Batboard

GlennD

As for a motorola preamp, you need one from a old metal mic. The current mics have a preamp for an electret mic and you need one for a dynamic mic. Also the preamp is powered from the radio so no isolating cap is used.

GlennD

Since you are a firefighter, the preamp from a David Clark mic works well.
I used one to interface a centracom cie gooseneck mic to an XTL5000
on an emergency van.

GlennD

We have seen this problem in some of our XTL5000s that fleet installed into police cars. If the red wire at the radio has continous 12V then the control head red wire must also be connected to cont 12V. This is shown in the later install CDs but it is wrong on the original CDs. In our case fleet ran...

GlennD

The city replaced my desktop computer with the latest dual core dell. It seems to be too fast. I can no longer program MCS2000s and Astro Spectras with it. Astro 25 radios work fine. I have to bring out my Panasonic CF52 to program using the same hardware. Our city has a rigid changeout policy. YOU ...

GlennD

You have to modify each version of the software. We have 450-512 radios and I have programmed ham frequencies in the 440 area in some recent motorcycle radios for a couple of amateur radio officers.

GlennD

Avoid a CE-3 since it is band segmented. Ce-4,5,6 are continous coverage.

GlennD

You really should have a close board layout. Common problems are the 10Mdf cap at the edge corrodes the thin foil trace supplying 12V, If you have 12V at the FET switch, when the radio is turned on there must be over 20V at the gate. This is supplied by a square wave tripler and limited by a 36V zen...

GlennD

I did about 500 XTS5000s going from the problem 8 version to a 9 version using the USB cable with no failures. Never used a serial cable on a portable but on a mobile it takes over 20 min. The XTS USB is less than 3 min.

GlennD

Uh, That is the processor crystal and it will read open. There is no fuse in the control head.

GlennD

The hole is there only to protect the center pin if the wrong antenna is screwed on. In the past I have found sma antennas screwed on to Sabers. In this case the only thing radiating is the stud. With our system, they still worked. Going the other way, you are screwing a shield cap on the antenna. I...

GlennD

Our SP version was 6.28 and it was used for all uhf radios except some fire radios that needed more PLs. In that case it was programmed with 6.28 and the Pls added with 7.01 without touching the freqs or it would revert to the band limits. The vhf radios were all programmed with 7.01 All of the radi...

GlennD

We pay for social security and 2 or 3% of the Calpers retirement. When I joined it was 1.8% but we paid an additional percent to go to 2.7%. Public safety people get 3% at 50. Ours is 2.7% at 55.

GlennD

I joined the City of Long Beach at 50. I will retire around 66 so I will have 16 years times 2.7% times 66K. It is certainly time enough for a fair retirement starting at 50. The real problem is that most cities, counties, and states are broke. Long Beach has a hireing freeze and we lost our three o...

GlennD

The control head can not talk to the trunk unit. Make sure that the rear unit has power and the control cable is firmly plugged in at both ends.

It is not likely a control head radio mismatch since it was working.

GlennD

We have batteries turned in with no battery display. When questioning the user it turns out that they never allow the battery to fully charge. If you pull out the radio to go on a call, sooner or later the battery status will go away since the battery charge is not known anymore. In all cases so far...

GlennD

I have never seen a memory alloc error. We mostly used an sp version of 6.28 with + or - 10Mhz band limits. For VHF fire we used 7.01 since they needed more pl freqs than 6.28 supported. I used an ancient DEC 486 50Mhz computer. When I was first dragged into the screen room the slow computer was a p...

GlennD

All Long Beach surplus is picked up by property room.com. After that it seems to end up at dealers or even on Ebay.

GlennD

The radios say error because we corrupt the code plug by turning off the power while programming. If you follow the batlabs procedure it is very easy to recover the radio. The trick is that you must let at least one dot show and quickly turn off the radio. Then program in a valid 8K code plug. We ar...

GlennD

Years ago the PD Sabers were shared and they had to be checked out at the start of the shift. We managed to purchase enough for the officer to be issued a radio. The maint went down since if a radio is yours, you tend to take care of it. Currently our XTS5000s are issued and I have very little probl...

GlennD

Years ago we had a MSF5000 that always voted. We finally tracked down the problem. It turns out that the tech that programmed the radio forgot to disable the 2175hz filter.

This made the unit look better than the other seven receivers.

GlennD

You have to be very fast. Let no more than two dots appear. Then program it with an 8K codeplug. I have had 100% pass rate.

We no longer use Sabers so I have not done it in a while.

GlennD

Follow the procedure on batlabs to recover the radio. If a 2K code plug is forced into an 8K radio the radio will then be 2K until fixed. I found many fed surplus radios this way

GlennD

Most of the CF 29s on Ebay are H revisions. It looks like a :o load of toughbooks came out of lease from GTE. You can buy a reburb from overstock.com or a rough one from Ebay. I purchased an Ebay one and it cleaned up to used status and works fine after cleaning it up. The worst part was cleaning up...

GlennD

If you have access to spectra lab, I will send you a command board for $10 shipping and handling.
THAT IS REALLY UGLY. IF I DID THAT I WOULD HAVE TO RESIGN AS A TECH!

GlennD

You can use the USB pins on the rear connector. I built up a cable that way and it works fine. No rib is ever used with Astro25 radios. My city only purchases XTL5000s so I can not help you on the rest. When I first programmed an Astro25 radio I could not figure out where to put in the frequencies s...

GlennD

Remember the duplexer does not have receive and transmit ports. It has high and low frequency ports. The notch slopes are not symentrical. If you align them backwards there will be increased insertion loss.

GlennD

We had some task force officers issued LASO Astro sabers with bad batteries. Since the city XTS5000s had more than enough room for the LA city and LA Sheriff channels, i just added them to the city issued radios so they would not have to carry two radios. Based on this, the LA Sheriff dept is still ...

GlennD

You do realize that you have to wright the new settings back to the vrm?

GlennD

Look very closely at the power supply connector where the PS plugs into the PCB. Very often it has burned pins.

There was a TSB recommending that the wires be soldered directly.

GlennD

The really bad thing is that if you want to purchase wideband equipment to use now with the idea of narrow banding in the future you must buy this year. No wideband equipment may be sold after Jan 1, 2011. This is putting a major crimp in some of our departments since Long Beach has major money prob...

GlennD

We had similar problems. Whelens response was too bad, move the antenna. We ended up with the 800Mhz data antenna close to the light bar and the UHF PD antenna close to the rear of the Black and Whites. Looks unbalanced but at least the bar does not turn off on a code 3 run when the Officer uses the...

GlennD

We, The City of Long Beach corrupt the code plugs on radios sent to salvage. It is corrupted by turning off the radio after a few dots appearing on the screen. It is much faster than programming a bogus code plug into the radio. Since we get vurtually nothing for the radio, speed is of the essence. ...

GlennD

Regarding our MDC, It is muted on most channels in the voter. On LG1 and LG2, It is repeated since towing uses button boxes for status. They use lg1 until the refuse gorillas stop using lg2. Then they switch to a clear lg2. Since the refuse people have no courtesy they make the channel unusable for ...

GlennD

All of our comparators use E & M keying over our microwave network and they have no click. On most channels we vote seven receivers. You really have to be watching the voter display to see receiver changes. There is no audio difference.

GlennD

If you do not need to load keys, Normal Spectra parts work fine on an Astro Spectra. Quite some time ago we ordered 100 radios for the Gas Dept. They were a fifty fifty split between dash and trunk. It ended up that most were installed as trunk mount. We converted the dash mounts using Spectra parts...

GlennD

I have seen a couple from fire but none from pd. It might be due to the fact that they have bolted leather cases to the engine cab for the radios.

GlennD

The Saber references work fine in the Spectra. You will need to set the frequency after changing it. I always check dev but so far it has been in the ball park.

GlennD

We have all of our Quantars, MTRs, MSF 5000,s run through mux to our shop. I think that they are all normal 9600 baud.

GlennD

Looking at the flat rate list dated 9/2/09 it looks like $284 for a HT1250.

GlennD

Well, after hearing no screams!, I gathered up my courage and tried to upgrade to the latest firmware. My 3920 does not see the flash drive on any port. A USB mouse works fine. The other 3 units we have have not been upgraded to the last release and they see both flash drives just fine. Since they a...

GlennD

When I was first put into the screen room the programming computer was a pentium 100. This sorta works with Sabers. It would program but it would not transfer the tuning info properly. I went into the junk room and found an old DEC 486-50. I now use this as my DOS programming computer. We have moved...

GlennD

I just downloaded a new version firmware for my 3920. I am afraid to install it until I hear some good news from others. The last one turned my unit into a brick until they posted a fix.

GlennD

I use a 486-50 with no problem with 6.28 and 7.01. When I was dragged into the screen room the programing computer was a pentium 100. This programmed OK but it would not retrieve any tuning info.

The reason we used both versions was that the 6.28 was SP with + or - 10mhz band limits.

GlennD

We are no longer a Saber shop but we used to use a lot of NTN9485 and 9486 batteries. Many would analizse OK but not hold a charge due to low internal resistance. Good new batteries last a long time between charges. I rarely charge my test batteries but they are charged when I need them for the rare...

GlennD

Indeed, I left out the 8, sorry.

GlennD

Same as a normal Saber. Motorola part number 660371B34.

GlennD

Just go into the radiowide settings and disable the HUB switch. Since we are on exclusive in our area channels, we usually disable this as an option.

On a shared repeater system this is not a good idea since the FCC requires you to monitor before transmitting.

GlennD

I have found missing segments are usually corroded foil traces. Some dim segments are usually caused by a bad driver IC. If you look at the segment signals with a scope they should be nice flat square waves. Any tilt signifies a bad chip. Also check the chip high voltage input for ripple. The very f...

GlennD

If you set for +10 db in the digital world you will get very unreliable keying since the mux will not have enough bits and it will strip the hi guard tone wake up. We use a max of 0Bd. With rare exceptions all of our traffic is carried on our in house microwave links and we have had a tech set the l...

GlennD

Yesterday I downloaded the new 1.75 update for my 3920. It promptly turned my monitor into a thirty-five thousand dollar brick! I have to fault Aeroflex for releasing a update that was not fully tested from the download. The support person bricked three test units with the same download, but I must ...

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