Help with XTS Programming QC II

[The Comish]

I have an XTS 5000 and an XTS 1500 radio and I am running into problems with the radio NOT unmuting when it received QC II tones. I have programmed serveral different types of radios and pagers and have never come across the issue at hand.

Since the programming is the same for both radios I will give a general overview of the issue.

Our fire department page is on VHF and uses qc II 349 and 389. Two tone A-B nothing special. I have programmed my CDM 1250, minitors, and several BK Radios and when the tones drop they all unmute fine.

With the two radios above when the tones drop, they will not UNMUTE. If I use another radio to send the tones, it works fine. Basically I use an old Relm to send the QC II tones to check my pager programming etc and it has always worked. I propgrammed the XTS Series and when I send the tones from the Relm radio, if functions fine...Alert goes off and the radio unmutes. But when the the station tones to drop, no dice. I have left it on monitor and can hear the tones with no problem so I do not think it is a reception problem, especially when I am at the station. I have tried to adjust all the settings but to no avail. I have compared the settings to my CDM and the BK and they all appear to be similar.

Here is what I have.

Conventional Personality 3

RX only, RX unmute delay 2 MS, Unmute/Mute type, And Unmute Std Mute, RX Voice, Non Astro - Squelch set at 6, RX Emphasis checked Busy Led, checked
Signalling QC II System 1
Quick Call II Selective Call Decode set to AND

Quick-Call II System 1
Call Format A-B, Long Tone 9, Tone A 349 Tone B 389
Advanced: System Pretime 500 MS, Sel Call/In-Call Reset Auto w/Carr, Auto Reset Time 10 Sec, Limited Patience 60 Sec

Channel setting: Channel Name, Cnv, Personality #3, Freq 154.370, CSQ, 25.0 on the Channel Spacing , the rest of the options are greyed out.

Any Help on this is truly appreciated as I have spent hours trying the different options...Could it just be as simple as the XTS series won't act like a pager? All I need it to do is unmute so I can hear the dispatch, then reset.

Thanks

[kotaguchi]

What is the firmware HOST for each radios?

With ASTRO 25 Series portables,you need a minimum of HOST R08.xx for QCII paging to work.

[tower200]

What is the firmware HOST for each radios?

With ASTRO 25 Series portables,you need a minimum of HOST R08.xx for QCII paging to work.

In case you did not notice he already stated the XTS decodes when he encodes himself with a relm radio, it just does not work when dispatch encodes the XTS.

[Jim202]

What is the firmware HOST for each radios?

With ASTRO 25 Series portables,you need a minimum of HOST R08.xx for QCII paging to work.

There are a couple of other issues that you need to keep in the back of your mind.

One is if the radio in question is scanning. You have a hit or miss on catching the tones.

Two, if the originating transmitter doesn't have the tone levels low enough to keep them out of clipping
or limiting, the transmitter will distort the tones and the receiving radio will have problems trying to decode
the tones.

Third, this also brings into play the pre emphisis and de emphisis of the originating transmitter. Most
radios have a built in filter to limit the tones below a certain point in frequency. As a result, most radios
that are not specifically set up for paging do a real poor job in transmitting the low frequency paging tones.

You could have any one or all of the above issues causing you problems. Plus you need to look at the
squelch setting on the radio giving you problems. There are selections like and, or and the likes that effect
how the receiver will function. Is the receiver set up to require a Pl tone as well as audio? You probably
need to make sure the radio is set for carrier squelch to get the decode to function normally.

Jim

[The Comish]

Hosting is above R08
Radio is not scanning
CDM 1250 sitting next to the portable receives the pages correctly. So I am assuming the transmitting radio has the limits set correctly.
Squelch set to 1 ( tried a variety of settings here...back at 1)

Thanks for the replies so far...still looking for that magic answer.

[jmr061]

The Astro25 radios are very picky with QCII. I bet the paging console or repeater is just a bit out of tune, won't affect most radios except the Astro25 series. I have heard of this several times.

Jason