Astro Spectra - Low Astro deviation out of band

[RocketNJ]

Hi All,

I've found my UHF Astro Spectra's Astro deviation is low when transmitting out of band (440 band it's about 1.2 kHz). Alignment for the digital audio does not work out of band.

I've tried changing the gain of the op amp on the command board and got the deviation up to 3 kHz and I was able to access a local amateur Astro Quantro repeater but the DPL level was way out of whack.

Out of band analog, PL, DPL, and signalling are fine.

in band all deviation is fine.

Any ideas??

Thanks,
George

[RocketNJ]

It is a 450-482 range Astro Spectra.

The deviation problem only affects the Astro deviation, analog and signalling are fine out of band.

It almost seems like the softpots default to 0 for the Astro deviation.

George

[kk6rq]

No, he's right; and it affects ALL bands and splits. On and 'R' model (450-482)
it suddenly won't work on 449.995 or .9875; an 'S' model (482-512), 481.995/9875 won't work; same for 145.995 on a 'K'. (146-174)
We're trying to make the 2-Maxtrac repeater work and until we figure this out, we can only use our portables. Can't get much north of 1KHz on any of the mobiles-- Help, please.....!

BTW, the firmware is plenty new, and the boards are sufficiently up-to-date
(1 Meg Vocon, 2.5 KHz RF Board)

[RocketNJ]

On the Astro Spectra there are two resistors set up in a power divider configuration (one in series with audio, one tfrom audio to ground). These are very small surface mount resistors on the command board. I changed the values to raise the out of band deviation to 4 kHz. The softpots need to be readjusted in band for proper deviation.

The downside is the mod balance alignment becomes tricky after that. instead of adjusting the high side to match low side at roughly 3 hKz, I had to fudge the numbers to get it to look right (around 1.7 kHz).

What some of us wound up doing (although a little pricey) was to upgrade our AS to Astro Spectra Plus (new VOCON). Now the unit deviation is still fine out of band. This also holds true for the new XTL series mobiles and the XTS 1500, 2500, 5000 portables.

[Motofanatic]

What some of us wound up doing (although a little pricey) was to upgrade our AS to Astro Spectra Plus (new VOCON). Now the unit deviation is still fine out of band. This also holds true for the new XTL series mobiles and the XTS 1500, 2500, 5000 portables.

I'm not sure about the XTL series, but this does not hold true for the XTS5000 if you have firmware 6.xx or later. This may also be true for the XTS1500 and XTS2500 with firmware 6.xx or later.