ASTRO SABER RADIO NOT TRANSMITTING INVERTED DPL CODES - I THOUGHT

[nokones]

I was in the process of my routine quarterly updating the radio codeplugs in all my mobiles and portables the last few days, and this morning, I had four Astro Sabers, model I. II, and IIIs, to finish up and I discovered that they were not transmitting the Inverted DPL Codes. I spent about an hour trying to figure out if it was a setting in the CPS, or the radios were way too old to transmit inverted DPLs. The radios did fine with the normal DPLs.

I did have the Inverted Box Checked in both the conventional personality transmit and receive menus. The Astro Saber Radios would decode the Inverted DPL from a couple of my XTS5000 radios, but the XTS5000 Radios would not decode from the Astro Sabers when the XTS5000 decode feature was enabled. However, the XTS5000 radios would receive the transmission from the Astro Sabers Radio if the Decode feature was disabled and set for CSQ.

I went over and over the CPS Conventional Personality and Zone Assignment settings in both the Astro 25 Portable CPS and the Astro Saber & XTS3000 CPS and everything was set correctly, at least I thought it was, and then a thought came to mind what may be contributing to the cause of the problem. As I was staring at the displays of both the XTS5000 and the Astro Saber Radios, I noticed that the "Talkaround/Direct" symbol in both displays was indicated on both radios, which they should be.

Although, I do know for a fact that with the XTS1500, 2500, and 5000 series portable radios if you have a simplex channel selected, the Talkaround/Direct symbol (→) will automatically be displayed. After, I went back to a repeated channel with the Astro Saber radio and then back to a simplex channel, I noticed that the (→) symbol was not being displayed. Ah Ha!

What I didn't realize is that with the Astro Saber and of course the XTS3000 Series Radios that is not the case now. So, with the (→) not being displayed maybe that has something to do with the "Talkaround/Direct Menu in the Astro Saber & XTS3000 CPS, I went into the CPS and sure enough the menu was not properly setup for the Inverted DPL codes for transmitting if the TalkAround/Direct Feature was enabled.

With the Astro 25 Portable CPS when you have a simplex personality programmed, in the Zone Assignment Menu the T/A Direct column is grayed-out and you are restricted to making any entries, but that is not the case in the Astro Saber & XTS3000 Portable CPS and is not restricted, if the "TalkAround" Box is checked in the Talkaround Menu and the portable radio talkaround/Direct Feature is enabled, the radio will functioned as set. When I disabled the Talkaround/Direct Feature on the Astro Saber, the XTS5000 Radio was able to receive the Astro Sabers' Inverted DPL transmission when the decode feature was enabled. Problem solved.

This will be the case if you reprogram a previously programmed Conventional Personality from a semi/duplex configuration to a simplex configuration which was in my case. If you add a new Conventional Personality, the box in the Talkaround Menu will not be checked.

Over time and after programming a gazillion XTS and XTL radios with both the Astro 25 Mobile and Portable CPS', who would have thought that going back and checking the Talkaround/Direct Menu to disable that feature in any of the early CPS'. Well now, that will be something that I will be doing from now-on.

What I did was I created my own problem. As I was going through checking my programming on the various channels, I activated the Talkaround Feature on the Astro Saber Radio so I wouldn't activate a repeater nearby on one of the channels, because I didn't want to take the time to connect the radio to a dummy load, and then I went to a Zone with all simplex channels and some of them with Inverted DPLs. The end result of this was the fact that the radio worked as designed and all I had to do is go back in uncheck a few boxes. Lesson learned. At least, I figured it out on my own.

[WRXB215]

@nokones nice job. Always good to document things like this.

[WRKC935]

Welcome to the confusing task of programming Motorola Radios