Batboard

Hello, I have a System Saber with a factory id of H43TUK5170CN. When I got the radio it was programmed for the 2 meter amateur radio band and marine frequencies. When I brought it to the Motorola dealer to have it programmed for the repeaters in my area they had 3 comments.

1.) After reading the radio with their rss software they said it was a 157-174 Government split.
2.) It was programmed before I got it with a lab version or hacked version of the rss.
3.) They said they couldn't program it.

Okay, so my question is this. If the radio is in fact a 157-174 split how is it working at 145, 146, 147 and 154 Mhz, well below the stated band split? Another thing that I find interesting is that the antenna has a yellow dot which is supposed to state that it works between 136-151 which is below the band split reported to me by the dealer.

If the radio was programmed with the lab or hacked version of the rss could the dealers version of the software give a wrong reading of the actual band split?

I opened the radio to see if I could ID any of the modules for that would signify the band split. From my reading I think the only part that are totally different for the 157 split is the PA. I think the PA had 73A marked on it but I'm not sure if that tells us anything.

I'm looking forward to actually being able to use this great radio. Hopefully someone will have some insight into this mystery.

Thanks,
Bruce

Hi, Bruce, and welcome to the board!

The best way to determine the correct bandsplit of your radio is to do what you have already done, and open it up. There are actually five modules that will be different if the radio is properly set up for low-split (136-150.8 ), which is how it should be set up if it was properly set up for Amateur use. There is always the possibility that it is a 157-174 split, that some idiot has forced a low-split codeplug into. Unfortunately, thats not very difficult, and is a fairly common practice for unscrupulous people to do this to make it easier to sell the less desirable gov't. split radios. Open it back up, and get the number off of all the modules. The numbers will be in a xxxnnnnx format, with the "x" being a letter and the "n" being a number, such as "NLD8201x", which is a low-split (136-150.8 ) VCO. The last character is a revision designator, and will probably be an "a", "b", "c", or "d". You can, for what you need to know, ignore the revision. After you get the numbers, go to the Saber section of The Repeater Builder's Technical Information Pages website, and scroll down until you find the list of module numbers. Compare whats on the site to what you have, and post back with what you find out. There are also pictures further down the page to help you in identifying the modules, if needed. If you plan on doing much "under the hood" of your Saber, you'll probably want to go ahead and read the entire page, as it contains a ton of good info. Best of luck, and let us know what you find out!

Yeah when I got my UHF System Saber a long time ago this was the problem. It was a T band radio, 470-512 MHZ but the seller put in a 440-470 MHZ VCO so the radio would work in the ham band. He forced in a 440-470 codeplug & tuned it as best he could so it actually worked pretty good. Just not as good as a few other legit ones my friends had. I was lucky because I was able to swap out the modules with a friend. He needed his radio to work on a bunch of 468 simplex freq's & the T band modules worked just fine there. I got all the correct 440-470 modules & a complete alignment at the Plantation factory for free. Unfortunately the model & serial #'s don't indicate the bandsplit on these radios like a Jedi or XTS. Good luck with your radio & welcome to the board. GARY N4KVE

Thanks for all the help. After some looking at the modules here's what I found.

PA - NTLD8773A 146-174 MHz High Power 6W
Synth- NLD8210B 146-178 MHz Used in 146-162, 148-174, and 157-174 splits.
5 pole filter NFD6112A
RX - NTLD8180A 136-174 MHz. Used for all of the VHF sub-splits.
Secure mod NTN5835A Smartnet DES-XL
XTAL NXN6269A

What do you think? It looks like I might be able to get some of the upper side of 2 meters with this radio.

What happens when you force a 146-174 split down to 144 or 145? Is that okay? Will I just get degraded performance below 146?

Thanks,
Bruce

That looks like a typical Systems saber They were set up pretty much in 2 ways 136-150.8 or 146-174 for the Feds. It sounds like yours was set up with a high split codeplug. I have programmed sabers with the 146-174 split modules to Ham freqs in the 144 range without any problems the -2mhz is well within the fudge factor for those modules.

Can someone tell me how I can get my H43TUK5170CN con 6 vhf system saber to go below 147.000 using ver. R04.00.02 rss. Need to get down to 144 tx and 145 rx for the ham band.
Getting serial comm errors with trying to read or write using ver. R03.00.02, so that's not going to work for me....

Thanks

[quote=kato56]Getting serial comm errors with trying to read or write using ver. R03.00.02.....[/quote]

What computer setup are you trying to use with this version? If its a Petium-class (or higher), you're out of luck. You'll need to find an older system (think 25 MHz 486 max, 16 MHz (or slower) 386 preferable), running real DOS.

running real DOS

Thanks for the hint... once I swapped over to a dos only machine..... it worked !

Hello everyone,

Just wanted to give you an update. The radio has been programmed and is working great. I've been getting reports that my signal into the repeater is good. I've noticed that the radio gets very warm after using it for a while. Over all I'm very happy with it. Thank you everyone for all your help.

-Bruce