Astro saber3 with a problem.

[Radio Intelligence Agency]

Hi,
I have a problem with an astro saber3 that´s puzzling me. It´s brand new but the mic is totally dead. I have checked connecters and all I can see is a very fine an new radio. Hmm, this is really strange course I have another radio that came along with this one and it has no such problem.
The reason I´m asking is that the rss has some parameters that adjusts the audio and gain features, but I have no idea if it has anything to do with this or not. I mostly do jedi radios so don´t come down on me like a load of bricks, I simply ask because I know nothing about this radio.

Some other thing, I have a really hard time with getting both radios to scan. One of them says that the list is empty, (scan list1 enabled on all personalities) and the other shows the scan symbol and the list can be defined but it dos not scan though.

If there is a real astro shark out there, I really would appreciate any info.

[RocketNJ]

Sounds like the radio personality might be corrupted.

If you enable DTMF or MDC signalling do you hear it? This will help narrow down the problem.

George

[Radio Intelligence Agency]

Yes, mdc is enabled. Not DTMF. I talked to a guy that claimed that voting scan had something to do with it. I find it hard to believe.
Another problem is that one of the radios wont x-mit on channels where modat is enabled.

[RocketNJ]

Sounds like that poor radio has been forced a codeplug (not the original flashcode). It is possible the codeplug dumped into the radio has problems with the host and dsp code in the radio.

George

[Radio Intelligence Agency]

I´m affraid you are right. I can only hope that someone had same probs and solved them somehow. Thanks.

[Motofanatic]

It sounds like you have the tools to take it apart as you mentioned the connectors look fine. If so, and since you said the 2nd unit that came with it works fine, try swapping the front shield from the good unit.

If it works, you've at least isolated it down to the front shield is bad. It's very rare for a corrupted codeplug to cause such havoc unless it is really mismatched badly (like a VSELP codeplug in a IMBE radio or vice-versa).

More often or not, the flex cable on the front shield is intermittent behind the mic element. Try swapping that first and let us know.

[Radio Intelligence Agency]

Thanks, I will try that. Will let you know what happens.

[wiliki46]

As for the scan, the scanlists are not programmed. That is why the radio says scanlist empty. If operator selectable scan is enabled you can program a scanlist. It works like the jedi programming in a way. Scroll throught the soft buttons and find PROG. press the button. Next should be a button SCAN. Press that button and you can scroll through the zones and channels programming the list. There should be the familiar blinking box and zigzag icon. press SEL to select the channela nd DEL to delete the channel while programming. Or, You can program your scanlists through the RSS. I hope this helps.

[Radio Intelligence Agency]

This is really puzzling me now. I switched the display boards and now the radio works just fine and the other dosn´t. So now I know that the board is bad. Now another prob turned up. The radio that wouldn´t define a scan list now have serius probs with Rx. The red LED flashes red all time and it has NO RX AT ALL. I tried to clone the good radio over and changed the tx/rx allignments back to what it was (after this prob turned up). Gues what, no luck. The radio worked when it was programmed first, it was a uhf and later changed to a vhf. BUT all matches up perfectly just like the original vhf radio, nothing should be wrong. Now the radio is really bad, but it x-mits just fine. Only the reciever is[ moderated/explicit] up (sorry but I´m really sad about this). I have an astro1 vhf model, I will try to rebuilt that one with the original allignments to see if it´s the rf board or the controller that´s bad. It could be the controller that has taken some serius damage somehow, but it seems a little strange after all.

[Pj]

So....did we change the RF board from VHF to UHF or the codeplug? My guess if the RX ref ocialliator (in the RSS service menu) is out of wack.

I would swiched to the orignal boards back. Only reason is I had the same problem before, and it was because one of the ribbon cables were not seated all the way in. When taking these radio's apart and putting them back together, it is easy not to correctly seat the plugs back in, and hence problems.

When people change out bands and screw with the codeplugs, radio's typically tx withough a problem but will not rx correctly.

[Radio Intelligence Agency]

Well, It was the rf board that was pulled from the astro1 and the radio has been working just fine until a few days ago. Now I have one radio that works but it still can´t do any scan. That´s really puzzling me folks, I have never seen anything that comes near to this. I have another option with the bad radio, it can be fixed as a flatrate repair but still it´s a damn shame when it´s a new radio.

[Pj]

Scan only works if:
-Its enabled in RSS
-Personalilties are assigned to a scan list in RSS
-A button or switch is assigned to the scan feature

Futhermore, you cannot change what is in the scanlist unless user programable scan is enabled. Its a pain, but needs to be done.

[Radio Intelligence Agency]

Yes, I have checked all that and it seems to be correct. It´s the same as jedi series almost, but trouble now is that this radio that works can define a scan list from the scan menu and when you press the scan button the scan symbol pops up but the radio dos not scan at all. I´ve been doing a few tests to see if it could be true and I´m sure it dos not scan when enabled. Everything else works except for the scan feature.