Quantar repeaters

I keep hearing about quantar repeaters and how good they are. I guess they arent specifcally ham repeaters, but a commercial radio that can be used on ham frequcies.

Are they really that rugged that they can be left untouched for long periods of time without maintenance?

https://www.reddit.com/r/amateurradio/comments/8waxlt/quantar_repeaters/


Great repeaters. They are honestly one of my favorites as they are very modular units and failures can quickly be bypassed and the only real failure points on them are the fans in the PA and power supply (which lead to the respective modules over heating and dying). Occasionally the SCM's fail but the big thing is the SCM is not banded and can be quickly and easily swapped.

They are commercial repeaters but are rated for continuous duty at full power. Key-up time on them is measured in years as they were at one point the basis of Motorola SmartNet and Astro 25 systems but have now been succeeded by the GTR8000 and are being phased out for the GTR8000 (which is offered in 700 MHz and is TDMA capable).

Quick rundown on them. They were commonly available in VHF splits, UHF splits, 800 MHz splits, and 900 MHz ranging from 20W (very uncommon), 60W and 125W outputs (100W for 800 and 900 MHz models) and were relatively small compared to the MSR2000 and MSF5000's that preceeded them as well as when compared to the GE MASTR III, see the one mounted under this MTR3000 triple stack. Power supplies available were AC only, DC only (48V telecom standard) or mixed (which could handle 24V or 48V DC) and they supported three different modulation modes depending on the firmware, Analog, Astro (Motorola's initial attempt at digital) and Astro CAI (P25) and are capable of running mixed mode operations. There were also some unique options available such as Intellirepeater which handled all of the trunking logic without a need for a site controller (such as a 6809 or Startsite controller) for a Type II system and could be optioned for either analog/digital/mixed voice as well as being capable of being setup as a single channel trunked system, multi-NAC for a digital community repaeter, multi-access for a traditional community repeater, digital over wireline (for interfacing to a Centracom console or remote Quantar) and could even be setup specifically as a digital link repeater to another site. There was also a higher power unit called the Quantro which was essentially a Quantar with a MSF5000 150W (for 800/900 MHz) or 250W PA (was not a compact unit, see one of my Startsite systems with Quantros and note the Quantro takes up an entire 48" Compa-cabinet).

As far as keeping them stable and in alignment, they are typically stable for at 1 ppm or less for years though Motorola recommends annual PMs. Aside from setting the reference power (which can be done with a Wattmeter and computer) they can be manually netted like a typical repeater or auto-netted using either a 5 MHz or 10 MHz frequency reference without the need for a service monitor (I know a guy who uses a 10 MHz GPSDO on them without issue).

All programming and maintenance is done through the RSS (Windows based) using a serial null-modem cable and is fairly straight forward.


Discussion: https://groups.io/g/P25