm old, too. Not THAT old, but still old.

[Ra]

Monty, this is not my acution, I just happened to see it on Ebay. I had a pair - The transmitter was even more amazing - in my 56' ford. The cables!!

Now they were 6 volts and drew so much current that we also had to put in a ..... a......Lease Nevell alternator, wasent that it?

Yes and the receiver had a dynamotor that ran all the time too I think. The control head was a magnificent looking thing - really cool. The receivers sound thru the official speaker was something indeed - the way the squelch closed was so great. "2150 bye"....remember?

No one messed with them as they tended to "shock" you pretty badly if you did not know - something the young guys would not really grasp. Boy O' boy nothing like a dynamotor B+ bite.

You could not kill these early Mororola units but they could kill you!

The day I got my first upgrade from these old babies I will always remember - I got a 5V working and installed. Now that was something too. Make no mistake - these were GREAT 2 way radios - and they almost NEVER broke. Made M Famous.

I have all todays latest cool Motorola cack too, but those days.... I would not trade for any new anything. By the time I got thru 80 & 140D's went to work for Chuck Crawford (who was a great man!) and put the VERY first UHF ham repeater on Mt Wilson in California those days were already waning. Ah....

Ra

[fail999]

Tom, you are correct the volume, squelch and toggle switch are not stock. The round connector on the front was connected to its mate on the 30D transmitter via an umbelical and brought the Vol and Sql lines to the control head cable via the TX. As far as the riectifier is concerned it is a 80 which is stock. The supply on the RX also furnished LO B+ to the TX, the Hi B+ being taken care of by a Dynamotor in the mobile or a AC supply on the TX with a pair of 5U4 rectifiers. The Dynamotor could really dim the head lights in an old 6V car.

[Jim202]

The first set of these I saw was back in the late 50's. They were in service with the state of New Hampshire. They had a split system. You listened to the dispatcher on something like 1680 Khz. and talked back to them on 42.44 Mhz. if my memory is correct. The dynamotor sure made the lights dim when you keyed the TX.

Jim

[Will]

Pretty sure that one is a VHF receiver.
And I knew Chuch Crawford, he was Mr. GE and had a whole bunch of repeaters in so Cal I knew Chuck so long ago when he could not even spell "Motorola"!!!!!!!.
I saved and printed the photos on the auction site page for my buddy, who was on a volenteer fire department back in those days and used the same radios in the fire trucks. He got a realy good kick out of the photos and added them to his old history file..

[Tron]

Perhaps we should install this "module" on our counties new $10M trunked radio system as a way to reduce the snap, crackle, pop, pop...you're cutting out... that we have now.

Tron

[Tom in D.C.]

When I was first getting into radio, around 1952, the only active PD to monitor where I lived on Long Island was our Nassau County (NY) police, whose base frequency was 2.5 mHz AM, and whose cars transmitted on 35.?? mHz FM, wideband of course. As you can imagine, the quality of the dispatch side was fantastic.

Tom, W2NJS
...in D.C.

[RADIOMAN2002]

When you transmitt at 15kc of deviation, of course you are going to get great sounding audio

[wa2zdy]

Speaking of a 4ER . . . my very first 2m rig was a GE Pre-Prog rack mounted base I got from my brother. It was a 4ER21A1 receiver and a 4ET1E1 transmitter. I had no docs for it, just figured out how to wire the receiver to the transmitter, and tuned for max signal on receive AND transmit. I don't know if it worked as well as it should, but it did what I needed to do. I never zapped that 832 in the final anyway. It sat on 146.52 for a few years keeping my bedroom warm. I guess I was 15 and this was 1976 or 77. That thing was OLD then.

Now 25 years later, I finally stumbled on a binder of old GE schematics and chassis layouts. And what was included? Yep, my old rig. A tad late huh? What am impressive looking thing that was in a kid's bedroom. I learned from the docs I just got that the thing was circa 1949 or 50. Geez, a tad before my time. (I'm 40 now)

Thanks for the link, I enjoyed reading about that receiver. So nice to hear stuff - war stories if you will - from the guys who HAD to make it work.

Regards,

Chris


ps: I had a Motorola of some sort - I've finally forgotten what it was - with the dynamotor in my car in 1978. I was 17, and that 829 put out 50 watts on 146.52. A single channel job. And I thought I was king s--t with that monster in the trunk, Adam 12 head under the dash, and about 50A key down. Yep, dimmed the light alright LOL!!!!