# MT500 and Holsters? **URL:** \ **Category:** Uniforms\ **Created:** [May 14, 2009, 11:18pm UTC](https://forum.gbfans.com/t/mt500-and-holsters/18520 "2009-05-14T23:18:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Karma](https://forum.gbfans.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/k/bcef8e/32.png) [@Karma](https://forum.gbfans.com/u/Karma)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2009, 11:18pm UTC](https://forum.gbfans.com/t/mt500-and-holsters/18520/1 "2009-05-14T23:18:31Z")
Picked these up at the local flea market for a song. Some have foil “Motorola” lettering on them, most need some kind of repair- either gluing the belt loop back on or installing new snaps. I also picked up, from the same seller, two MT500 radios. One works but needs a new battery. The other receives but doesn’t transmit. I can’t imagine it being worth the $$$ to make the broken one work again…the replacement batteries alone run $30-60 apiece. Has anyone every had one refurbished? -Karma ---
**Author:** ![umoribawar](https://forum.gbfans.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/u/dfb087/32.png) [@umoribawar](https://forum.gbfans.com/u/umoribawar)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2009, 11:23pm UTC](https://forum.gbfans.com/t/mt500-and-holsters/18520/2 "2009-05-14T23:23:17Z")
i used to just hook up 9volt battery’s to mine. doesn’t last as long but it works. ---
**Author:** ![davis](https://forum.gbfans.com/user_avatar/forum.gbfans.com/davis/32/5853_2.png) [@davis](https://forum.gbfans.com/u/davis)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2009, 3:02am UTC](https://forum.gbfans.com/t/mt500-and-holsters/18520/3 "2009-05-21T03:02:52Z")
I totally gutted mine to make it lighter so there is no chance of it working at all. I’m the only GB I know in my local area so there was no need for me to have a working radio! ---
**Author:** ![pgrant](https://forum.gbfans.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/50afbb/32.png) [@pgrant](https://forum.gbfans.com/u/pgrant)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2009, 8:00am UTC](https://forum.gbfans.com/t/mt500-and-holsters/18520/4 "2009-06-09T08:00:46Z")
The Motorola MT500 radios were our first purchase after deciding to build 3 of the costumes but we only finished them for their last outing. We decided early on that they would be very handy to keep in contact at events however it was quickly apparent that being 25 years old and lacking crystals and chargers this would not be a worthwhile task. So we stripped them down and gave them a through clean after which we refitted them with modern pmr radios the PTT button works and volume control turns the speaker on and off. The rest of the settings can be accessed simply by removing the battery cover as seen in the photo below. I would not recomend doing it unless you are very good with a soldering iron beacuse after some tests we decided the only pratical way to do it was to solder leads directly to some of the surface mount components. We also struggled to find radios small enough to fit in the MT500 shell. Removing the case from the new radios would have also removed the battery holder so this was not an option. We did wire the drop in charger contacts on the new radios to the ones on the MT500 case but we have never got round to makeing a charger for the MT500s so we just used a normal charger to charge the batteries. The life of the batteries are very good the life of which can be mesured in days. We could not find holsters and had read that they were uncomfortable to wear so we made pivot holsters from leather and the plastic part was made on a CNC Mill. ![image](https://discdn.gbfans.com/original/3X/8/a/8ad52061daf401d13cb8a3adf2c9b78df78f899d.jpeg)