Batboard

Just got a few of these in. Already having problems with them.

On our community repeater they will not decode DPL from MTR2000 with a model 38-MAX Repeater Panel.

Also we have had problems getting them to open up for the newer General Dynamics SVC MON's...

I have literally cranked the deviation from as low to as high as it will go and it doesnt make a difference. It is very intermittent. It doesnt work more than it does but i cannot do anything to make it work or when it is working make it not...

Motorola says they know about it and the MTR needs touched up...but i am literally sitting in the floor of the site checking and rechecking the station and it is dead on freq, perfect deviation, ect...

HELP!!

-Nick

I hate to say it, but I think the Magone's are a case of, you get what you pay for. Our company bought several of them. They work ok, but over all we were fairly disappointed with them.

Have you tried injecting the DPL into the radio to see what happens?

I have over 100 of these in service and have not heard any complaints.

Try a different dpl code, or even a pl code, or set it up as carrier squelch. Narrowband or wideband? Whats the dpl level from the repeater? Does that code work for other radios?

With a service monitor, generate a RX signal with the inverse DPL code of what's programmed to see if the BPR will open, indicating a programming or internal unit problem.

60A wrote:I hate to say it, but I think the Magone's are a case of, you get what you pay for. Our company bought several of them. They work ok, but over all we were fairly disappointed with them.

Does the MagOne have X-PAND audio companding in narrow mode and can it be enabled or disabled in the programming?

The low end "bubble pack" radios (Moto TalkAbout GMRS/FRS and XTN/CP100/CLS/VL50 portables) force X-PAND to be ON in narrow mode and cannot be disabled in narrow mode. No user-selectable option in the bubble packs.

Who makes the MagOne for Motorola? Is it made by Giant International, who makes Moto's GMRS/FRS bubble packs?

The DPL issue is a problem motorola is aware of. Symptom is slow opening squelch on DPL (usually 3-5 seconds). TPL is not affected. Motorola is looking into it, but states it is not a high priority and to use TPL instead. What am I supposed to do about all the radios I have in the field that are on DPL (500-1000+)? MOT says to reprogram all of each customers' equipment........WHATEVER!!!! FatBoy

FatBoy wrote:The DPL issue is a problem motorola is aware of. Symptom is slow opening squelch on DPL (usually 3-5 seconds). TPL is not affected. Motorola is looking into it, but states it is not a high priority and to use TPL instead. What am I supposed to do about all the radios I have in the field that are on DPL (500-1000+)? MOT says to reprogram all of each customers' equipment........WHATEVER!!!! FatBoy

Hey, give them a break... DPL is brand new technology, it's going to take Moto a while to figure out how to make it work right. [/sarc]

DPL is around 25 or so years old. Anybody know EXACTLY how old?

Has anybody with problem BPR radios checked to be sure they are on the correct frequency, say within a few hundred Hz? DPL is sensitive to frequency errors in the transmitter and receiver. A signal w/DPL received a couple of kHz off-frequency as seen by the receiver can cause slow decoding or failure to decode DPL. The decoder sees a step function instead of the DPL data due to the DC offset from the discriminator output due to the received signal being off-frequency. If the discrimiator output is capacitively coupled to the DPL decoder, it may recover a few seconds later (slow decode) after the coupling capacitor gets fully charged up (or discharged) and the decoder no longer sees the DC offset and can see the DPL data.

Check to make sure the BPR radios are not off-frequency! They need to be within a few hundred Hz of being dead-on frequency for DPL to work reliably. Also check to make sure what transmitters they're trying to hear are on-frequency. Either one being off-frequency is enough to cause DPL-decode problems.

Good luck.

I don't know about being exactly on frequency....but...

There's a few repeaters over here that I've maintained, on 461.375 and 462.175, and they both use the same DPL. On occasion, they will cause interference with eachother's output signals if they're both transmitting at the same time. No idea why...but it stopped when I reprogrammed the DPL tones to individually seperate ones between the two.

Rayjk110 wrote:I don't know about being exactly on frequency....but...

There's a few repeaters over here that I've maintained, on 461.375 and 462.175, and they both use the same DPL. On occasion, they will cause interference with eachother's output signals if they're both transmitting at the same time.

That sounds like an intermod situation of some sort.

No idea why...but it stopped when I reprogrammed the DPL tones to individually seperate ones between the two.

I suspect the DPL change is simply masking the symptoms of the behavior you described.

I mentioned DPL and freq tolerance because DPL is known to be sensitive to frequency errors in the receiver and transmitter. Radios talking to each other don't need to be EXACTLY on frequency but must at least be within spec for DPL to work. Just a kHz or two off in frequency is sometimes enough to cause DPL decode problems when the waveform and deviation all check out OK. Narrowband systems are likely to be even more sensitive to freq errors due to the tighter tolerances required.

Good luck.

I would go into the service menu of the MTR-2000 and adjust the Reference Modulation to obtain the best possible square wave and see if that fixes things. I know it has nailed a few users on this board when working with LTR systems and I imagine DPL will be no different.