Well, there was plenty of stuff to be seen there this year. Some of it was for sale, and some of it was in use. For example, I roamed around with 220 MHz, 900 MHz, UHF Mototrbo (lots of fun) and P25 on UHF. Do you think I was in touch? Lets not forget the cell phone too.
I had the most fun on the ham UHF Mototrbo repeater that was there, but the other off the wall bands like 900 MHz were fun and had people waiting to make QSOs. The Mototrbo ham system was linked via IP to sites all over the world that are also using this digital modulation type. I talked to guys in Northern Virginia, Florida, California and Germany while I was there learning about this emerging mode. This is a shot of the repeater from the Motorola truck that was on site. For more info about the network, check our the DMR MARC page.
I was very happy when I came across these new old stock Motorola Maratrac UHF radios. They were for sale for $200. The complete radio (that was discontinued at least 15 years ago) was in beautiful shape, including the 100 watt RF deck and all accessories. While I didn’t pick one up, I took the opportunity to admire them since this is pretty rare. This is what I have one of my repeater transmitters built from.
You can expect all kinds of semi-modern day radios to be there for sale as always. This is a shot from Paniks table, who always brings tons of P25 radios, like XTS3000s, 2500s, and 5000s. If you wanted it, he likely had it on the table….You just had to be willing to pay his usually higher than everyone elses price. He did have some older stuff that was priced more reasonably.
These guys had a bunch of recently decomissioned low band radios that were prime for conversion to the ten meter band. The prices were high on these MT1000 portables (that will go straight to 29 Mhz FM with just a key extra keystrokes when programming) it is nice to see that there is still plenty of this stuff out there, for those of us that want to be active on those bands, and ahve very unique radios to make those kinds of QSOs with.
Well, that is it for now. Stay tuned for more, folks.
Awesome! I so wish I could have gone but sadly haven’t been able to. Thanks for sharing Jay.
It really is Mecca when it comes to ham radio, and especially the intersection of commercial radio into ham radio. Good to hear from you…Do you have a new UHF portable? You are sounding like you are talking on a radio with DSP in it. 🙂
Oops, sorry for not seeing this right away! No, I have the same rigs I’ve had for a while. At the Special Olympics I was mostly using my VHF JT1000 crossbanded to the RATS UHF machine but when I stepped out of the Robins Center I’d use my Yaesu FT-60. Of course, I preferred using the JT!
Well – it still sounded good !!
Thanks!