Saber 3 ! ( a rare one )

[mbnv992]

All the old school Motorola guys will love this one - picked up this pretty rare black tag with green print, manufactured in 1998 Motorola Saber 3 ! Top tag says “Securnet-S” so it should be a submersible model as well.
Anyone know what the last year of standard Saber production was ? This 1998 model has to be closer to one of the last years if not close to the last year it was made.

 

[asd6845]

All the old school Motorola guys will love this one - picked up this pretty rare black tag with green print, manufactured in 1998 Motorola Saber 3 ! Top tag says “Securnet-S” so it should be a submersible model as well.
Anyone know what the last year of standard Saber production was ? This 1998 model has to be closer to one of the last years if not close to the last year it was made.

According to BatLabs Saber I/II/III or MX 1000/2000/3000, that saber is non-submersible but secure capable which is why it has the switch and label on top. It will operate on the 2m ham band with no editing but I would refrain from using it outside of the 2m band since it is not narrowband capable.

Now this is based off the tag, but it is not uncommon for people to swap internal parts to change its capabilities.

 

[jruta]

If I remember correctly the submersible sabers had a yellow nameplate? Its been a while.

 

[mbnv992]

Someone probably changed the “securenet” label with a “Securenet-S” label sometime in the radios life. Since looking up the model number - this is NOT a submersible radio. A submersible Saber would also have extra gaskets and a film over the speaker to keep water out which this radio does NOT have.

Oh well - still a cool radio that was a later made Saber. Still would love to know what the last year of production of the standard Saber was.

 

[DVINTHEHOUSEMAN]

I'd imagine they didn't roll the serials back around. I didn't even know they made them in 1998. I do have a rare-ish Saber with the first version case and date codes of 88.



I assume yours is an 8D model?

 

[RFI-EMI-GUY]

The part number in the housing should confirm if it is submersible. It was a popular option for fire departments. There should be a test port on the battery plate if that is the case. The battery plate is removable so be sure the housing is correct before diving with it.

 

[MTS2000des]

The analog Saber was orderable up until at least early 2000. Would have been about right given the radio was "born" in 1987. I had an 1988 model 3 VHF at one time with the early rev housing, red PCB and all back in the early 2000s when Sabers will still cool. These radios rock when tuned and on frequency. I have seem some UHF 1E's that had 1999 serial numbers with black laser engraved tags about 10 years ago, someone dumped a ton of them on Ebay. Most were well used and put away wet.

 

[jruta]

Man I wanted one of those when I became a medic! (1994) I had the brochures M used to have.

Another (seasoned) Police officer/Paramedic had one when I was in school (92, maybe 93?) he loaned it to me and I properly returned it to his son post 911….

A local dealer had a Systems Saber that a customer ordered and never picked up. I was just starting out and couldn’t afford it. I left a deposit. Sold to somebody but of course got my money back. Long long ago

Lol mindless musings

 

[ElroyJetson]

Arguably Sabers were the best analog chassis radios Motorola ever made. If they'd been narrowband capable and li-ion battery technology had been more developed at the time, it'd be a radio type that could still be quite useful today.
Thanks to certain Chinese vendors, knobs are still available. Not sure if they ever made secure switches for them. Those were always very problematic to replace properly.

 

[RFI-EMI-GUY]

Arguably Sabers were the best analog chassis radios Motorola ever made. If they'd been narrowband capable and li-ion battery technology had been more developed at the time, it'd be a radio type that could still be quite useful today.
Thanks to certain Chinese vendors, knobs are still available. Not sure if they ever made secure switches for them. Those were always very problematic to replace properly.

No argument here! Why they abandoned this form factor is a mystery.

Not too difficult to change the second IF filters and reset the modulation for NB if one is looking for a functional NB radio. The non-System Saber radios actually had a deviation setting per channel so you could mix WB and NB , however the RX remained WB. Of course, the Securenet will not behave well at +/- 2.5 KHz deviation.

 

[SCFDCOMM]

love these! Found a guy with a few cases of 15 year old OEM batteries, never charged. Gave me one to test out, works on astro saber 3 10+ hours use.

 

[SuitSat]

Arguably Sabers were the best analog chassis radios Motorola ever made.

Yep, agree with you & RFI-EMI on that one !

Saber/SysSaber were the best line of radios PERIOD
(and on the GE side, the M-PA was a very serious competitor...)

Not too difficult to change the second IF filters and reset the modulation for NB if one is looking for a functional NB radio. The non-System Saber radios actually had a deviation setting per channel so you could mix WB and NB , however the RX remained WB. Of course, the Securenet will not behave well at +/- 2.5 KHz deviation.

I never knew you could mix transmit deviation settings on US "vanilla" Saber, that's good to know !
IIRC, the EURO version of the Saber (MX1000/2000/3000) was available in a "true" 2.5k Dev narrowband version.

I have a UHF MX1000 [Narrow version] (440-470MHz Saber I with 10 channels instead of 12), so with a NLE9462A Synth, but with a NXN6269A Ref Osc (2.5ppm, same as Systems Saber IIRC) instead of the common NXN6268A (5ppm).
The Receiver is a NLE9502A with CEPT marking, specially designed for NB.
(The PA(?) is a NLE9922A, which is unknow to me...)

I guess that the motherboard and the CORE are vastly different too, but I wonder what would happen if you put a NLE9502A with its 2.5ppm ref osc in a standard US Saber...
[I thought before that the CORE would have no notion of NB, but since you indicate that it was at least switchable in TX deviation, I'm not so sure anymore... Any guess ?
(It would be cool to turn a WB US Saber into a NB one with help of some MX1000 components )]


PS : As you said, Good Ol' CVSD SecureNet will need that 4kHz deviation, maybe that's why my MX1000 is a non-Secure model...
(A vanilla Saber model capable of NB for clear and WB for Secure would be wicked cool, but that's not going to happen... (Yeah, yeah... I know that's what the Astro Saber is for !)

 

[RFI-EMI-GUY]

Yep, agree with you & RFI-EMI on that one !

Saber/SysSaber were the best line of radios PERIOD
(and on the GE side, the M-PA was a very serious competitor...)


I never knew you could mix transmit deviation settings on US "vanilla" Saber, that's good to know !
IIRC, the EURO version of the Saber (MX1000/2000/3000) was available in a "true" 2.5k Dev narrowband version.

I have a UHF MX1000 [Narrow version] (440-470MHz Saber I with 10 channels instead of 12), so with a NLE9462A Synth, but with a NXN6269A Ref Osc (2.5ppm, same as Systems Saber IIRC) instead of the common NXN6268A (5ppm).
The Receiver is a NLE9502A with CEPT marking, specially designed for NB.
(The PA(?) is a NLE9922A, which is unknow to me...)

I guess that the motherboard and the CORE are vastly different too, but I wonder what would happen if you put a NLE9502A with its 2.5ppm ref osc in a standard US Saber...
[I thought before that the CORE would have no notion of NB, but since you indicate that it was at least switchable in TX deviation, I'm not so sure anymore... Any guess ?
(It would be cool to turn a WB US Saber into a NB one with help of some MX1000 components )]


PS : As you said, Good Ol' CVSD SecureNet will need that 4kHz deviation, maybe that's why my MX1000 is a non-Secure model...
(A vanilla Saber model capable of NB for clear and WB for Secure would be wicked cool, but that's not going to happen... (Yeah, yeah... I know that's what the Astro Saber is for !)

My first two "analog SABERs" were apparently "Muts" with MX1000 programming and 2K COPEs. I am pretty sure they were ALT radios given the seller. I changed them to 8K and programmed with US SABER RSS successfully gaining scan capabilities and other features. They did have the 12 channel selectors. There were about a half dozen RSS versions, I think my last was like 7.0? I still have those radios, they were working fine last I checked. I have shifted to SYSTEMS SABERS and use the "analog SABERS" as donors for 440-470 MHz RF modules to band change ex Federal radios. I have two ASTRO SABERS which were gifts, but they are not as interesting to me from a servicing point of view and being that they are huge.

What I would like to see:

Better heliflex antennas. Motorola outsourced the heliflex antenna and the vendor was apparently confused as to the 12M specs and from the moment the part number changed, the antennas were very inefficient.

Another source of Lithium Ion batteries. I have a couple NOS Honeywell shorties and they are great. I also have some 5000 mAh Chinese knock offs, and they are great, but also great big. The Honeywells are out of production and the Chinese KO are dwindling. If all SABER aficionados could agree, maybe we could convince Honeywell or other vendor to build another batch for a group buy? I bought a W&W NIMH and was disappointment as the case fit was wrong and the battery had an early demise. That said, maybe W&W has a source of plastic and can get the mold tweaked?

Knobs. Motorola made them of cheeze and they are the sole failure item. "Linda" on e-bay sells them from time to time and I have a small stock, likely insufficient. A US seller made some $13 set of knobs made of industrial materials like you would find on an old school Techtronics scope. I never bought any because he only had red inserts and I was leaning toward all black. Wish he would make some more, red or black I would buy them.

 

[mbnv992]

I’d definitely be in for a group buy for super short Li-Ion Saber batteries!

 

[Falcon9h]

Got a bunch of Sabers lying around. Last time I tried programming with a formerly working setup, I bricked two of them so I quit. No longer have any capability and batteries died years ago. When I got my first one in 1989 I thought I died and went to heaven. I learned my way around them pretty good.
I tried some aftermarket batteries but none of them lasted long and had no longevity at all.

All finito now. Any Motorola now is beyond the Outer Rim as far as money goes. I'm busted down to CCR's.

 

[DVINTHEHOUSEMAN]

+1 on the stub batteries. Would love to buy a few.

Supposedly there was a SECURENET variant that used 4FSK for narrowband as opposed to 2FSK... but I've never seen any real world example of it. Likely never saw wide adoption as 2.5 kHz narrowband wasn't in wide use and it probably was close to when VSELP ASTRO came out and later P25, so that probably killed it before it got off the ground.

I need to fix the flat flex on my COPE board for my UHF unit, it's a little sad right now. The CORE works fine, it powers up, displays all the characters on the LCD, and does the keyfail beep. If I push on the case I can sometimes get it to get to the next stage where the icons disappear except for the clear circle.

I wish they still made batteries with the sense pins, kind of tired of the permanent low battery icon on my standard Saber.

 

[RFI-EMI-GUY]

I’d definitely be in for a group buy for super short Li-Ion Saber batteries!

If anyone has connections to a supplier, I am all in for a bunch.

+1 on the stub batteries. Would love to buy a few.

Supposedly there was a SECURENET variant that used 4FSK for narrowband as opposed to 2FSK... but I've never seen any real world example of it. Likely never saw wide adoption as 2.5 kHz narrowband wasn't in wide use and it probably was close to when VSELP ASTRO came out and later P25, so that probably killed it before it got off the ground.

I need to fix the flat flex on my COPE board for my UHF unit, it's a little sad right now. The CORE works fine, it powers up, displays all the characters on the LCD, and does the keyfail beep. If I push on the case I can sometimes get it to get to the next stage where the icons disappear except for the clear circle.

I wish they still made batteries with the sense pins, kind of tired of the permanent low battery icon on my standard Saber.

The 4FSK was called "FRED" and was a short term solution to Securenet on NPSPAC channels. I don't know if it was used in other bands. A system I was involved with deployed it.

The sense pins went away early in the game. The good thing about Saber's is that you can buy a bushel full cheap and make a couple good radios from the bits without breaking out the soldering iron.

 

[prcguy]

+1 on the stub batteries. Would love to buy a few.

Supposedly there was a SECURENET variant that used 4FSK for narrowband as opposed to 2FSK... but I've never seen any real world example of it. Likely never saw wide adoption as 2.5 kHz narrowband wasn't in wide use and it probably was close to when VSELP ASTRO came out and later P25, so that probably killed it before it got off the ground.

I need to fix the flat flex on my COPE board for my UHF unit, it's a little sad right now. The CORE works fine, it powers up, displays all the characters on the LCD, and does the keyfail beep. If I push on the case I can sometimes get it to get to the next stage where the icons disappear except for the clear circle.

I wish they still made batteries with the sense pins, kind of tired of the permanent low battery icon on my standard Saber.

There was a Type 1 encrypted Saber using a Fascinator module. Some have shown up intact on eBay over the years.

 

[DVINTHEHOUSEMAN]

I'm well aware of FASCINATOR, those are a big gray area by themselves and a huge no-no if you have it keyloaded. Wish there was more information out there about it but it's completely understandable why there's not.

The sense pins went away early in the game. The good thing about Saber's is that you can buy a bushel full cheap and make a couple good radios from the bits without breaking out the soldering iron.

Well... used to be cheap. Sabers are starting to get a little expensive nowadays. I figured the sense pins were gotten rid of fairly quickly because my 1990 Systems Saber doesn't have them and I have never physically seen a battery with the sense pads. My standard Sabers are 1988 and 1989 models and they both have the extra sense pins.

 

[prcguy]

I'm well aware of FASCINATOR, those are a big gray area by themselves and a huge no-no if you have it keyloaded. Wish there was more information out there about it but it's completely understandable why there's not.



Well... used to be cheap. Sabers are starting to get a little expensive nowadays. I figured the sense pins were gotten rid of fairly quickly because my 1990 Systems Saber doesn't have them and I have never physically seen a battery with the sense pads. My standard Sabers are 1988 and 1989 models and they both have the extra sense pins.

Fascinator equipped radios are out there, I've herd of several people who have them, however the military key loader setup is extremely rare and I doubt anyone will ever come across one. I have a fairly rare mid band Saber III that covers roughly 70MHz through 88MHz with a huge antenna. I've also got a UHF Systems Saber R with DES around here somewhere. I should probably put them on the dump it site.