Resurrecting a Motorola MSF 5000 … Maybe

Resurrecting a Motorola MSF 5000 … Maybe

by N6SX

13 Apr 18 –

For those of you who may be following my attempt to build a BITX40, you may have noticed I haven’t posted anything recently. Well, it took a while to figure out what my initial BoM should be and now, I am just waiting for delivery. Along the way, I started to sketch up an initial enclosure buuuuuut while making measurements of the BITX40 board, I noticed the L3 toroid was cracked … well, actually, it was broken but the wire for the coil kept it together. So now I am waiting on a replacement toroid and wire … yeah, it seems that most toroids of this size requires the purchaser to wire it up themselves.

Yesterday, during the EE198 class, Miki (KK6MRI) mentioned there was a donated Motorola MSF 5000 repeater with unknown operational status. Since I am still waiting on parts, I thought I would add this to my plate. After a brief search online, I found a site that talks about clubs receiving donated equipment like the MSF 5000. Using the site as a initial guide, I am going to take a look inside, clean it up, (if possible) replace parts that may need addressing and work from there.

Here are a few pics of the outside: