Best stuff for 900 MHz ham usage?

[Jonathan KC8RYW]

What stuff have people had the most success with?

I want to get a 900 repeater on the air.

But before I do that, I will need a 900 HT and a 900 Mobile for myself.

So far these seem to be the canidates:

- GTX 900 MHz Portable
- MTX-9000 900 MHz Portable
- LCS-2000 900 MHz Mobile
- MaxTrac 900 MHz Mobile
- Spectra 900 MHz Mobile
- Mitrek 900 MHZ Mobile

Which is best?

How much should I be paying for each of these, without ripped off?

Any suggestions on radios for the repeater?

[mts2000des2]

What stuff have people had the most success with?

I want to get a 900 repeater on the air.

But before I do that, I will need a 900 HT and a 900 Mobile for myself.

So far these seem to be the canidates:

- GTX 900 MHz Portable
- MTX-9000 900 MHz Portable
- LCS-2000 900 MHz Mobile
- MaxTrac 900 MHz Mobile
- Spectra 900 MHz Mobile
- Mitrek 900 MHZ Mobile

Which is best?

How much should I be paying for each of these, without ripped off?

Any suggestions on radios for the repeater?

I use an MTS2000 for 900MHz, and have no problem on the 928/927 repeaters, haven't tried it much lower, but the radio will tx and rx with almost full performance at 956.8875MHz, a local MUZAK frequency.
Using the out of band mod as listed here on batlabs, no hardware mods were done. I assume the MTX9000 would be similar, same RF board and can probabbly had cheaper. I picked up my full keypad MTS2000, a rev C with 6.11 software, in a trade, radio is like new. I would think an MTX9000 B3 could be had for as little as 75.00 w/o accessories in working shape, maybe on the order of 125-150 w/accessories.

The GTX mobiles seem to be choice for ham use, again, only software mods needed, no hardware stuff. The LCS2000 is based on the GTX, very similar hardware, the LCS is a SmartNET/SmartZone radio. Overkill for ham use.

The older radios like the Spectra, MTX900's and MaxTracs require hardware modifications to work in the ham band, beyond my desires since there is only 1 900 ham repeater around here.

As far as repeaters, ours is an MSF5000. GTX mobiles could theoretically make decent repeaters, and can be had for not much. I paid right at 100 bucks for my GTX mobile- it is very clean and came with standard accessories (mike, cable and bracket).

[Jonathan KC8RYW]

As far as repeaters, ours is an MSF5000.

Gripes. I'm guessing you guys bought it used? I'm guessing it cost a chunk of change. I'm not sure if I'd be willing to put THAT much investment into 900 MHz with all the NexTel crap going on.

[Will]

NexHell is just driving the prices of used 900 equipment lower. A MITREK for the repeater transmitter, way cool!! add a fan just for safetys sake.

I need to see if I can do channel steering on a Spectra or do I have to use a Maxtrac? Need two chans for different repeaters and one simplex. Conventional PL!!

[Jonathan KC8RYW]

Gee, from the massive response over time, it really re-enforces how DOA 900 MHz is. Let's breathe some life into it!

[nyghthawk]

while we are on the subject, in some states (colorado) the FCC mandates that the 900 mhz ham band is not to be used by hams. i read it in all the books, but i've never heard the reason why. its not like up north where canada uses 70cm band for business band.

can anybody tell me why no 900 in the rockies? nobody here knows

[kb8zqz]

Cheyenne Mountain. Or 47CFR97.303(g)1, if you prefer.

Ditto Texas/New Mexico in subpara 2, presumably White Sands or some such.

It seems like there were also some restrictions somewhere on any emissions in a small area of West Virginia near either a major satellite downlink for international telephone service, or a radio astronomy site, or for the paranoid, an NSA monitoring point.

[recurry]

I posted this before but somehow it didn't appear. Anyhow,

When I started on 900 in '95 I used a converted 900mhz Micor repeater and Spectra for the mobiles. Later we started using MTX900 HT's with my MOTS6 mod. We still use those today although I've replaced the Micor with a Spectra based repeater several years ago. The Spectras put out 25 watts continuously and the RX has .17uv @ 12db SINAD when combined with a 12db .5NF pre-amp and a 1 mhz(3db) wide notch cavity filter. I'm guite happy with that these days.

I've converted a number of Maxtracs that others have used as repeaters and mobiles but they are less flexible than the Spectra (IMHO).

Lately, I've been using MTX9000's as the HT's. I like these A LOT! Very flexible radios, no h/w conversion required. I use B7's (full keypad and display version). The converted MTX900 are still in use because of being capable of working on a 12mhz split with the MOTS6 modification.

Biggest issue I've dealt with is antenna and finding some that work as well as the ham antenna I use on 1.2g. The commercial 900mhz antenna are very broad band at the sacrifice of gain and many of the surplus ones available have little or no down-tilt. My current antenna setup is very noisy only five miles away from the site (it's at 2200') but 50 miles away it's full quieting using a MTX9000 HT!

Lastly, I would say that to get a similar audio quality to other ham bands I've found that using the audio companding (Hear Clear) helps tremendously. The othe other option is to use 25khz channels and 5khz deviation.


Cheers,
Ron Curry
ke6wed

[fireradio]

I too have been thinking about maybe setting up a little 900 MHz system using some Motorola gear. Right now I'm thinking that two GTX mobiles hooked together would do the trick. If anyone has any suggestions or ideas, please share them! Also if you know where to get some good GTX mobiles, I'd be interested! I haven't seen too many on ebay (last time I looked...)

Thanks!

[fireradio]

The GTX mobiles seem to be choice for ham use, again, only software mods needed, no hardware stuff.

What about GTX portables? Does anyone have any performance reports on these?

Thanks!!

[Jonathan KC8RYW]

What is a good source for this 900 stuff?

I really want to try to stay away from eBay...


I hear that 25 MHz split is better for 900 MHz.
Here in Michigan, the bandplan calls for 12 MHz split.
I'm sure I could just use a 25 MHz split anyway, it's not like anyone in the state uses 33cm right now, anyway.

[recurry]

What is a good source for this 900 stuff?

I really want to try to stay away from eBay...


I hear that 25 MHz split is better for 900 MHz.
Here in Michigan, the bandplan calls for 12 MHz split.
I'm sure I could just use a 25 MHz split anyway, it's not like anyone in the state uses 33cm right now, anyway.

Ebay is where I've obtained most of my stuff except the Spectra. They seem very high priced on EBAY. THe HT's seem to be priced right though. You'll get more users with a 25mhz split. To work well on the 12mhz split nearly all (maybe all) commercial radios need to be quite extensively modified to work. I used Spectras and MTX900s when I was running 12mhz split but the mods are not trivial.

Regards,
Ron Curry
ke6wed