Anyone use MDS Microwave products ?

[chartofmaryland]

What is your take on them and how reliable are they?


CoM

[RFguy]

We use the 900S. Have about a dozen in service. Generally reliable, but have had some power output failures.
We turned down the output by 3dB and that seems to have fixed it.

What product are you looking at?

[chartofmaryland]

Same, LEDR900s

Have been going through alot of issues with Rx and Tx problems between the sites and radios, they are in the 930 Mhz and with mountain and valley sites it makes it difficult.

Have had Rx failures and alot of data failures.


CoM

[RFguy]

Sounds like a system design issue, not a product issue.
System needs to be line-of-site shots. If you are going through trees and hills, reliable performace would not be expected.
Ours is a public safety system, we run hot standby. We have about 5 seconds a year of total outage time.

[chartofmaryland]

The issues are on the table between the party and the persons in charge of the original project. It appears the products are going to still be used even though the product experienced the failures like Rx unlock, I/O alarms, and loss of framing during "normal" operation.


I'm a nice shade of blue,

CoM

[Astro Spectra]

The LEDR radios run really close to their margins. The PA linearity is only just able to manage the QAM modulation and that's why people often see better performance if they back the output power down a bit.

Some units simply don’t meet the FCC mask which suggest a degree of unit to unit variation. The LEDR radios are known for getting hot and in some installations you'll see fans strapped in to keep the heat sink on the side cool.

I saw a nice radio on the Trio Datacom Canada (1-866 844-8746) stand at IWCE in Vegas last year, had IP and 2W/4W interfaces even T1 all in the one box. Available in 400 and 900MHz.

[davidg73]

we have a couple of these out there, one hop is less than 3 miles, one hop is about 10. both hops are clear LOS. so far we have had 3 no power out issues and multiple issues with corruption of the data onthe MUX.

i can say that MDS tech support is great, my only complaint is they are open only during M-F business hours. most of my failures happen at 2AM. with this tying in consoles at 2 PSAPS, i cannot wait for tech support to open!

[jpatrou]

We have several hops of the 900S in the 960's. Had several failures and radios sent back to the factory. One radio failed on the bench, never put into service, factory could not fix it, would not honor the warranty, and I paid $2500 to get them to send me another new radio.