MCC5500 E&M + channel steer

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acs680
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Joined: Fri Mar 27, 2009 7:21 am

MCC5500 E&M + channel steer

Post by acs680 »

We recently changed all of our CDM control stations from tone to e&m due to poor unintelligible audio. We have two control stations that need to channel steer 3 channels (minimum 2) that have remained on tone for now. Is there any way to steer without using tone?
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kb4mdz
Posts: 282
Joined: Tue Oct 02, 2001 4:00 pm
What radios do you own?: Too many for the time I have.

Re: MCC5500 E&M + channel steer

Post by kb4mdz »

Yes, you set up channel steering using the CPS, using the programmable pins as inputs, and setting them as Channel Steer 1, Ch.St. 2, Ch. St. 4 (it's binary), and then everything else, PTT, TX Aud, RX Aud, & COR/PL if your using it. All defined in the Accessory Pins tab of the Radio Configuration.

KInda curious, what you've been using for tone remote adapter; if things sound awful, could be just alignment or setup is wrong. (The cynic in me thinks a shop is trying to sell more than the customer needs; a little time doing alignment can do wonders for a small labor charge.)
Jim202
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Joined: Sun Sep 09, 2001 4:00 pm

Re: MCC5500 E&M + channel steer

Post by Jim202 »

I have to agree that audio level settings are not correct if the audio is distorted. Many radio shops either don't have the technical skills to correctly set the audio levels on a tone control channel or lack the test equipment to do it correctly, or just don't know how to make correct audio level adjustments..

In my travels around the country installing radio interoperability gateways, it was not uncommon to find radio circuits that either had the audio levels too high or too low. It was not very often that I would find multiple radio circuits with even the same audio levels coming from the same dispatch position. This is a general indication that the radio circuits have not seen a radio tech do an alignment on them in some time.

Yup the audio sounded crappy on many of these agency installations.
motorola_otaku
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Joined: Tue Jan 13, 2004 7:03 am

Re: MCC5500 E&M + channel steer

Post by motorola_otaku »

Our local shops have a tendency to just plug everything in on their 5500 console installs without doing any audio optimization, and they all sound uniformly terrible. If you have MOL access do yourself a favor and download the MCC5500 Installation and Operator manuals (6881005Y65-J and 6881005Y60-I, respectively) and go through all of the volume adjustment settings paying extra close attention to the Microphone AGC settings. Once you're satisfied the audio fidelity is good at the wireline connections it's time to align the audio in the tone remote adapters. If you're using E&M/relay keying straight to the radios with no tone remotes you'll have to fiddle with the external mic level settings in the CDM programming (and it probably wouldn't hurt to do full service alignments on them at the same time.) At the end of it all when you hit the 1 kHz tone on the console you should get the same thing out of the radio at the aligned deviation level with no clipping.

Sorry for the tl;dr post but I've been down this road before...
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