picked this baby up at a county SO auction!

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kf4lne

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This is my new used Motorola Maratrac VHF radio. its 99 channels but currently only has 22 channels, 100 watts, and should look great installed in my car. (Project for Sunday) I picked this up at a County SO auction today. This thing is fully functional and in great shape, in fact it looks close to new.
 

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kf4lne

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I am going to mod it for 2 meters and program in a group of local repeaters and simplex frequencies, weather channels and the area VHF PS frequencies and if it has the option to operate at lower power on certain channels I am going to load MURS channels in it
 

intrepid97

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Looks almost like the same type of radios we used when I worked for a construction company.

They were VHF Low Band.
 

rcvmo

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Romulus, Mi.
good going. I picked up 2X 45 watt spectras a couple years ago from a local dept. that went P25. One radio went into a command post, the other in my shack. You can't ask for anything better than having 114 channels not to include the DIR button for instant Talkaround on rptr channels.
If you are going to program yourself, read all the help files. That's what they're there for. HELP. There's alot to learn from on this radio. To bad they don't make them anymore. It was way ahead of it's time.
rcvmo
 
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Rayjk110

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Programming them is actually quite easy, if it is the same as a Spectra.

Messing around with my spectra RSS as we speak, it is time consuming, but it's the only way you can get it done.
 

kf4lne

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Joseph11: it contains Carter Co SO channels, Unicoi Co SO, Carter Co FD/Rescue, Elizabethton, TN PD, Tennessee Wildlife, Cherokee Nat'l Forest and a few I cant identify. (its amazing what a freq counter and dummy load can find) Its also set up with MDC. I have to find a programming cable for it so i can mod it for 2m Amateur and reprogram it, but I plan to keep the VHF PS frequencies for RX so i can listen.
 

DewAddict

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SE, Michigan
The Maratrac is an excellent radio. That is all we used in our FD units until 800 came along and in fact they are still mounted as a backup to the 800 system. Our Chief in charge of radios selected the Maratrac over the Spectra due to its flawless performance.110watts and very loud and crisp audio. Hard to find a good one these days.

Rob
 

joetnymedic

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had one in onee of my old cars back in the day - we wound up selling the whole lot to a construction co. Funny thing was about a week or so after we sold the radios to the guy, he calls me saying they all broke going off on the phone- I was like hello- i told you I paid a radio service for repeater space- he's like yeah, I'm like hello, thunk thunk thunk, you have to now too. gave him the shops info he paid setup and the fees and was back on the air in a day - what the heck did he think he was getting lifetime repeater too. God. lucky for him he didn't have to get everything reprogrammed or it would have cost him a bundle. I think he's selling them now, they were in the bargain news about 2 or 3 weeks ago. oh and btw check city, state asnd for those of you that have them, county auctions. I know CT. State Police and other different department radios are up for grabs in wethersfields next auction- radios are flat priced and I'm not sure what they're going for this time but last time was like 45.00 a radio

Joe
 
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kf4lne

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hmmm, looks like this thing is too much for my Stratus...i key it down and the car shuts off...this is bad...cheap junk car! naybody wanna trade me a scanner for the car?
 

nhp9943

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kf4lne said:
hmmm, looks like this thing is too much for my Stratus...i key it down and the car shuts off...this is bad...cheap junk car! naybody wanna trade me a scanner for the car?

Run it on Low Power and see if it still does it. I installed a bunch of 100 Watt Radios into Stratus cars and never had a problem. Also try relocating the antenna as it could be RF screwing with the PCM.
 
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Rayjk110

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Definately....

Crank that mother F*cker down to about 45w, because the difference between 45 and 100 on VHF is, while altho there, if you need to talk to someone where you need to use 100w to get into a crappy repeater or reach someone on simplex ON A CAR, you need to be using a phone, or HF.
 

red8

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denham springs la.
We had the Motorola Spectra Syntor 9000 radios in a select few of the units at the EBR Sheriff's down here in Louisiana when we first went on line with our 800 system. And we had problems with the radios running the batteries in the units when left unattended. The
line officers in Uniform Patrol and General Investigations and Narcotics had the STX radios with the Convertacoms. Now we made
the switch to Astro system with P25 and analog channels. What I liked about the other radios was the Telephone Interconnect feature
to where you could make a telephone call from the keypad of the radio.
 

kf4lne

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Bristol, VA
its a problem with the car. if I run the IC2200 on 65 watts it causes the car to stall. never did this before replacing the ECM a few weeks ago so it must be the cheapness of the Autozone part.
 

SLWilson

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No Mod needed

kf4lne said:
I am going to mod it for 2 meters and program in a group of local repeaters and simplex frequencies, weather channels and the area VHF PS frequencies and if it has the option to operate at lower power on certain channels I am going to load MURS channels in it

I have a Maratrac in my truck. Without having had any modifications done, I have our local 2 meter amateur repeater as well as surroundung counties repeaters in it. Again, with NO MODIFICATIONS required.....I'm up to about 56 frequencies in mine now. :p

Steve/KB8FAR
 
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SLWilson

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Antenna placement?

kf4lne said:
hmmm, looks like this thing is too much for my Stratus...i key it down and the car shuts off...this is bad...cheap junk car! naybody wanna trade me a scanner for the car?

We had that issue in a VW Rabbit one of the local volunteer firemen had with a Maratrac. (Radio was worth more than the car).....HaHaHa....Anyway, seriously, after we tried a couple of things, it ended up we had to move the antenna. RF was getting into the electronic ignition & killing it. Might try that....Steve/KB8FAR.... :confused:
 
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