Batboard

Hello,

As this is my first post, I would like to thank all of the responsive, technical, and patient advisors out there reading this board. I have found out a lot about Motorola Radios here, and you guys make this place a wonderful environment.

I have a VHF Spectra, with Zones configured, and 128 Modes. I have anywhere from 10-16 modes programmed per zone's scan list.

When the radio is in Scan, the radio has a base mode that it returns to if I turn off Scan. I am wondering if there is a way to program a button for me to turn off the button, and stay on the active mode.

For example, let's say that I am on mode 5, an amateur radio repeater. I press the scan button, and a conversation begins on mode 9. I decide that I want to stop scanning, and remain on mode 9. If I simply turn off the scan button, I return to mode 5. I want to program a means to stop scanning on mode 9, and remain on mode 9 to hear the whole conversation.

If there is such an option, where would I find it in the RSS?

As long as I have you here, I am wondering too if there is a way to mute the volume on the radio, so that if my cell phone rings, I can hit one button to mute instead of turning the volume down. Muting is much faster.


Thanks!

Christian KC0ARF

I haven't seen many spectras lately so I'm a bit rusty.. not sure if these will do what you want, but you can try and see..

You can set some of the buttons to A/B for A or B speaker, I've never used that so I'm not sure how it works, might be able to switch the speaker off though.

For the scan thing the only thing I see in the RSS is TX Revert Mode, you could try changing that to selected, I don't recall if that will affect the receive channel though.

Sorry, but I've never seen any option for stopping scan on a busy channel on a spectra.

And as for mute, the only thing quicker is the power switch. What I do is have a normally no traffic channel selected as my standby/selected channel, then if I need to shut it up for a moment, I can just turn scan off.

The only thing I can think of for your problem.. I do have somewhat the same pbm.

There are two delay times in the Scan Options. One is the time the radio stays on the mode after the carrier+PL drops, and the other is the time it waits on the mode after PTTd. Sorta like "talk back scan" it waits for the PTT, but you gata be quick on the PTT before it reverts back to the selected mode.

When the Scan is deactivated, the radio allways goes back to the Mode that was selected.


My VHF Spectra has one ham repeater as the selected channel and Priority also. If the radio picks up the distant co-channel repeater, the scan stays on the selected node but the speaker does not unmute because there is no or different PL. And yes the Spectra can 'hear' the Houser rptr (Palmdale) even tho it is way on the other side of the mountains. And that is with a unity 1/4 broadband antenna. So sometimes the scan will 'snatch' the seleced chan even tho the scaned one is much stronger and with proper PL. Just a quirk in the Priority Scan.

Though the terminology is a bit arbitrary, Motorola (in other contexts) uses the term "scan suspend" to mean stopping the scan on a non-selected active mode, and it uses the term "scan off" (or "scan stop") to mean cancellation of the scan function altogether, with a revert to the selected channel.

Some devices allow one to select either scan suspend or scan off as the result of toggling the "scan" button while in scan mode. So far as I am aware, "scan off" is hardwired into the Spectra and not changeable by programming.

To be fair to the Spectra, it should be remembered that it is designed primarily as a public safety radio, and the use of the scan function in public safety operations was not widespread when the Spectra came out. This partly explains why the Spectra's scan list is limited to 15+1, and why it has troubles if there are co-channel users of any channel assigned a priority in a scan list. Indeed, the fact that the radio has options for off-hook scanning, talkback vs. selected as the result of going off-hook during scan, and nuisance delete was considered quite advanced at the time.

As Will suggested, if you set the off-hook option for talkback (on "Radiowide|Scan Option," set "Tx Revert Mode" to "Active") and stretch the scan-stop dwell time (same screen: set "Conv. Timing: Receive Hang Time" to something on the order of 4-6 seconds), you can achieve what you want to do by lifting the mike when the scan stops on a non-selected channel you want to monitor for a while, rather than hitting the scan button. To do this, be sure that "Scan Off HUB" is "disabled" on the same screen.