Steve Posted February 17, 2015 Report Posted February 17, 2015 if anyone is looking to get one, there is a nice GR1225 repeater on ebay now, and is selling for a fair price, starting bid $260 +$40 shipping with 24 hours left, with duplexer, but you'd have to re program and re tune it for GMRS. Quote
Steve Posted February 23, 2015 Report Posted February 23, 2015 my GR1225 is on the air! all tuned and programmed up great. I just had one hickup so far... I would like to describe my issue and see if there is anyone anyone who has ever programmed or used one before that might have some ideas. In short, does anyone know why the Rx light blinks red and not steady green like the broshure? http://www.motorolasolutions.com/web/Business/Products/Two-way%20Radio%20Networks/Repeaters/GR1225/_Documents/Static%20Files/rd-gr1225-01c.pdf the reason i ask is because when i first plugged it in, it worked for a little while, and in the time i took me to program up my second radio, it stopped transmitting. It would receive fine, but the controler would not re transmit. Monitor would hear fine, and even the speaker mic was able to braodcast fine. The RX led would blink red on receive and the Tx would normally be steady red but it just stopped Txing and would only RX. I'm thinking the Red Blink on Rx might be an indication of a setting such as PL is active on Rx, or its in low power mode, etc. I'm using a PL on the in and a different one on the out, and its running in low mode and my SWR meter shows 10 watts out and almost zero watts reflected. I thought maybe the repeater somehow decided it was not safe to transmit? I didn't change anything else, using the same radio,etc. When i turned it off and back on, it still had the same problem, just the RX would blink red and the TX would not light, no output. But again, i would hear the PL decoded audio on "mon" setting. I tired to key up with no PL and there was nothing coming through the monitor, so i know the PL was correct. After unplugging it overnight last night and trying it again today, it has been working great. Today i did some range testing with it and all seemed to work as it should. I don't think its heat related because it was only running for 20 min before it stopped working. Any ideas? Quote
zap Posted February 23, 2015 Report Posted February 23, 2015 Generally a red blinky light means channel busy (RX). If an amber light is on, generally means busy channel (different PL or microphone is off the hook). Quote
Steve Posted February 23, 2015 Report Posted February 23, 2015 okay, yeah, red blinking when i key up, that sounds right. The brochure has it green, and with the hiccup i had where it wasn't repeating, i was wondering if the blinking red was something more than just traffic, maybe something wrong. Had it working more on sunday all day, no problems. my experience so far with it... vs what i was using... with the SWR in-line, and my not so great coax rg8x 65ft, adapters, and ed fong jpole antenna, my receive range on this compared to straight into my kenwood tk880 is a lot less. I believe the meter and duplexer each have at least 1 or 1.5 db of loss on the receive, so i was unable to hit my repeater from the edge where i normally can at least get a signal back home. this just goes to show how important the line is and everything it goes through. I hope to get an adapter in soon and connect it straight out of the duplexer with N to the antenna cable on so239. Next step once spring is here, is new shorter LMR400 line with a new high gain antenna. I can "hear" the repeater fine a mile away, but it has a lot of trouble hearing me on my HT. I'm not making it in from 1.0 miles over the hillls, but i was able to hear the HT over the noise when connected directly to the kenwood mobile. My terrain is really more challenging than you may think. When i look out the window of my house, in the direction i want to cover, there are houses along the ridge going up. I have to tip my head down and look up to see the top house. I am literally broadcasting inside a shadow area to everyone else. I'm realizing that my terrain is my most limiting factor, in terms of receiving the HT from over the hilltop. Quote
Steve Posted March 1, 2015 Report Posted March 1, 2015 Are there any owners of the GR1225 out there who can tell me if i should be using CPS or RSS? I have CPS r06.04.00 but it wont read using the usb rib adapter. i have run the CPS before for my HTs. Quote
Steve Posted March 1, 2015 Report Posted March 1, 2015 a little more looking around, i found out i need to run it on Win95, not XP like i had been doing for the HTs. I have to go back even further.. wow. Quote
FrankNY Posted March 1, 2015 Report Posted March 1, 2015 Steve, you may not need an actual Windows 95 system in order to run this particular program. Give the Windows 95 Compatibility mode option in Windows XP a try first. How to use Windows Program Compatibility mode in Windows XPhttp://support.microsoft.com/kb/292533/ Regards and good luck! Frank. Quote
zap Posted March 1, 2015 Report Posted March 1, 2015 a little more looking around, i found out i need to run it on Win95, not XP like i had been doing for the HTs. I have to go back even further.. wow. There's an RSS version made for DOS, one made for 95, one for 98 and one for XP. RSS 3.1 is the commonly available one and was written for 98 but it should run just fine on a 7 computer (I never had an issue with it at least). RSS 4 is the harder to track down version that was written specifically for XP. CPS 6.04 is the commonly available CPS for the Profesional series radios (HT750/1250, etc). Quote
Steve Posted March 1, 2015 Report Posted March 1, 2015 i got it working! i found a Win95 VM for vmware and loaded that, put software ver3.1 on there, linked up the virt com port to the real com port on my win7 laptop, connected the usb-rib from ebay adapter cable, and yes! it worked. i was able to go in an change the hang time. too bad you can't change the delay between carrier loss and roger beep. i would love an extra 100 or 200 ms so i can hear it on the HT. hangtime is an extra second long.... there was course and fine power adjustment in there too... the model info says its the 45 watt ver but on low its only putting out 15 watts according to my SWR meter. i'll test that out more before i touch that because those adjustments looked right, the high was all the way up and the low was pretty low..... not much room to move them. i found this, and loaded it into a free trial of vmware workstation:https://winworldpc.com/download/3DCDE31D-18DA-11E4-99E5-7054D21A8599 ran this all on my win7 64 bit machine and used the $10 cable from ebay and it worked! not sure if this mattered, but on both the host and the VM i set the com ports the same and set them to 1200 baud, away from the default that was 9600. not sure if that matters but i did that. Quote
Steve Posted March 1, 2015 Report Posted March 1, 2015 There's an RSS version made for DOS, one made for 95, one for 98 and one for XP. RSS 3.1 is the commonly available one and was written for 98 but it should run just fine on a 7 computer (I never had an issue with it at least). RSS 4 is the harder to track down version that was written specifically for XP. CPS 6.04 is the commonly available CPS for the Profesional series radios (HT750/1250, etc).thanks, i tried all that, compat mode, etc. even ran it on xp 32bit hardware, etc. tried ver 3.1 only. i looked for ver 4.0 but after downloading it, it was still just 3.1 inside the zip file. Quote
zap Posted March 1, 2015 Report Posted March 1, 2015 thanks, i tried all that, compat mode, etc. even ran it on xp 32bit hardware, etc. tried ver 3.1 only. i looked for ver 4.0 but after downloading it, it was still just 3.1 inside the zip file.Only place I've found the real version 4 is on the p25.ca forums under legacy radios. They were referring to the P1225 but the RSS covers the whole 1225 family. Quote
FrankNY Posted March 1, 2015 Report Posted March 1, 2015 Steve, I'm pleased to hear that you got it working. Wonder why Win95 compatibility mode in XP didn't work though. Quote
Steve Posted March 2, 2015 Report Posted March 2, 2015 new issues with my GR1225 ...maybe someone can help.... as i mentioned in an earlier post, the repeater wouldn't repeat, out of the blue, just stopped, then started repeating again the next day.... I was hoping it was just a one time thing, but it kept doing this at random times during the day.... so i edited a video together showing the issue.... its about 4 and a half minutes and about 2 and a half minutes in you can see it just start working after a power cycle.. when the first 3 power cycles didn't have any affect.... i also point out the issue with the monitor enable button not working and a buzz coming from the speaker during idle, as if the audio amp circuit is enabled. usually this is the sound you'd hear when the audio is enabled and sound coming out, not during idle time. Normally during idle the speaker is muted and you hear nothing. it sounds almost like loose connection or bad ground. my thought is maybe a cold solder joint somewhere... i'm not sure. Please take a look and let me know if anyone has any ideas on what it might be and how i might be able to fix it..... http://youtu.be/R4xrJwq8g50 Quote
Steve Posted March 3, 2015 Report Posted March 3, 2015 update: i spoke with the guy i bought it from, he thinks its the power supply and is going to send me a new one and help me fix it. also, for the record, the "monitor" issue is not an issue... that is a feature that i didn't understand until he pointed it out. I feel pretty stupid that i didn't realize this but the monitor will monitor all traffice on that ch without and pl tone fliter. so when you were hearing the audio even though the monitor was not enabled, that was in fact correct. it should be playing the audio becuase its the proper pl tone audio. the only issue is it will sometimes not transmit, and again, we think its a faulty power supply. Quote
mainehazmt Posted March 10, 2015 Report Posted March 10, 2015 Can we expand on this? Im pretty sure in gmrs its kinda a not type accepted but with theory in mind I have bought an MSR2000 that i was contemplating on putting on the air it is a c74gsb3106bt. but it was in the thinking stage... as it would take all the re cyristaling (sp) alignment ect...lowering the power out and on and on.. also in my mind am looking to go ham too... but the pa deck in that could be powered by a gm300? or lets say an r100 thus giving a full duty cycle radio? am I understanding this correct? Quote
zap Posted March 10, 2015 Report Posted March 10, 2015 Can we expand on this? Im pretty sure in gmrs its kinda a not type accepted but with theory in mind I have bought an MSR2000 that i was contemplating on putting on the air it is a c74gsb3106bt. but it was in the thinking stage... as it would take all the re cyristaling (sp) alignment ect...lowering the power out and on and on.. also in my mind am looking to go ham too... but the pa deck in that could be powered by a gm300? or lets say an r100 thus giving a full duty cycle radio? am I understanding this correct? R100's are complete repeaters. They made a 10W version and a 25W version (I have one of each, well technically one is a MCR100, both DPL) but they are just a TX only Radius and a RX only Radius in a box with better power control. I actually pulled a 75W PA off a old Mocom-70 (only thing worth really salvaging on that radio) to eventually drive with a GM300 someone stripped the PA guts out of ore maybe even a Micor exciter. Lot's of amateur stories of guys pulling Micor PA's and driving them with GM300's. Quote
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