Saber current consumption

[oh2glg]

Has anyone ever looked, how much current analog sabers usually take when on stand by?

After a while after I got my Systems Saber III here I noticed its' usable working time (tx/rx ratio about 1/10) was quite short, no more than 8 hours or usually less. Then again Saber II R (not systems) went on (with a bit larger battery though) for more than 20 hours or so with no problems at all.

Well, battery on Systems saber III is an "aftermarket" battery (looks a lot like original though), however it has been measured with battery analyzer to have capacity for about 1300mAh. I claims to be NTN4538DR, 1100mAh NiCD battery. It even has the green dot on its side.

Ruggedized Saber II R battery is NTN7058AR, 1800mAh 7.5 volts. Also measured with battery analyzator, holds about 1890 mAh.

Then I looked what two different sabers take current with adjustable PSU and Fluke multimeter.

Turns out that Saber IIR takes about 70mA when it's on a channel with no traffic and about 90mA when there's traffic, but speaker output is set to minimum.

Systems Saber III takes 100mA with no traffic and 120 or more when there's traffic, but with speaker output set to minimum. That's a bit more that Saber II R, but it does not give full answer either. Too little difference still.

Is that current consumption lever normal? There is more circuitry on display board etc on System Saber III compared to SII, but still both seem to be quite hungry for current.

Also setting different "battery low"-levels on Systems Saber RSS don't seem to help much, since if I set it lower, lo batt warning comes in such late time that radio does not even transmit anymore when there's lobatt warning, and when it's set to higher, it starts beeping bit too early.

Original setting on Lo batt level was about 158. I tried to lower it to 100, which turned out to be much too low, then about 140, not too good either. Original lobatt warning level seems to be best level after all.

Is there some setting to enable rx power save? Most radios seem to go into powersave mode, which can be easily seen when measuring current consumption.

[MTS2000des]

Systems Sabers, like most trunking radios, don't use a battery save logic like the conventional only radios. Thus the battery life is shorter. Same difference between an HT1000 with battery save enabled versus an MTS2000 (programmed for conventional), even though the MTS and HT share the same RF board (theoretically current draw should be similar), the MTS keeps everything "on" all the time as it's designed primarily to be a trunking radio and trunking radios cannot go to "sleep" as they always have to be decoding OSW's.

However your Systems Saber battery life seems a little shallow, I got around 12 hours with mostly RX and scanning, occasional keyups. A standard analog Saber would run for two days off the same battery.

[oh2glg]

Systems Sabers, like most trunking radios, don't use a battery save logic like the conventional only radios. Thus the battery life is shorter.

Well, that explains it quite well.

However your Systems Saber battery life seems a little shallow, I got around 12 hours with mostly RX and scanning, occasional keyups. A standard analog Saber would run for two days off the same battery.

Well, I should take another look again with more controlled environment then. The operating times were somewhat estimated.

Thanks for the information about the battery saving. Missing rx battery save was news to me, although thinking about it now, it makes sense.

[dallas]

Guys, maybe anyone measured current consumption on Astro Sabers?
As is knows schematic is completely different so what is normal current in rx mode? Thanks

[GlennD]

Measured standby current.

VHF Saber III 70MA

VHF Systems Saber III 100MA

VHF Astro Saber III 110MA