Manager


Manager - NA4M
Manager Notes

Reviews For: Motorola Maxtrac Conventional

Category: Transceivers: VHF/UHF+ Amateur Base/Mobile (non hand-held)

eMail Subscription

Registered users are allowed to subscribe to specific review topics and receive eMail notifications when new reviews are posted.
Review Summary For : Motorola Maxtrac Conventional
Reviews: 17MSRP:
Description:
Commercial grade radio.
Product is in production
More Info: http://www.motorola.com/LMPS/RPG/NA/mobile/cmaxtrac/index.html
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
00175
REMOVED_BY_REQUEST_W0VI Rating: 2019-09-17
Great value and solid Time Owned: 3 to 6 months.
This radio meets my mobile needs and then some. Picked up a 32CH-25W Maxtrac on eBay for under $30. Found a RIB-less DB9 to RJ45 programming cable and programming software for another $30 or so. Audio is great for a mobile environment. Transmit power is quite adequate to a quarter-wave trunk-lid mount antenna. So far, a lot of bang for the buck. In years gone by I used to run Motrac and Micor radios in the mobile. It's nice to have s good quality radio in the mobile again.
N2MDV Rating: 2019-04-21
The best freebie radios I have! Time Owned: more than 12 months.
Yeah, folks have given me various Motorola rigs, and the UHF Maxtracs are all programmed for GMRS FREQ's, and work great there. I haven't had one programmed for 440MHz, yet. A friend of mine brings a VHF Maxtrac for 2M FM use on Field Days, and that works well there. The biggest expense is to get someone with the software and RIB to program the rigs for you, but pretty much bullet proof after that. Great RX / TX audio! I'll keep my Maxtracs for years to come, but definitely use those 12VDC CPU fans on the back heatsinks.
W5KVV Rating: 2015-09-09
Simply one of the best Time Owned: more than 12 months.
As stated, these radios are some of the best Motorola ever produced. A simple, rugged & robust radio from back when Motorola was untouchable.

Our local club employs 3 of these radios as link radios on a full time linked UHF system. They perform flawless as a link radio. 5 watts with quality feed line & a 5 element yagi gets us into the next repeater on the system 70 miles away with crystal clear audio.

Besides my amateur experience with these rigs, I've been around them in the rail industry for years. We beat the living crap out of these rigs on a daily basis. These radios take a beating & never complain. With so many different versions available, it's hard to find a better suited commercial rig that adapts to amateur use.

K6ZRX Rating: 2015-06-13
Great radio for little money Time Owned: more than 12 months.
These old Maxtracs are a great deal. Since narrowbanding, they are useless for commercial/public safety work. Us hams get them cheap. Many models have dual priority scan, which is a feature only found in commercial radios it seems. For monitoring public safety, the PL decoder seems to have no problem with the low deviation of narrowband. A programming interface is easily constructed for only a few bucks.

The VHF models can be modified for 222 and work great there, too.
KB2CRK Rating: 2011-05-13
Great radios Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I am using several of these maxtracs and a couple are parts built. simple to use, and easy to program if you know DOS and can get you hands on the no longer available software. I use two on uhf, one on vhf, and setting up another vhf for aprs. I also use a maxtrac on steroids, the 100 watt maratrac. these radios have been to hell and back and still work great. the kenwood tm241a i used to have died shortly after being installed in the car i have been using these in for over two year.
NT9M Rating: 2009-11-08
Working FB for Echolink Time Owned: 3 to 6 months.
I have a 2 channel conventional UHF MaxTrac that a local radio tech obtained for me for the link radio for Echolink. Prior to that I had tried using a Yaesu amateur rig and a Kenwood commercial mobile, but in both cases had one problem or another with the interface.

Switching to the MaxTrac tamed my Echolink problems. Now the DTMF tones are decoded by the computer much more consistently, and the audio quality is very good. That big heat sink gets pretty warm during a long QSO so I'm going to put a fan on it just for insurance.
AF6IT Rating: 2009-10-30
Solid! Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
If you can live without instant flexibility and too many bells & whistles then this is a nearly perfect mobile. That said, take some time at the repeater-builder website's Maxtrac section to see what to look for. There are MANY versions, and some are useless to hams, and others may require a mod or two to be useful. Then again if you know exactly what to look for you may even find one of those rare coveted models which require nothing more than just programming your frequencies, offsets, & PL. The software for programming is available for those willing to pirate Moto's "abandonware", but my thinking is if you really need to change things around a lot you'll be better off & happier with a YaeComLinco ham mobile. So do your homework and know what to expect & what to look for. These are excellent- for those who know what they're getting into.
N5GIT Rating: 2006-07-25
simple simon Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
i now have 2 m/m uhf radios i bought off ebay. once programmed and wired up the way u want it, its a KISS radio. my g/f, who is also a ham, saw the first one i am programming for echolink and wanted one for the car cause ' theres nothing to lock up!"
squelch is autiset and has good receive imo.
as others have noted, use a FAN for long ragchews or using as a link or repeater.
N0XJY Rating: 2006-05-30
Super radios Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I personally own 15 of these radios of different configurations, in low or high power, and 2 or 16 channels. They are mounted in pickups, cars, tractors, straight trucks, combines, and base units. Some of them really take a beating, but they all perform wonderfully. Real commercial Motorola quality. The only thing I don't like about them is the tend to get a little warm while "chewing the rag". Other than that, they are super radios!
73, Brandon
KB1MMR Rating: 2006-03-17
Maxtrac 300 Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I use this transceiver for a base radio it performs extremely well on simplex and threw the repeaters. I added a motorola desk mike (tmn1005b) and got what some people call “killer” audio but I did un-cover one problem while running on batteries. When they started to drain the radio started to move off frequency and while doing that it began to over deviate, but adding a battery charger solved that problem. Over all I am very pleased with this radio and I think the features are great. ROCK SOLID,50 watts
If you want the best, it's gotta be Motorola.