I joined the cult (New XG-100M owner)

[ElroyJetson]

I guess their rationale is that the equipment should be able to be used to call for help until the very moment when you turn to ash and blow away on the wind.

It's not unlike my attitude toward my ammo stash.

If I ever NEED it, it'd better be deep enough that there's zero chance that my cause of death is "ran out of ammo!".

And that won't happen. Last time I did inventory, I stopped counting at 6K. Figured, "That's enough...."

 

[jess_sherman]

I guess their rationale is that the equipment should be able to be used to call for help until the very moment when you turn to ash and blow away on the wind.

Seems like it, and I think that's the right way to do it from the perspective of someone who has to be in that situation and rely on their gear. As an administrator I really appreciate the mindset as well. I would prefer a way overbuilt system than having the techs deal with hundreds of radios that have knobs that randomly fall off or battery cases/clips that snap and break during normal use. Hypothetically speaking of course *cough* P7100 and P5400 *cough cough*

 

[ElroyJetson]

I don't know about that last one, man. A few days ago I was looking at cases and cases of retired P7100 and P5100 radios and I picked out a 5100 with a really useless and boring feature set and attached a battery and antenna to it, verified that it was fully functional, and drilled it into the concrete as hard I possibly could and that's saying something. I put my 240 pounds of weight behind it. The case exploded, the LCD was never found, and I just stuck another LCD on it and the stupid thing still worked perfectly. Yeah the knobs are a weak point but I've got to say, the P5100/7100 chassis is well constructed and takes some pretty ridiculous abuse. I have one that was run over by a fire truck. The frame and PC board were fine. It needed a new housing and LCD/keypad assembly, and a new control flex. But the main board was undamaged.

I expect belt clips to be consumable items. Every brand, Motorola or Harris or whatever. At some point they always get weak in the spring and/or snap.

 

[jess_sherman]

I don't know about that last one, man. A few days ago I was looking at cases and cases of retired P7100 and P5100 radios and I picked out a 5100 with a really useless and boring feature set and attached a battery and antenna to it, verified that it was fully functional, and drilled it into the concrete as hard I possibly could and that's saying something. I put my 240 pounds of weight behind it. The case exploded, the LCD was never found, and I just stuck another LCD on it and the stupid thing still worked perfectly. Yeah the knobs are a weak point but I've got to say, the P5100/7100 chassis is well constructed and takes some pretty ridiculous abuse. I have one that was run over by a fire truck. The frame and PC board were fine. It needed a new housing and LCD/keypad assembly, and a new control flex. But the main board was undamaged.

I expect belt clips to be consumable items. Every brand, Motorola or Harris or whatever. At some point they always get weak in the spring and/or snap.

haha, yeah that's true, they can take a beating. I had one come in with a baton through the LCD. Still worked. I've had a few that were dragged behind vehicles. Ugly but functional. I've seen one that's taken a bullet and still works. But every single one I've ever issued has had to come back in because the knobs were not attached with loc-tite and the PTT button was held up by some kind of foam that after a while would flatten out and become un-pushable, like a spring that lost all it's spring-iness. It's not a big deal but it is a time consuming pain in the a$$ to fix hundreds of them.
The P5400's have these little clips that hold the battery to the radio at the top, and then at the bottom there's a little ledge that the batteries rock into place on. Both of those will break if the radio gets banged around, even just a little. That is the weak point of that particular radio. I don't have an XG-75-ish series radio near me right now, but they use the same batteries and they probably have the same configuration, but I've never had one of those series break in the same way as the 5400's do so maybe they hardened it some. It doesn't render the unit useless, but sometimes I'll have some come in for reprogramming or repair or whatever and the user has duct taped or put a bundle of rubber bands around them to hold the battery in place because they snapped that ledge off or broke the battery clips. Also the cases are much weaker than the 7100's. If you drop them and they hit on the underside, in addition to snapping that ledge (in most cases) you can knock a hole in the case itself. But to be fair the 5400's didn't come with the promise of being first responder/rugged type radios. Still good units though and I'd buy them again if they were still on the market.

 

[ElroyJetson]

Yeah, there are some flaws in those various models, sure there are. They got tired of making radios that would outlast their useful service life in fully intact condition, I guess. But I've never seen any real issues at all with the construction of the P7300 and XG-75P platform. Those spring clips on the battery might be an issue, rarely, but that's on the battery, not the radio. I've acquired hundreds of those radios through surplus channels and never once found one that was mechanically unserviceable yet.

Let's see...an HT600 could be the eternal radio if the knobs weren't made of a grade of urethane that eventually turns to wax. That particular material issue was actually engineered into all 80s and 90s Motorola products as there was some government mandate that they had to have some degree of "recyclability" so we got garbage grade knobs and antennas that would turn to wax after several years or even less with a few heat cycles. I don't remember all the details but that was the jist of it. The MX radios had only that PTT boot issue, otherwise they could be the eternal radio, and I have one on my desk right next to me, 40 years old, still runs perfectly. VHF, and I have a plan to slowly convert it for 2 meter use as I acquire the low range modules for it and with luck the prom can have more channels added to it. (It's a 48 channel radio with only 18 channels populated.)

The GE M-PA and M-PD radios basically could last forever. Use one as a jack stand, it would barely even care. But the power switch in the battery was a weird design choice. Oh well, it just made one less part in the radio to fail.

 

[wa8pyr]

I guess their rationale is that the equipment should be able to be used to call for help until the very moment when you turn to ash and blow away on the wind.

Actually I think it's overkill (no pun intended). IIRC, the single biggest point of failure has generally been the remote speaker mike, so a hardened RSM with a standard radio should do the trick and survive at least to the point where the user is unfortunately beyond saving. On top of that, temperature isn't usually what kills, it's lack of oxygen.

It's not unlike my attitude toward my ammo stash.

If I ever NEED it, it'd better be deep enough that there's zero chance that my cause of death is "ran out of ammo!".

And that won't happen. Last time I did inventory, I stopped counting at 6K. Figured, "That's enough...."

Yeah, me too. I've got somewhere around that number (across all calibers and not including a couple of cases of 20ga shotgun shells as well as the reloading supplies for quite a bit of it). Even so, I still buy what I can when I can; no telling what will happen the next time Congre$$ goes nuts.

 

[ElroyJetson]

Something tells me that the way things are going, those times when Congress goes SANE will become ever more rare for quite a few years to come....

 

[jess_sherman]

Yeah, there are some flaws in those various models, sure there are. They got tired of making radios that would outlast their useful service life in fully intact condition, I guess. But I've never seen any real issues at all with the construction of the P7300 and XG-75P platform. Those spring clips on the battery might be an issue, rarely, but that's on the battery, not the radio. I've acquired hundreds of those radios through surplus channels and never once found one that was mechanically unserviceable yet.

Let's see...an HT600 could be the eternal radio if the knobs weren't made of a grade of urethane that eventually turns to wax. That particular material issue was actually engineered into all 80s and 90s Motorola products as there was some government mandate that they had to have some degree of "recyclability" so we got garbage grade knobs and antennas that would turn to wax after several years or even less with a few heat cycles. I don't remember all the details but that was the jist of it. The MX radios had only that PTT boot issue, otherwise they could be the eternal radio, and I have one on my desk right next to me, 40 years old, still runs perfectly. VHF, and I have a plan to slowly convert it for 2 meter use as I acquire the low range modules for it and with luck the prom can have more channels added to it. (It's a 48 channel radio with only 18 channels populated.)

The GE M-PA and M-PD radios basically could last forever. Use one as a jack stand, it would barely even care. But the power switch in the battery was a weird design choice. Oh well, it just made one less part in the radio to fail.

Yeah for sure. There are plenty of them out there that were made to last. MTS2000's, I've got several still in great shape even though they were beat up by cops for a couple decades. Some old ICOM's in a box somewhere that still function as if new (if the crusty old NiMH batteries weren't so old at least). I'm sure everything I touched in the Army is still somewhere in a motor pool shed beeping and hissing, even the old Nam era stuff they refused to replace. And they do all tend to have little frustrating things about them when you're dealing with them in big numbers. For example, the little rubber pad on the early run XL200/XL185's that would slide off makes my eye twitch when I look at how much I pay for them, but it only impacts the aesthetic (and makes it hard for me to tell if it's a 200 or a 185 at first glance...) and the end users couldn't care less about it, so it's just a minor annoyance like the knobs on the 7100's.

 

[jess_sherman]

Actually I think it's overkill (no pun intended).

Yeah but... it's really, really cool...

 

[ElroyJetson]

My XL185 has that sliding rubber side pad issue. It was made in 2020 and I bought it as "NOS" about 2 months ago. I'll be replacing those...

 

[BMDaug]

I love my six (and a spare) vhf p7100’s full keypads with P25C and AES256! Especially when paired with my Tait TB9100. Great radio with great features. I have six matching OEM holsters too, so there are no belt clips…

-B

 

[ElroyJetson]

My complaint with the P7100s has been that I've seen lots of evidence that their battery contact pin system is marginal for a 5 watt transmitter. I had a lot of issues with getting good battery performance out of my VHF 7100 because of it. I'd put on a know good, full charge battery, and within just a few transmissions get a low battery alert because of current limiting through the battery contacts.

They're just too small.

Maybe they're fine for a 3 watt radio on 800 MHz but at 5 or 6 watts, I never liked the results.

And the GE/Macom(etc) implementation of FPP is laughable at best. You get ONE channel to FPP program. Seriously? Is that the best they could do?

However I did like the FCC menu tools that were available in some firmware releases. There are some useful tools in there. I've used the RSSI feature to do system coverage mapping.

 

[BMDaug]

My complaint with the P7100s has been that I've seen lots of evidence that their battery contact pin system is marginal for a 5 watt transmitter. I had a lot of issues with getting good battery performance out of my VHF 7100 because of it. I'd put on a know good, full charge battery, and within just a few transmissions get a low battery alert because of current limiting through the battery contacts.

They're just too small.

Maybe they're fine for a 3 watt radio on 800 MHz but at 5 or 6 watts, I never liked the results.

And the GE/Macom(etc) implementation of FPP is laughable at best. You get ONE channel to FPP program. Seriously? Is that the best they could do?

However I did like the FCC menu tools that were available in some firmware releases. There are some useful tools in there. I've used the RSSI feature to do system coverage mapping.

Interesting… I’ve not had battery issues with any of mine using GTS hi cap batteries. They work all day without issue. I’ll keep that in mind while operating and see if I notice anything!

I also have no need for FPP really… I actually had scan fronts on them forever and never even needed FPP, but I did switch them to system fronts because I got a super deal on six, brand new with LCDs, and the full PTT assembly. I figured that would solve a variety of other known issues with old, heavily used PTT buttons etc. Plus they look all shiny and new!

They definitely aren’t perfect radios, but with the many systems available, there are lots of channels I can program and I think it’s still the cheapest way to get full P25C features with AES on a part 90 portable.

-B

 

[jess_sherman]

I didn't really have any battery issues but I don't think my users were doing a lot of 5w transmitting. We had hundreds of them in use for probably 10-15 years before replacing with the XL's, maybe did 3 or 4 mass battery replacements. We did do a brief stop at the XG-100P but it was too much radio for the average user so I just sort of kept them handy in case they were needed and issued a handful to some scientists that work on... whatever they work on. But sometimes they do RF stuff and they were happy to get a multi-band with a little bit of FPP. I did have a problem with the 100P but I can't remember what it was so it couldn't have been too bad. Maybe a button fell off or something. That's a very cool radio for such a limited run and that's what shifted me into buying the XG-100M mobiles at the time because I was so happy with the 100P. Still my favorite mobile that they offer and I imagine the 200M is going to be that radio with a pile of upgrades so I look forward to getting my hands on a couple of those someday as well.

 

[Teotwaki]

So…. Back on topic

I finally have devoted some time to a mobile install of the second radio. The first thing to tackle was mounting the control head. I wanted to stack it with the existing FT857D head. The extra weight meant reworking the mount with a plate behind the plastic and a L bracket to anchor the plate to the sheet metal of the transmission hump.

 

[Teotwaki]

This is what the area around the shifter looked like for a while

 

[Teotwaki]

Then it was the new plates to adapt the two control heads to the mount. You can see the shiny aluminum plate under the Harris head which is not yet cut to length.

 

[Teotwaki]

Once the adapter plates were finished they were primered and eventually painted with flat black

 

[Teotwaki]

Now with the solid mounting bracket finished and paint on the brackets dried it was time to put it all together. Next is wiring it back to the radio. Initially I will make some temporary choices to be able to drive with the radio powered up but will need to take out numerous panels to route cables cleanly from front to back.

 

[Teotwaki]

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