Why won't my Retevis RT87s communicate with other radios?

[WRTC928]

I recently purchased a pair of RT87s in addition to the UV-5R, AR-5RM, and Arcshell AR-5 radios I already have. I programmed them in CHIRP and they communicate with one another just fine, but they absolutely will not receive from nor transmit to any of the other radios. The other radios all communicate amongst themselves just fine, but the RT87s will only communicate with one another. I looked in CHIRP and on the menu for anything I may have set wrong, but nothing seems amiss. Is there some secret to these things that I have to do, or are they just designed to be incompatible with other radios? As a general rule, if you program two radios of different brands to the same frequency, they will communicate, but these little bastards just flatly refuse. Suggestions?

[OffRoaderX]

• Make sure they are all on the same frequency
• Make sure they are all on regular simplex channels, not repeater channels and/or do not have a +/- split 
• Make sure none of the radios are using any CTC/CTCSS/DTC/DPL tones or codes
• Make sure the radios are at least 50 feet apart from each other when testing

[WRTC928]

2 minutes ago, OffRoaderX said:

• Make sure they are all on the same frequency
• Make sure they are all on regular simplex channels, not repeater channels and/or do not have a +/- split 
• Make sure none of the radios are using any CTC/CTCSS/DTC/DPL tones or codes
• Make sure the radios are at least 50 feet apart from each other when testing

Thanks. Yes, I did all that. That's why I'm baffled.

[OffRoaderX]

15 minutes ago, WRTC928 said:

Thanks. Yes, I did all that. That's why I'm baffled.

you're doing it wrong!

[WRTC928]

9 minutes ago, OffRoaderX said:

you're doing it wrong!

 I guess that's not impossible, but I'm doing the same things that have always worked with other radios. 

[WRTC928]

New piece of information: I put the RT87 and the UV-5R both into VFO, entered frequencies to match, and they can communicate with one another. Apparently the problem only occurs when using channel mode. No idea why that should matter.

[OffRoaderX]

34 minutes ago, WRTC928 said:

I put the RT87 and the UV-5R both into VFO, entered frequencies to match, and they can communicate with one another. Apparently the problem only occurs when using channel mode

My money is on a tone being stored on the channel.

[SteveShannon]

45 minutes ago, WRTC928 said:

New piece of information: I put the RT87 and the UV-5R both into VFO, entered frequencies to match, and they can communicate with one another. Apparently the problem only occurs when using channel mode. No idea why that should matter.

Export the channels from both and compare them.

[WRTC928]

9 hours ago, OffRoaderX said:

My money is on a tone being stored on the channel.

It would have to be stored on every channel. Besides, I checked that several times.

[WRTC928]

So...I did get them to work. They're RT85s, not RT87s, but that was a typo; I'm not using the wrong radio profile. On the RT85, in order to enter the VFO mode where you can input frequencies directly from the keypad, you have to turn it off and then turn it back on while holding down keys #1 and #7. After I did that, it took the programming from CHIRP and worked correctly. I can only guess that if it's not in that mode, the frequency numbers in CHIRP don't get read into the radio's memory correctly. I don't know if it played a role, but during troubleshooting, I noticed that the RT85s are extremely sensitive to spurious RF emissions from my laptop computer. If the radio is too close to the computer, it tries to transmit on whichever A/B channel is not selected. That may have been a factor in the data not reading into the radio correctly. I was able to get around that by holding the radio out at the very end of the programming cable while uploading. Thanks for the suggestions. Even though the problem wasn't due to any of those things, you guys at least helped me be sure I wasn't making a rookie mistake.

[OffRoaderX]

3 hours ago, WRTC928 said:

It would have to be stored on every channel

FYI - Several Retevis radios ship from the factory with tones pre-loaded on every channel.

Glad you got it figured out though.