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Earlier in the game, the same basic guts were common to mobiles and base stations / repeaters. Obviously, the packaging of these differed. Mobiles were compacted for said environment with less transmitter heatsinking, different power supply configurations, and so forth. As power supplies became less complex when tubes gave way to solid state, this was less an issue. Take the GE MASTR II line for example, literally its name means "Mobile And Station Transistorized Radio." The same exciter and receiver assemblies were common to both, and the same power amplifier design was common to both. The continuous duty PAs of course were wrapped in a LOT more metal. The Base/Repeater stations of differing makes usually would have various option cards for control and interfacing. They were designed before our more sophisticated ham-oriented controllers were really around.

As the years went forward, the base station versus mobile designs began to differ. The Motorola MSF 5000 among others represented this departure. While sharing some common internal design elements with the Syntor mobile, no modules were in any way interchangeable. The "fancy box" these days can vary in quality. Some of these "fancy boxes" merely hide mobile radios themselves. Even the high & mighty Motorola did it for their XPR Series repeaters. Nothing more than 2 XPR mobiles in a box. It depends on the 'tier' of equipment. A Quantar or MSF in their day were the "top tier" for Public Safety, Government and high ticker Commercial users. While something like a GR300 was a "security guard repeater" made with a pair of Radius mobiles.

Let's not kid ourselves that hams are the only ones capable of "kludging" things together. I've seen some TERRIBLE "commercial installs" over the years too. And they've ranged from goofy installs using base stations to mickey-moused mobile radios and even a stray handheld or two. Others like a site not far from me have expensive broadcast equipment racked up, and the worst mess of hanging wires, coaxes, network cables and other spaghetti you've EVER seen. Our amateur gear is a stark contrast of neatly stacked, easily serviceable equipment. Shrug.

There's nothing particularly wrong with using "mobile radios" if you engineer a sanitary package. Provide for adequate heat dissipation on the transmitter, have your interface ingress/egress done clean, and consider a nice box to house it. If not, at least a decent rack tray with wires neatly dressed. Do your RF engineering right, and you'll be just fine. If it looks good, it should work good, and if it works good, it looks good. Small things like how wires are dressed, custom fabricated hardware, quality fasteners like stainless, grommets passing wires through panels all combine for the total appearance. Build something you're proud to show. Avoid RF adapters, make properly terminated cables.

73,

Matt W6XC