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Motorola Maxtrac won't transmit

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I've got a VHF Maxtrac that will not transmit. The red light comes on when I PTT but there is NO output power at all.

Where do I go from here to fix it?
 

cmjonesinc

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Honestly, with the price of Maxtrac's right now your best bet is to probably buy a new one.
 
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Probably so, but I paid only $20 for this so if it's something simple then it's worth it to me to tinker with it rather than throw it out.

The cheapest 45w 32ch Maxtrac on fleabay right now is $60-$70. Not bad, but I'd rather not put more money into another radio that might show up with the same exact issue.
 

cmdrwill

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One of the trouble shooting tips for no transmit is to look at the radio current draw in receive and when transmitting. How much current is radio drawing on transmit?
 

mm

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After working on Maxtracs for close to 20 years all I can suggest is to find a new working radio and save or sell off the dead TX Max as a good working receiver.

If the PA or driver is damaged then the only replacement parts that you will find are going to come from another maxtrac of the same model, this would be called a donor radio but this presents a catch22 situation for you.

If you do find a good working radio then why would you want to try to fix the dead one with parts from a good working radio?
 

cmjonesinc

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If you do find yourself in the market for a new one I find it can be worth the time to scroll through some of the "I don't know anything about it" radios. I've bought a couple radios that people were selling cheap simply because they didn't know how to decode the model number.
 

FFPM571

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Maxtrac is not narrowband anyway so unless you are using it for ham Transmitting on it is not legal under the narrowbanding mandate. Time to upgrade
 

cmjonesinc

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Maxtrac is not narrowband anyway so unless you are using it for ham Transmitting on it is not legal under the narrowbanding mandate. Time to upgrade

I completely forgot that maxtracs won't narrowband band... Man where does the time go. Seems like just yesterday that a maxtrac was the radio to have.
 

ten13

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If the radio is "motorboating" when you transmit, it may be that your power source may be weak, like a low-powered, or defective, power supply.
 
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I'm pretty sure I've determined that the PA is bad. When I applied 9.6v to the P7-2 pin on the logic board I still had no power out. According to the instructions I found this verifies the PA is bad.

I'll probably just hang onto it for parts.
 
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