I finally have a home station. I still need to run the antenna, but there's the Motorola Syntor X VHF mobile radio I've set up as a base station. I haven't set up the permanent antenna yet, but the radio is retuned and tested. I also need to crank the power down (even programmed for low power, it's blowing out 50 watts,) and alter the programming to enable the operator-selectable non-priority scan. I also want to rewire it for more than eight channels. The silvery bracket visible near the bottom of the frame is the speaker, which I still need to mount.
I came across a Mostar mobile fairly cheap at Gateway Electronics some time back. I finally decoded the model number, it turns out it's an 800 MHz Type II trunked rig. It looks like it can be field reprogrammed, though not as easily as the Syntor was. This radio will require custom external equipment. Depending on how expensive it is, I might start a little side business programming these things for people, who knows? Unlike the Syntor, I can't actually use this radio, at least not as a full tranceiver. It won't operate on any ham bands, and I'm not associated with any organization who does use or run such a system. This is going to be just an exercise, I'll probably try programming it for the San Diego County system with transmission disabled.
But dear God, does this radio have a shitload of screws!
There was a new Saturn Ion commercial on as I was writing that. It looked very promising... a bunch of 2004 Ions chasing clowns around a downtown area. Unfortunately, they didn't run over the clowns. They just packed them inside to show how roomy the Ions are. Bummer.
Paul has a journal now... I figure he finally crossed paths with
dskirvin, as they're both vet med students, which gives you tskirvin, who of course leads to me. 