Batboard

lately I have seen some old lunch box series on the auction web sites and wondering what the actual marketing model numbers are for these.
I did a lot of searching on the internet and came up with zero help. I have never seen a PT100 or PT200 and wondering if one of these may
be one of them.

See below the plate model numbers
H23BAM-1101AH
P33BAC-1131AM

Here's some info. More is out there to be found.

http://www.repeater-builder.com/motorol ... 2a40-e.pdf

The H23 is a PT200, which is basically an HT200 in a packset case. The P33 is a PT300, which is an HT200 with a power amplifier in the same packset case. They drift a bit too much for modern usage but work well if you're still using 5 kHz deviation. They are crystal controlled and require some patience to work on.

DavidJ wrote:The H23 is a PT200, which is basically an HT200 in a packset case. The P33 is a PT300, which is an HT200 with a power amplifier in the same packset case. They drift a bit too much for modern usage but work well if you're still using 5 kHz deviation. They are crystal controlled and require some patience to work on.

Thank Dave - I already know most of what you told me but these H23 and P33 radios were in completely different cases than
the normal brown hi impact plastic cases. They were in metal cases painted with white and a strange pastel green with the red motorola bat wings logo. This is what has me wondering about them.

I have an H23BAM. It has date stamps inside from 1960. It's a hybrid of transistors & tubes. It still works.

These ran on wet nicad battery packs. Mine has a conversion to allow it to run on externally provided 12 VDC.

http://batboard.batlabs.com/viewtopic.p ... 90#p476390

XMO has it right, sorry. There's a manual at http://www.repeater-builder.com/motorol ... 5a40-e.pdf The HT200 (H23DEN) based ones are PT200 P23DEN and PT300 P33DEN are the ones in the gray plastic cases, manual at http://www.repeater-builder.com/motorol ... 2a40-e.pdf ... There is also a PT500 packet in a similar case made from MT500 boards and PX300, PX500 made from MX boards.

fineshot1 wrote:

DavidJ wrote:The H23 is a PT200, which is basically an HT200 in a packset case. The P33 is a PT300, which is an HT200 with a power amplifier in the same packset case. They drift a bit too much for modern usage but work well if you're still using 5 kHz deviation. They are crystal controlled and require some patience to work on.

Thank Dave - I already know most of what you told me but these H23 and P33 radios were in completely different cases than
the normal brown hi impact plastic cases. They were in metal cases painted with white and a strange pastel green with the red motorola bat wings logo. This is what has me wondering about them.

US Forest Service. Those are most likely crystalled around USFS channels in the 160's-170's.

Thanks to all that participated with info - lots of good info and most of it during my preteens era while i was into cb radio.

The metal pack sets which pre-date the PT200 and PT300 are hybrids and did not have a name per se other than the manuals calling them Handie Talkie. Forestry bought a lot of them but so did fire departments, police, civil defense, etc.. The circuitry is the same as the Transistorized Dispatcher type used in motorcycle radios from 1958-1967. The model series began with numbers such as H23-1 and P33-1 for VHF 1 and 5 Watt respectively, later the numbers became H23AAM and P33AAM, then when the receivers became fully transistorized, H23BAM and P33BAM. P33 was the 5 Watt and H23 was 1.5 Watt. Per the model numbers you cite, a suffix BAC, the "C" means a dry battery power supply with 67.5 V B batteries and some cardboard cased A batteries last available when Kennedy was president. Suffix "M" as in P3BAM means a NiCad suppy using a 6V wet nicad, but some D cell NiCads will work great. The series prior to these was entirely tube type. Photos are on my website at http://www.wb6nvh.com in the Motorola History pages. The Transistorized Dispatcher series was possibly the longest lived and most successful Motorola radio other than HT220. Thousands of police motorcycle radios used these receiver and transmitter modules for over two decades. These were "instant heat" tube transmitters. That means you had to wait a split second after keying the mic or your first word would be chopped off and the dispatchers would label you as a doofus. Same with the pack sets.

Thanks Geoffrey - that is great info as well as your informative website!

Hey Geoffrey - it seems to me that it could be that somewhere in time the dispatcher series
and the handie talkie series merged into one or similarity along with the change to transistors.
The "Radiophone" term seemed to be universal to both. This was well before my time in electronics and radio knowledge.

We actually used quite a few of the PT500s, when I was still working on the CCP/IC. The MOW (Maintenance-of-Way) guys, as well as the Conductors of the day liked these, over the hand-helds, because the PT500 seemed to 'get-out better', as the guys used to say. We had two different versions. I believe they preferred the hi-power version.

Most had dry-cell cases, although we had a few rechargeable units in the Comm & Signal Department. There were even a few retrofitted with an AC Power supply, & built into a 19-inch equipment rack, so they could be used with the announcer circuit of the older Safetran Hot Box Detectors.

I believe the field units were either 2 or 4-channel units - for yard & road frequencies. The microphones had 2 additional buttons on the top, which would trigger a single frequency tone generator - 2200 Hz or 2600 Hz. This allowed them to select which radio site or tower to 'ring-up' the dispatcher. The time table indicated which frequency corresponded to which radio site.

The only real short-coming was their weight. With all of those dry cells, they weighed a ton, especially after carrying them all day! As far as radio maintenance, I wish the guys would have emptied them before the batteries leaked. Cleaning the battery compartment was oh so fun!

All in all, the PT500 was a good radio in its day – lunchbox radios were a work horse in their own right.

- trg,

Yes - i had to re-channel some VHF-Hi 6 channel MT500's and thought highly of the engineering of them also.
The miniature module nature of them we well laid out.