Wasn't it the Mastr II's that were modular in that you could remove one side and replace it with another band? I think a local was making split site repeaters by replacing the receiver in one and the transmitter in the other with a UHF transmitter and receiver.
Yes, one of the groups I was with up in Columbus did that. We used brown-handle UHF Mastr IIs and swapped a VHF receiver and preselector in place of the UHF receiver. They made fantastic remote receivers for the repeater.
Some people opined that using so much power on the UHF links to the repeater would not work and that one should always use minimum power on those links, but I always found the opposite. We turned the PAs down to about 50 watts, but using that much power ensured that the signal into the voter receiver was solid copy, and that any noise the voter heard was in fact on the signal received at the remote site, not noise on the link itself.
Yeah, if it involves more than plugging in a programming cable and getting the software to work the new generation doesn't have a clue.
Even with all the advances you still can't beat a properly tuned helical front end. Very sharp, not like the funnels of today's machines.
Programmable is fine if it's a mobile or desktop radio with a need for a bunch of channels, but a repeater is just going to sit there at the site on one frequency; I'd much rather have a solid, reliable crystal-controlled station with a quality PA and excellent preselector, especially at a remote site with a bunch of co-located transmitters amping up the noise floor.
A local ham repeater that was a Mastr II station got replaced on a hill with about 10 towers and RF galore. High power radio stations, TV, paging, etc. They replaced it with a Kenwood NXDN repeater. Needless to say the thing instantly took a dump, couldn't handle it. Plugged the Mastr II back in and it's been running ever since.
A bunch of groups around here did that when Yaesu was dumping their Fusion repeaters on the market for $500 each; several of them replaced perfectly good Mastr II (or Micor) repeaters which were running perfectly (and had been for years) with those pieces of garbage. They found out pretty quickly that you can't run a Fusion repeater at full power continuous duty very long without it dying. They all ended up spending a fortune on 100 watt PA decks (and preselectors in some cases) to get even close to what they had with the Mastr II and Micor stuff (which they had unfortunately already got rid of). Dopes.
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