Never hear much about Motorola !

[whiteastro]

Found this. Where does Motorola fit in the game.

UNTESTED Vtg Motorola CB 555 SSB Base Station Radio System 500 40 Channel RARE | eBay

Not fully tested, sold as is. Unit turns on and lights up but no further testing was done.

www.ebay.com

 

[BayouRadioAmplifier]

hey, are those cigarette burns? or melting from a soldering iron
in that one pix.???

 

[TM86]

Found this. Where does Motorola fit in the game.

UNTESTED Vtg Motorola CB 555 SSB Base Station Radio System 500 40 Channel RARE | eBay

Not fully tested, sold as is. Unit turns on and lights up but no further testing was done.

www.ebay.com

They're considered good radios. Not $450 for a broken one good, though.

 

[nomadradio]

Found this. Where does Motorola fit in the game.

Motorola jumped into the CB market about the time it was collapsing under the weight of 17 new channels. Some time around 1977, if memory serves. Motorola never made a 23-channel CB that I'm aware. And the first five years of 40-channel radio sales was handicapped by zillions of 23-channel radios being sold for pennies on the dollar. Motorola got out of making and selling CBs as fast as they got in.

Best I can tell all their radios were made in the USA. Made them pricier than stuff made offshore. Just another handicap in a collapsing radio market.

73

 

[999]

Motorola jumped into the CB market about the time it was collapsing under the weight of 17 new channels. Some time around 1977, if memory serves. Motorola never made a 23-channel CB that I'm aware. And the first five years of 40-channel radio sales was handicapped by zillions of 23-channel radios being sold for pennies on the dollar. Motorola got out of making and selling CBs as fast as they got in.

Best I can tell all their radios were made in the USA. Made them pricier than stuff made offshore. Just another handicap in a collapsing radio market.

73

I have seen a couple 23 channel Mocats.
Here is one:

Vintage Motorola Mocat 2005 23 channel CB Radio tested | eBay

This radio is in very good condition. It is tested and working. This radio uses the Motorola type TMN6119A microphone. This uses a non-standard connector. I have two of these radios but only one mike so I was able to test this radio using the correct microphone.

www.ebay.com

 

[unit_399]

After the FCC switched to 40 channels, the Indiana State Police equipped all of their cruisers with cb radios. They selected top of the line Motorola AM sets with a ball mounted steel whip and spring on the left rear fender. Whenever a state cop keyed up, everyone knew right away who it was. Their signal was strong and their audio was the clearest I ever heard. Motorola rigs weren't the most powerful, but they were great talkers.
They were not popular because they were practically impossible to modify.

-399

 

[whiteastro]

I can believe what your saying because everything I've had with that name was good stuff.

After the FCC switched to 40 channels, the Indiana State Police equipped all of their cruisers with cb radios. They selected top of the line Motorola AM sets with a ball mounted steel whip and spring on the left rear fender. Whenever a state cop keyed up, everyone knew right away who it was. Their signal was strong and their audio was the clearest I ever heard. Motorola rigs weren't the most powerful, but they were great talkers.
They were not popular because they were practically impossible to modify.

-399

 

[Smokinone]

An older thread from this forum

MOTOROLA BASE 555 CHANNEL MOD/CLARIFER UNLOCK

Hi Retro here again and in search of both a channel mod for uppers above 40 on this model base station if ANYBODY knows how or can point me to a confirmed mod for that please ? Also clarifier unlock for this radio please ? One final note : I'd like to have the service manual to this vintage...

www.worldwidedx.com

I think they are a nice looking rig, always kinda wanted one but never picked one up. Shame the plastic turns colors over time, used to be white, not yellow.

They are pretty rare, but as stated already, this one is out of line for the condition...me thinks.

 

[w9cll]

I have one of the Mocats mobiles, I got it years ago. Motorla's headquarters was here in the Chicago area and I knew several peoe who worked there and I got the rig from one of them. The campus is still there but Motorola is hardly a company any more. Thier rigs were very well made and would hold up to extreme use but were very expensive. Thier downfall started in the early cell phone days, thier phones were the best made but then Apple released the iPhone and Motorola never recouped after that.

 

[Blackcat630]

Never had a Motorola cb but I can attest to the build quality. My first cell phone was a Motorola and it withstood some serious abuse without issue. When I was a teen a budy had Radius P50 handheld. We joked about the fact it was indestructible. We parked his 83 Ford Thunderbird on top of it on concrete. It still worked liked a champ after our test.

 

[nomadradio]

Back in the Jurassic era, when I maintained city police radios, it seemed every police department had a tale about a car that had slid into the local river, creek or reservoir. As the tale would go, the only thing still working when it was fished out was the Motorola radio, blaring out channel traffic as the wrecker pulled it back onto dry land.

Never witnessed this myself, but other folks in the business swore they had seen it for themselves.

73

 

[whiteastro]

I carried a Motorola Flip Phone for years that took a beating and sometimes I wish I still had it. Then I switched over to a Samsung Note smart phone and it didn't get the reception of my old Motorola Tundra. I just might work my way back to a Motorola Smart Phone if the price is bearable.

 

[sunbulls]

A note to restoration: I have a 23 channel Motorola Mocat 2020. It’s the same as the 23 channel 2005 except it also has a Dim switch. Mine has been modified with extra channels. It doesn't have a central PLL, but has a multi-chip layout. Only two channels are missing now, 26 and 30. The mod would have been much easier by simply adding extra toggles on the side or back instead of utilizing the Extend and PA switches. I had difficulty due to their accessibility, but at that time I felt it was worth the effort. I also had to replace one of the display digits, another pain to access. Some of these older radios have axial lead capacitors. Changing them over to the readily available radial caps is another issue. Mine never came with the original mic when it was given to me. Changing the jack over to the 4 pin Cobra standard wasn’t too difficult. This is something I prefer anyway. The audio line needed to be redirected elsewhere with a series cap. Besides the excellent build quality of this radio, this one was a challenge for me to do the restoration and modifications, especially something with such radically different circuitry and design.

 

[nomadradio]

The audio line needed to be redirected elsewhere with a series cap.

I had forgotten the Motorola CB used a dynamic mike cartridge with a 1-transistor preamp inside. Same internal mike setup as the professional land-mobile radios.

Motorola police radios hit the market in the 1940s/50s with a carbon mike cartridge. Those had drawbacks, and Motorola came up with a "compatible" upgrade. Had a dynamic cartridge with a 1-transistor preamp. Sounded much smoother. Since you had to feed six Volts DC up the mike's audio wire, a capacitor would 'tap off' the audio inside the mike socket, or downstream from it. I scored some of those mikes at a hamfest cheap and installed one on the Saturn Turbo that served as our "bench" radio at the time. Had to add a couple of resistors to tap off regulated 8 Volts DC and limit the current feeding into the mike socket's audio pin. A capacitor blocked the DC on the mike socket, and fed audio into the mike gain control in the normal way. Had a toggle switch on the front of the radio so you could turn off the mike power and use a normal dynamic mike on the radio if desired. But the Motorola mike's sound was hard to beat, and had more than enough gain. Those mikes would pile up next to the trash barrels when the Dayton Hamvention flea market would close up on Sunday back in the 80s and 90s. More often than not, the cord would be trashed.

Only drawback is that it's a power mike. Run too much power and it will rectify any stray transmit signal that leaks into it, and exhibit feedback "squeal" like a power D104.

We only had that problem if a customer's amplifier had the cover removed while pumping into the dummy load.

73