Our fire department is looking at purchasing some surplus Motorola Saber III portables.  I am currently testing one that the chief handed me the other night.  His words were, "Play around with it and tell me what you can about it next week."  Well, I'm always one to jump on playing with "new" or different equipment, and I always try to be thorough with my research.  I know that they have been discontinued; however, I've heard that they were among Motorola's better units.  I will say this...they're HUGE!!!  They almost remind me of the ones that I used in the mid 80's as a police officer.  The ones that we're looking at are surplus from Texas DPS and the one that I have is in excellent condition.

Anyhow...

I'm looking for feedback on how well they performed for any of you that have had experience with them....good, bad, and ugly.  I appreciate any input.

the radios were some of the best offered at the time.   they have been discontinued for some time now and parts will become more expensive.  they are also limitted in comparison to some of today's radios.  better scanning features, more pl tones, more frequencies (channels).  programming on todays radios is easier  too.


just mho

huge radios are always a pain in the a$$ to carry around.

try and convince him to actually spend some money to buy some good portables

best of luck

We're still using the original Saber radio

I'm not too worried about the difficulty in programming anything Motorola makes, since they are so protective of their programming software.  That's what technicians are for!

We've actually found a shop in Dallas that says that they can service them.  I'm feeling a bit more hopeful now.

Our interest in these came from the ICOM IC-F50 experiment that went awry about two years ago.  Don't ever trust anything that is the size of a pack of cigarettes, unless it IS a pack of cigarettes.  (At least cigarettes have a warning label on them.)  

The sabers are going for $100 apiece, amazingly enough, while the ICOM's are running in the neighborhood of $360 each.  None of us were impressed with them.  

This the same post thats on Firehouse Forums?  If so, it's good to see people from there on here too.

I've heard nothing but good about Motorola.  Right now we have Bendix King and EF Johnson.  King is good, Johnson sucks.

Quoted: This the same post thats on Firehouse Forums?  If so, it's good to see people from there on here too.

As a matter of fact, yes.  I'm trying to do the homework assignment the chief gave me...LOL.

I've actually been a member of AR15 longer than firehouse.com  I'm almost certainly becoming a forum junky.  (At least, that's what my 20 year old step son is telling me!)  During the time I've been with AR15, I've gone from LE to FD.  As someone put it several mos. ago, I'm the one with the round happy badge, now...not the mean, pointy badge.