Batboard

OK Saber (and other) gurus-

Having discovered how nice a radio the Saber really is, I am loathe to put it down and carry my HT1250. Unfortunately, I have to work on two narrow-band repeaters (and accompanying simplex talk-arounds), and wanted to throw in a couple of MURS channels for chatting with my better half.

First off, I realize that I'm stuck with the 25KHz receive bandwidth, and I'm fine with that. Here are my questions:

1) Can I configure the Saber to work on narrowband channels by simply tuning it for 2.5KHz transmit deviation on the narrowband channels? Will this put it within spec. for narrow-band useage, or will I have to worry about dirty side lobes outside of the channel edges?

2) Since the Saber does not appear to support the off-center 12.5KHz channel spacing plan, can I simply edit the 12.5KHz channel center into the RPF file the same way I would for out of band programming, or will the radio have an issues with seeing a "non-standard" channel center?

2a) Speaking of out of band programming, how far down ito the 144MHz range can I expect to take a VHF High Saber before it gets unhappy? I know I can get down to 145MHz with no problem, but some of those 2m input frequencies are just out of reach.....

3) Does anyone know if DES or DES-XL can be supported with only 2.5KHz of deviation, or does it need the full wide-band bandwidth? How are DES encrypted transmissions modulated anyhow? Are they FSK, and if so, does anyone know if it is two or four state modulation, and what the shifts are? Also, I'm still looking for an answer on the minimus KVL version to load a DES-XL Saber.

Thanks in advance to all!

OK- now I'm begging!

Ignoring, for the time being, the questions about DES modulation, isn't there anyone out there with any experience on trying to use the Saber on 12.5KHz channels, and / or taking it down into the 2m band?

Please......

Thanks!

I used the low power trick to get my 146-174 saber R to go down to the low end of the 2M band, But I don't think I got a consistent lock on TX for the 144.XX repeater input frequencies, at least not 144.63. You may have different results, I think I had a non-secure saber that would lock on that channel. I'm sure there's some discrepencies in the component values in the VCO that allow certain VCOs' to lock and not others, kind of like the two mtx8000s' I had a few years ago, one of which would tx up to 903, thet other of which would only lock at 899.5 or something like that.

As for the narrow band thing, Try the hack and park the rx channel 12.5 off of a paging channel, that should clear things up. Good luck

A belated thanks!

I'm not having a lot of luck getting the VCO to lock at 154.535, so maybe I'm out two repeaters down in that range.

I tried editing the narrowband off-center channels (for example 155.9775) into the RPF, unfortunately, when I tried to program the RPF into the radio, it flagged them with an error for not being divisible by 5KHz or 6.25KHz, and graciously adjusted them to values it found more to its liking. It took the out of band, on center, frequencies just fine though. Very odd.

I don't know if there's any hope for getting past the pre-programming error trapping, or if I just need to start saving the nickles from my soda cans for an Astro Saber