Re: The joys of ONAN power supplies in Motorola Quantar repeaters
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It's not that bad.? It just needs to be recharged with an extra-large can of Magic Smoke.?? Those early Onan PSUs are well-known for sometimes spectacular failures but I don't know that I have seen one quite this dramatic.? If any of you have one of these in service there are plenty of 800 MHz Quantars on the market for relatively little $.? I highly recommend you buy one with a newer?PSU (easily identifiable as they have a smaller fan grille that is square - but keep in mind there are some different flavors of these including DC-Only supplies which have a different power switch among other noticeable differences) - then junk the band-specific parts and keep the PSU, chassis, controller (unless it is an EPIC 4 or EPIC 6), and wireline/V.24 boards.? I think I have one of the old Onan supplies floating around that hasn't failed but I would never put it in service - especially since I acquired a few exactly as described above.? I am just waiting for the hamfests to start back up and truckloads of Quantars will be appearing out of garages and storage units - as even the pandemic has not really slowed down their replacement and with End of Life and End of Support both having passed most public safety users are upgrading to GTR8000s which for the most part have been pretty reliable from my experience.?? Once the next generation of base stations is released the GTRs will start finding their way to the secondary market.? Then we get the fun of 6-Pack Chassis, X-Hubs, Option Boards, CSS, etc.? I already have a UHF GTR8000 with a 6-Pack and Standalone chassis.? Despite what some say they can do wideband - and it doesn't require any mods or special software mods - just a specific procedure that is less-than-obvious as they want the majority of users to be forced to Narrowband for good reason.? Many don't realize the GTR8000 has been on the market for close to 15 years now and is in its second generation (released in 2013) due to parts that were NLA and design improvements. Thanks, Dan Woodie, CETsr KC8ZUM On Thu, Dec 17, 2020 at 10:18 AM JeffBanke <jeffbanke@...> wrote: Glad I did not have this Quantar in my house when the power supply flamed, it had previously been there for several month during our testing phase. Finally installed about a year ago, and this last week went down. Upon entering the room the repeater was located in, from the very first smell it was obvious something had burned, and boy had it burned! |