Motorola high power Spectra mobile value

jim202 · May 18, 2016

Having always been a strong supporter of the Motorola Spectra family of radios for ham use, I have a number of them.

I recently had one of the PA boards decide to have black smoke come out of the holes in the cover. Didn't know it went up in smoke until one day I went to key the radio and nothing came back from the local repeater. Opened it up and was surprised by the amount of black all over the input area of the PA board.

So decided to go see what flee bay might have available. Boy was I surprised to see that people think these radios are still worth a pile of money. They must think a sucker is born every minute for these radios and some of the parts that go in them.

Most of the radio shops I know just toss them in the dumpster. It isn't even worth trying to advertise that they have them and then go through the effort of packaging them for shipment. They weigh too much to even be bothered. Plus it would cost too much in labor to strip them down just for the cast aluminum case they have for the junkie to take them.

Kb2Jpd · May 18, 2016

jim202 said:
Having always been a strong supporter of the Motorola Spectra family of radios for ham use, I have a number of them.

I recently had one of the PA boards decide to have black smoke come out of the holes in the cover. Didn't know it went up in smoke until one day I went to key the radio and nothing came back from the local repeater. Opened it up and was surprised by the amount of black all over the input area of the PA board.

So decided to go see what flee bay might have available. Boy was I surprised to see that people think these radios are still worth a pile of money. They must think a sucker is born every minute for these radios and some of the parts that go in them.

Before you fix it, you should let an expierenced Technican see it first and figured out how it died. Maybe it was the antenna or natural phenomenon that caused the death of the PA board. Sometimes it's more than high SWR.

Adam Kb2jpd

jim202 · May 18, 2016

Kb2Jpd said:
Before you fix it, you should let an expierenced Technican see it first and figured out how it died. Maybe it was the antenna or natural phenomenon that caused the death of the PA board. Sometimes it's more than high SWR.

Adam Kb2jpd

I have about 50 years on the bench working on radios. Have all the test equipment normally needed to service radios. Think I qualify as an experienced Technician.

I didn't indicate that it was a high SWR. My antenna has almost no reflected power.

I indicated that the problem was in the input section of the PA stage.

mmckenna · May 18, 2016

I threw out so many old Spectra's and 800MHz MCS2000's (after rebanding) that it was almost a crying shame. Little value on the used market, not worth the time to try and sell them.

cmdrwill · May 18, 2016

Very few Spectra radios get scraped here. If you could send a photo of the PA, I may be able to see if it is salvageable. IIRC I fixed a bunch for you years ago, 800 radios.

N4KVE · May 19, 2016

mmckenna said:
I threw out so many old Spectra's and 800MHz MCS2000's (after rebanding) that it was almost a crying shame. Little value on the used market, not worth the time to try and sell them.

Spectra's require a cap change, are wide band only, & the hi power ones are expensive to ship, but they were great radios in their day. But MCS2000's are rebandable, can do narrow band, do not have the cap problem, & I have one that's enjoying a second life as an excellent scanner.

mmckenna · May 19, 2016

MOONBOOTS said:
But MCS2000's are rebandable, can do narrow band, do not have the cap problem, & I have one that's enjoying a second life as an excellent scanner.

Right, this was after my system had been rebanded. We were still running the old MSF5K's and they were failing. Went with a NexEdge system as a replacement.
The MCS2K's were good radios, but at the time it seemed that e-Bay was flooded with them. I had about 50 of them that had to be dealt with. I put a single RX only channel in all of them and sent them off to our materials recovery department. They all ended up getting recycled for the aluminum cases. Kind of a shame, but I had no use for that many of them and it wasn't worth the time to try and sell them. I did manage to dump a few on some of our other sites that were still using SmartNet, though. The XTL's all got repurposed.

krokus · May 19, 2016

An interesting thread. I have a couple of Spectras sitting at the station, that were removed when we prepared for narrowband.

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Motorola high power Spectra mobile value

jim202

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Kb2Jpd

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jim202

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mmckenna

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cmdrwill

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N4KVE

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mmckenna

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krokus

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