Workshop 'Wall Art' Made Functional

[WD4JKH]

I rounded up a half dozen old control heads for mobile radios I have dealt with in the past, mounted them to a floor plate and attached it to the wall for decoration in my workshop.

I then decided that if I was going to show them as a tribute to the good ol' days, they might as well be functional so I rounded up all the accessories and mounted the drawer units in a cabinet then checked and reprogrammed everything. Next will be to make some antennas to go on a mast outside.

This will give me a way to monitor anything analog in the area and a way to talk on the 10m, 6m, 2m and 70cm ham bands. Plus it looks nifty in dim light!

 

[RFI-EMI-GUY]

Cool!

 

[P25Radio]

You need some old mo com 70s and system 90 heads. Cool idea!

 

[kjfswkr]

Looking good! So everything works?

kevin

 

[WD4JKH]

You need some old mo com 70s and system 90 heads. Cool idea!

I wanted these to be all programmable radios even though some of the software I used is 30 years old. Most all of my crystal based stuff is gone except for a couple of Mastr II drawer units.

 

[WD4JKH]

Looking good! So everything works?

kevin

Like a top!

 

[N9JIG]

I like it!

When we replaced a whole bunch of old Masr-II bases with new Moto repeaters I had a couple dozen full-size cabinets in the garage at work with repeaters, receivers, control stations, power supplies, multicouplers etc. Some of my coworkers and I picked over the carcasses. One friend used a bunch of the receivers at home, I used some of the multicouplers and a big power supply.

I tried to con the wife into letting me keep a couple of the cabinets as free-standing coat closets but she wasn't having it.

I missed out however on mobile radios. I could have had a couple dozen Mastr-II, Micor and X900 control heads, including some of the unique-to-Illinois ISPERN ones with the red mics and special faceplates. One of my friends kept some of this stuff and still has it.

 

[tunnelmot]

Nice! I really appreciate the GE rigs. Growing up in SoCal, I appreciated the GE radios (CHP, LA Co Sheriff, etc). Those units have GREAT buttery smooth audio and innovative GUIs/control heads. I'm glad you did this and glad they still have life in the analog space. Later in life I was able to utilize GE EDACS units in their prime. Some of the best 800meg trunked audio I've ever monitored. That generation of radio was built to outperform and last.

 

[LowderK]

Ge s8xx heads always looked the best even out of the new radios today..... i miss the Delta SX and Ranger days

 

[Chris-KH2PM]

I rounded up a half dozen old control heads for mobile radios I have dealt with in the past, mounted them to a floor plate and attached it to the wall for decoration in my workshop.

I then decided that if I was going to show them as a tribute to the good ol' days, they might as well be functional so I rounded up all the accessories and mounted the drawer units in a cabinet then checked and reprogrammed everything. Next will be to make some antennas to go on a mast outside.

Brilliant! I love it! Looks great!

 

[N9JIG]

We had a mostly GE system when I first hired on, Mastr-II bases, repeaters and mobiles as well as Model 2500 consoles and PE portable radios, kind of a GE island in the center of Motoville. The audio was always spectacular, espcially with the wider bandwidths in the pre-narrowbanding days. Eventually it all got replaced with Moto stuff: Quantars, MX360's, MT1000/HT1000's, Spectras and Syntors. The audio was crisper but lacked the dynamic range of the GE equipment. Later narrowbanding made it even worse, and for us old-timers sad for the sweet sound of the old systems.

 

[NWI_Scanner_Guy]

Sweet set-up!!

 

[autovon]

Very cool! I have 'grand plans' to wire up a Mocom 70 control head to to the ham rig so that the red/green lights work.

 

[wa8pyr]

I missed out however on mobile radios. I could have had a couple dozen Mastr-II, Micor and X900 control heads, including some of the unique-to-Illinois ISPERN ones with the red mics and special faceplates. One of my friends kept some of this stuff and still has it.

My 2m ham repeater is still a MASTR-II and I saved a box full of the RX IF, RX AF/control and Exciter boards as spares, as well as a couple of mobiles as remote base radios. Several of the radios were Ohio LEERN mobiles with red mikes; I sold most of them but kept one of the control heads and a mike to use for alignment, plus another mike to put on the repeater.

Nice to have those red mikes, they were pretty rare.

 

[wa8pyr]

Very cool! I have 'grand plans' to wire up a Mocom 70 control head to to the ham rig so that the red/green lights work.

If you really want some bragging rights, scrounge up a Motorola GM300 with the 16-pin accessory port and program it for channel steering. You can get pretty much all of the connections you need from the back of the radio to go to that Mocom head so that it will be fully functional, TX from the mike, RX from the speaker, and selection of up to 4 channels from the control head (assuming you have the Mocom head with 4 channels).

I started a project like that but got busy with work; the whole thing is residing in a box somewhere in the garage.

To the OP: Nice display!!! I have a bunch of toys like that (stored out in the garage), seeing what you've done makes me wish I had more room in the shack.

 

[kayn1n32008]

What is the top control head?

And the bottom two?

 

[WD4JKH]

What is the top control head?

And the bottom two?

The top one is a GE S-990 control head with the firmware that will allow reprogramming frequencies from the front panel.
The bottom two are GE S-825 control heads. One is on a UHF radio and the other VHF.

 

[ShawnInPaso]

Super cool, thanks for posting

 

[HudsonScannerGuy]

Very very nice!

 

[WD4JKH]

Already modifying the set-up!
Added a second Rf power meter to the top panel and swapped the bottom radio from a VHF Delta-SX to a low band Delta-S to have a dedicated 6m radio, keeping the same S-825 head.