Leaderboard

I sold well over 800 UHF versions of them down in deep southeast Texas when I owned the GE Service Station in Kingsville. I added a DTMF microphone and a DTMF decoder and horn relay to them in order to create a "poor man's mobile phone". All incoming calls were answered 24/7 by a live operator. The operator would then dial the 4 digit code for the called party. The user would take the mic off the hook to put the transceiver in "monitor mode" to make sure it wasn't in use, press * to get a dial tone, then key in the number they wished to call. Sending a # would then end the call and release the repeater. Customers could buy their equipment and have our shop install it, then pay a modest $50/month for service. Alternatively they could lease the equipment for $100/month. The primary repeater was located just south of Kingsville at the top of a 680' guyed tower, and it provided sixty mile radius coverage easily. Over the years I added three additional repeaters to pretty much cover the eastern Rio Grande Valley area. I really liked those little transceivers! Eventually I partnered with a company in Corpus Christi and the King Ranch. We installed five channel 800 MHz EF Johnson trunking systems in six locations to provide much wider dispatch and mobile phone service. EF Johnson engineered a mobile unit for us that would auto-switch to use cellular service in those very few areas of coverage