Back to Moto index Back to Micor index Back to Home

Motorola Spectra TAC™ Receiver and Comparator Index Page Compiled by Robert W. Meister WA1MIK

Left: Spectra TAC Receiver. Right: Spectra TAC Comparator

This is the main index page for the Motorola Spectra TAC voting receivers, satellite receivers, and voter/comparator units. The various articles and information resources that have been collected or submitted to Repeater-Builder are listed below.

Both the voter chassis and the receiver chassis are three rack units high (5.25 inches).

Despite people calling everything in this chassis style a Spectra Tac receiver, they aren't.

Note from WA6ILQ:
The original design of the Micor station had separate chassis for the receiver, exciter and control shelf, all linked by 50-pin ribbon cables. At that time multconductor ribbon cable and the insulation displacement connectors were a fairly new product and Moto had nothing but trouble with them. It wasn't long until Moto came up with a Unified Chassis design that eliminated the riibbon cables entirely (and after the the 50-pin ribbon cables and the insulation displacement connector products matured they lived on as the PC and mainframe SCSI-II disk drive intercabling).
Moto needed a second receiver for the unified Micor chassis and the engineers took the early Micor receiver chassis and did some redesign. They came up with a package that could function as a second receiver or even more (I've seen six in a system rack, each on a different channel), as a stand-alone auxiliary receiver.
The first Moto-designed voter system used DC current in a phone line to indicate signal strength. This system used cards in slot two and slot three. The later voter design (called "Spectra TAC") fit on one card and it went into slot three and slot two was used for the PL or DPL card. The fourth slot has always been for the metering/speaker card.

MANUALS:

• Spectra TAC Total Area Coverage Voting and Satellite Receivers Instruction Manual, p/n 6881039E45. Contains info on all Micor receiver boards (low, mid, high, UHF, 800 MHz) plus the plug-in cards, power supply, and chassis. It has been reported that some copies also have documentation on the 900 MHz receiver boards. $13.50US in April 2010.
• Spectra TAC Total Area Coverage Comparator Instruction Manual, p/n 6881039E50. Contains info on the plug-in cards, power supply, and chassis. $13.50US in April 2010.

ARTICLES: