Other letters have been added or assigned to the first and second letter tables since this list was formulated in the 1960s. If anyone has newer information please let us know. Some of the meanings have been ignored, redefined or modified as well. For example, the desk charger for a Genesis series portable radio (HT600 / MT1000) has a model number of NTN4633A; this is clearly not a transmitter. A MaxTrac UHF RF board is model number HLE9310A, clearly not a housing or cabinet. A MaxTrac 900 MHz conventional firmware EPROM is model number FVN4019A; I won't even try to explain that one. If I had to form an opinion, I'd say that the people that assign / assigned the part numbers seem to have lost the "formula".

1st Letter - Major Category
N	Portable product (i.e. Florida manufacturing plants)
S	Test Equipment, CCTV, traffic light equipment and other special products
T	Two-way radio product (i.e. Illinois manufacturing plants)

2nd Letter - Product Type
A	Antenna related but not duplexers, filters or feed line
B	Boxes or packaging kits (mostly used internally by Motorola)
C	Control equipment (control heads, control panels, etc)
D	Drop-ship items (i.e. product manufactured outside bur for Motorola, and shipped directly from the original equipment manufacturing plant to the end customer). This category can included antenna system parts like mounting brackets, duplexers, Heliax™ feedline, etc.
E	Service kits and conversion kits
F	Filters and duplexers, can be Motorola sourced or drop shipped.
G	Panels (including metering panels)
H	Housings and cabinets
J	Coil kits
K	Cable kits
L	Miscellaneous non-categorized items
M	Microphones
P	Power supplies and power supply related equipment
R	Receivers and receiver related
S	Speakers, earphones, and related
T	Transmitters and transmitter related
U	Unified chassis

3rd Letter - Frequency Range
A	Under 25 MHz
B	25-54 MHz (yes, the table in the buyer's guide included 10 meters and 6 meters)
C	72-76 MHz   (see note 1)
D	144-174 MHz   (see note 2)
E	406-470 MHz   (see note 3)
F	890-960 MHz   (see note 4)
N	Not frequency dependent (like an audio-squelch board, a power supply or a microphone)   (see note 5)

NOTES:
[1]: C was limited to the 72-76 MHz USA assignment (one split) until Motorola started making land mobile equipment for the European 66-88 MHz band (which usually required two splits). Some manuals and sales literature say that the so-called "mid band" is 60-99 MHz. There is no 30-50 MHz low band in Europe; when they refer to low band they are referring to 66-88 MHz. Note that 75.000 MHz is used by aeronautical navigation beacons worldwide.

In the USA, 60-66 MHz is television channel 3, 66-72 MHz is TV channel 4, the 72-76 MHz frequencies are used as "Operational Fixed / Repeater" frequencies (essentially commercial point-to-point links) except for 75.000 Mhz as noted above, 76-82 MHz is TV channel 5, 82-88 MHz is TV channel 6, and 88-108 MHz is commercial FM broadcast. One rumor is that as part of the HDTV conversion in the USA the FCC and the military wanted to eliminate TV channels 4, 5 and 6 then reassign the 66-88 MHz range as a military band that aligns with the rest of the world (i.e. for joint operations and exercises).

[2]: D was redefined downwards to 136 MHz at some point, then to 132 MHz later on. There are high band equipment product lines that have two ranges, usually specified as 136-150.8 MHz, and a second range that is 150-174 MHz. Other product lines are 132 (or 136) MHz to 174 MHz. As an example, the CM series of mobiles have their two ranges as 132-150 MHz and 146-174 MHz.

[3]: E was redefined downwards to 390 MHz in the early 1970s, then to 360 MHz in the early 1980s for certain military, government and spook equipment. Initially the UHF LMR band was 450-470 MHz (440-470 in Canada and Europe), then in major population areas TV channel 14 (470-476 MHz) was reallocated to LMR (some publications referred to it as "the top band" or "T-band"). That 6 MHz chunk was split into 470-473 MHz as repeater outputs and 473-476 MHz as repeater inputs. Later on 476-512 MHz (channels 15-20) were reallocated and used similarly. Most product lines are either 450-470 MHz, 470-490 MHz, and 490-512 MHz or they are 450-480 MHz and 480-512 MHz. Some are 450-512 MHz, and there are rumors about newer equipment that will cover 400-512 MHz (or 400-524 MHz in Europe) in one range. A 1990s salesmans order guide has the UHF LMR band listed as going from 400 MHz to 470 MHz in one chunk and 470 MHz to 524 MHz in multiple 6 MHz chunks. There has also been some interesting equipment and signals found on frequencies as high as 550 MHz. One of my more useful gifts was a dead scanner that after repair covered from 25-1000 MHz.

[4]:F: 806-947 MHz were reallocated to the Land Mobile Radio at a worldwide convention in 1983. 698-806 MHz was reallocated in the USA simultaneously with the HDTV migration on June 12, 2009. Motorola has offered LMR gear on "700 MHz" frequencies (look at the specification sheets for the CDM series of mobile radios).
Note that there is an amateur secondary allocation from 902-928 MHz. It is not very usable because there is a lot of unlicensed grunge in that spectrum.

[5]: N is still used as a "Not Frequency Dependent" identifier even when there is some difference between wideband and narrowband equipment (like in the audio recovery circuitry in an IF / discriminator board). Most of the time a variation like that is handled in the final letter suffix (i.e. a TLN9999A1 might be wideband and a TLN9999A2 might be narrowband), but there are exceptions.

The four numbers after the three letters are simply a design sequence number. One or two letters after the numbers are a version, variation or revision identifier (the term used depends on which book you read). Almost all assemblies have one letter after the sequence number (i.e. the first shippable design is dubbed version A), some have two characters, a few have three (i.e. TLN9999A1A).

Acknowledgements and Credits:

As said above, this information came from four different 1960s and early 1970s vintage Motorola Buyer's Guides, plus a few other sources. I'd like to thank Neil McKie WA6KLA (SK) and Don Root WB6UCK (now K6CDO) as they gave me my first two Buyers Guides and I found the third and fourth at a local ham radio swap meets.

Contact Information:

The author can be contacted at Mike Morris WA6ILQ.

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This page originally posted on Wednesday 29-Aug-2007

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