XTL 2500 MPL and Talk Around issues

[Birken Vogt]

I am programming a bunch of XTL and XTS 2500s and am running into what I think is the same old Western States issue we have with countless other radio models:

1. When you program a channel for MPL, you automatically knock out receive PL on that channel because every channel has its own receive PL, so you have to leave it blank in the MPL table. Your people just have to deal with squelch crashes and on-channel interference from distant sources.

2. When you try to use Talk Around mode, the receive PL is not encoded on transmit, so anybody else running a radio that has the proper functionality (BK and special firmware Kenwoods) cannot hear you.

Is there any hidden check box to solve this, or do I have to just live with it?

[Jim202]

I am programming a bunch of XTL and XTS 2500s and am running into what I think is the same old Western States issue we have with countless other radio models:

1. When you program a channel for MPL, you automatically knock out receive PL on that channel because every channel has its own receive PL, so you have to leave it blank in the MPL table. Your people just have to deal with squelch crashes and on-channel interference from distant sources.

2. When you try to use Talk Around mode, the receive PL is not encoded on transmit, so anybody else running a radio that has the proper functionality (BK and special firmware Kenwoods) cannot hear you.

Is there any hidden check box to solve this, or do I have to just live with it?

Yup you have run into the Motorola BOTCHED job in their software that they broke after the R15 version. It worked just fine in R15. But when you went to R16 or higher, it stopped working as you have found. Have complaind for a long time and the 2 year old programmers just ignored the complaints.

I use to enjoy using the multi PL feature that these XTL radios use to have.

Haven't had an APX mobile in my hands long enough to see if they fixed it in that family yet.

Jim

[Birken Vogt]

What if I dug up the R15 software? Is it possible to go back in time on this issue?

How exactly did it function in R15?

[Will]

There is somewhere.. a utility that takes the radio back to an earlier CPS Version.

[kd5ual]

look in radio mods at p25.ca for the rollback

[Birken Vogt]

Just to be clear before I go to a lot of trouble (I do not have access to the radios in the shop here) what functionality will I gain by going back to R15 (actually all I have found here is R14)

Will MPL change the tx tone only and leave rx alone?

or

Will Talk Around encode the rx tone on transmit?

or both?

[Jim202]

Just to be clear before I go to a lot of trouble (I do not have access to the radios in the shop here) what functionality will I gain by going back to R15 (actually all I have found here is R14)

Will MPL change the tx tone only and leave rx alone?

or

Will Talk Around encode the rx tone on transmit?

or both?

Can't vouch for the R14 version, but I was using the R15 version. It allowed the fixed PL tones to stay on your channels. Then you had to check the multi PL box and it would allow you to use the, up to 16 PL tones that you set into the multi PL table. The way it works is when you pressed one of the programmable buttons you had set for the multi Pl function on the control head, it would allow you to rotate the channel selector to pick which PL tone you wanted. This then would be set into the channel (mode) the radio was set on.

This should also work on the same principle in the direct or talk around mode.

When you pressed the multi PL button again, it would go back to normal and use what ever fixed PL tone you had hard programmed into that channel (mode). Great feature if traveled around the country as much as I did.

Problem is the stupid software 2 year old's at Motorola didn't understand how it worked and messed it up. Now we have lost a very valuable feature. What it does now when you check the multi PL box in the software is gray out the fixed PL. So it forces you to use the multi PL all the time. Not what I would call a user friendly feature. It forces you to keep changing the PL selection for every channel you change to. It also means you have to have a very good memory, or be forced to pull out your channel listing book to find the correct PL tone. The other problem is it limited you to only having 16 PL codes.

The new APX radios will give you all 32 tone codes. But I don't think the multi PL button works any better on the APX software.

Jim

[Birken Vogt]

I set up V14 and it does not seem to behave any differently.

I can't change "transmit squelch" type in line 1 of the image shown.

Am I doing something wrong, or misunderstanding?

[Jim202]

I set up V14 and it does not seem to behave any differently.

I can't change "transmit squelch" type in line 1 of the image shown.

Am I doing something wrong, or misunderstanding?

[img]i.imgur.com/zCZk4vA.png[/img]

If you go to the zone channel selection (bottom of the tree view). Click on the + sign. Then go to the zone channel assignment tab. Select the zone you want to change by double clicking on it. Then click on the channels tab. I then left click and hold on the lower right corner of the window and drag it down and to the right to open up the view. In the 7th column over, you will find the selection for user selectable multi PL.

Now this is predicated that you have already set a button in the control head for multi PL use.

Jim

[Jim202]

I set up V14 and it does not seem to behave any differently.

I can't change "transmit squelch" type in line 1 of the image shown.

Am I doing something wrong, or misunderstanding?

[img]i.imgur.com/zCZk4vA.png[/img]

Forgot to add that in the 9th column over, is where the RX squelch type is set. Your choices are CSQ, PL or DPL. If the RX squelch is set to CSQ, the next couple of columns are grayed out and you can't change anything.

Then in the 16th column over is where you set the TX squelch type. Again the choices are disabled, PL or DPL. If the TX squelch is set to disabled, then like in the RX setting, the next couple of columns will be grayed out and you can't change anything there.

All these changes have to be done on a per channel basis.

Jim

[Jim202]

I set up V14 and it does not seem to behave any differently.

I can't change "transmit squelch" type in line 1 of the image shown.

Am I doing something wrong, or misunderstanding?

[img]i.imgur.com/zCZk4vA.png[/img]

Having done this programming so many times, I forgot to mention that you need to left click on the right side of the squelch type selection box. It will bring up a small window where you can make your selection. Click on the type of squelch your looking to have on that channel. It will then un gray the other required columns for that row for either the RX or TX selections. Depends on where you are clicking.

Jim

[Birken Vogt]

But I can't change either tx or rx squelch type when the MPL box is checked. They are greyed out.