The club has purchased a few Motorola MTR2000 VHF repeaters to replace the very old and aging GE-2 radios that we have been using in all the repeater sites for around the last 30 years.. The old GE-2’s are great radios but the last time we tried to peak one up the capacitors on the xtal multiplier board just snapped off.. These old parts have seized solid on the circuit boards so it is time to upgrade I guess.. These new MTR2000 are not brand new but are more of the latest technology, every thing is set up by a computer and there is really now adjusting of parts anymore.. In order to be able to connect these units into our controllers I had to remove the old J5 interface connector and build a new circuit board for having things isolated between circuits.. This required unsoldering a 96 pin plug and then creating a new circuit board and drilling the 96 holes into it for the plug to resolder into, that was fun I tell you…

Motorola MTR2000.

 

Front cover removed to show laptop and other connections.

 

Rear View of the radio..

 

New Interface board with the 96 pin connector..

 

Completed Interface assembly.

In the next few days I will be going up to the repeater site to check for mounting and cable lengths that need to be built. Then after that we will install it and see what happens. Stay tuned.. Skip, VE6BGT.