Mobile Equipment Used By Michigan State Police
 
 Note, items on this page are not intended to be an in depth history of each manufacturer's piece of equipment, only showing the variety of what was placed in patrol cars over the years and what needed to be maintained by the communication technicians. 

 
Mobile Radios

All of the above were low band only.

 

 

 

GE Mastr, Micor, Mastr II, Syntor X, Mitrek and Ranger were mostly low band, but these also were used for other agencies such as sheriff departments and cities where dispatching was done on high band and UHF.  Also the Intelligence and under cover work used high band.
 
  

Max Trac, Vertex, Wilson and Regency were mostly used by
under cover or other agencies where high band was used.


    

Sirens

Early day sirens were motor driven and normally were maintained by garages, but many techs did work on them.  Dominator was the first electronic siren used by MSP, Federal Siren was next with many different models that looked the same, PA15, PA20 and PA20As.  After the PA300s,  800MHz equipment came with a siren from Motorola.
 
 
  

Portables

          

 
Handie Talkies

A handie talkie, often referred to by its abbreviation, HT, is a handheld, portable two-way radio transceiver.  MSP's first HT was the Motorola HT200.

When more frequencies were added to both low-band and high-band for under cover work and more, the HT220 became the HT of choice.  They came in models for HF, VHF and UHF.

When vehicle repeaters were introduced, the Motorola MT500 became unit of choice where VHF was the primary use.

As more communications were added state wide it became much more complex, sheriff departments, local police and other agencies needed to work together.  Depending on district or post area many state police vehicles were dispatched not only by post but also by local dispatch centers.   The Bendix King filled the need with fully digital micro processed frequency control with 12 and more channels.

When the 800MHz system came into use the Motorola Saber was the state of the art. 



Vehicular Repeaters


Vehicle Repeaters were put into service in 1974, Harris, Aerotron and Motorola PAC-RT.


 
  

Scanners

Above is a good representation of the scanners that were used over the years.   Early units were crystal controlled, the SBE Opti/Scan used a programmable card and everything after that was keypad programmable.
  
  

  

 Speed Enforcement Equipment

       

The original speed equipment besides the stop watch were radar with a speed meter.  Vascar was a time and distance measuring device that served well.  First digital radar was the Kustom MR-7.