P25 Out Of Range

[fallspolice]

I have an XTS2500 and an XTS5000 I am trying to add to a single site 800MHZ P25 system. I have double and triple checked that the control frequencies and system ID are correct, but I am still having an issue. The XTS2500 is new from the dealer, and the XTS5000 is only a year old. It was purchased new from a dealer as well...neither one are Ebay purchases. Both radios have 11 trunking systems, 9 of which are smartzone systems. The other 2 systems are P25.

When I program everything into the radio and switch to the P25 system in question, I constantly get the "out of range" tone and indicator on the screen. This happens even when I am 100 feet away from the tower looking right at it. Sometimes the out of range tone is short and other times it is longer. If I push the button a few times it will occasionally allow me to key up between out of range tones. The funny thing is when other radios on the system transmit the out of range goes away and their radio traffic comes through just fine. As soon as they are done with their transmission the out of range message returns. I have one other P25 system in these radios, and it works perfectly...even from nearly 30 miles from the tower.

Any help on with this would be greatly appreciated!!!!

[Jim202]

I have an XTS2500 and an XTS5000 I am trying to add to a single site 800MHZ P25 system. I have double and triple checked that the control frequencies and system ID are correct, but I am still having an issue. The XTS2500 is new from the dealer, and the XTS5000 is only a year old. It was purchased new from a dealer as well...neither one are Ebay purchases. Both radios have 11 trunking systems, 9 of which are smartzone systems. The other 2 systems are P25.

When I program everything into the radio and switch to the P25 system in question, I constantly get the "out of range" tone and indicator on the screen. This happens even when I am 100 feet away from the tower looking right at it. Sometimes the out of range tone is short and other times it is longer. If I push the button a few times it will occasionally allow me to key up between out of range tones. The funny thing is when other radios on the system transmit the out of range goes away and their radio traffic comes through just fine. As soon as they are done with their transmission the out of range message returns. I have one other P25 system in these radios, and it works perfectly...even from nearly 30 miles from the tower.

Any help on with this would be greatly appreciated!!!!

As with all people that come on this site with questions about programming trunking systems into their radios, the answers are all the same. Not trying to be hard on you, but unless you have the radio system administrator's permission, it is best to not play with programming any radio on the trunking system.

The reason for the above statement is that it is easy to mess up a trunking system with a radio that has been miss programmed and causes trouble. The radio programming is a complicated process and you need to have all the information available to be entered into the radio.

Being that the radios are Motorola XTS family, the software would require a system key to even allow the radios to have any of the trunking system information entered or changed.

My suggestion is to go see the radio system administrator. Then that person should direct you to the radio shop to get the radios programmed correctly if your authorized to be on the system.

Jim

[fallspolice]

I typed all of that information and I failed to mention that I do have a system key. But if I didn't have a system key, I wouldn't even be able to enter the system into the radio. One would think that after everything I mentioned that I'm not just some guy who bought a radio off of ebay and wants to program it on my local towns trunked radio system. I was going to mention that I am an authorized user on this system in my original post, but I figured that would be clear with all of the details I posted. Next time I will be sure to make it clear that I am an authorized user in ALL CAPS and in BOLD. I guess I will just call Motorola on Tuesday unless someone wants to give me an answer that would actually be useful.

I apologize to all those who are just reading this for the first time, and I am not trying to be a smart a$$.

[jmr061]

It no doubt is a programming problem. Have to double, triple check everything. If you have a working radio go through it tab by tab and check all the settings.

Jason

[MTS2000des]

is the radio trying to affiliate at all? do you see the red TX LED light or does it immediately show OUT OF RANGE?

[fallspolice]

is the radio trying to affiliate at all? do you see the red TX LED light or does it immediately show OUT OF RANGE?

The light does flash rapidly before the out of range message and also while it appears.

[MTS2000des]

is the radio trying to affiliate at all? do you see the red TX LED light or does it immediately show OUT OF RANGE?

The light does flash rapidly before the out of range message and also while it appears.

A few things come to mind:

-Modulation type wrong (CQPSK, Wide, or C4FM), if so you will have problems.
-Authentication fail. Is it a 7.9 system with radio authentication?
-ID not provisioned, or a cloned ID

All of these should be addressed by your system manager. He/she can pull an affiliation history, verify your ID is correct, and verify no problems exist in the network, as well as the proper settings discussed above

[radioeng462]

It is best to use a scanner to monitor and not mess with a Moto radio. As everyone has said you can easily cause harmful interference to a legit user. Just be safe!!

[tvsjr]

It is best to use a scanner to monitor and not mess with a Moto radio. As everyone has said you can easily cause harmful interference to a legit user. Just be safe!!

Wow, really? I'm more than happy to jump on a clueless user, but it's pretty clear that the OP is an authorized user.

To the OP, I'd suggest finding a trusted associate to review your work. Just like editing your own writing, it's very hard to spot those minor little checkboxes that will totally hose you up. I suspect there's no problem, just one setting that's wrong that you're overlooking. Been there done that!

[fallspolice]

is the radio trying to affiliate at all? do you see the red TX LED light or does it immediately show OUT OF RANGE?

The light does flash rapidly before the out of range message and also while it appears.

A few things come to mind:

-Modulation type wrong (CQPSK, Wide, or C4FM), if so you will have problems.
-Authentication fail. Is it a 7.9 system with radio authentication?
-ID not provisioned, or a cloned ID

All of these should be addressed by your system manager. He/she can pull an affiliation history, verify your ID is correct, and verify no problems exist in the network, as well as the proper settings discussed above

Thanks for your help!

I tried all 3 modulation types and it still displayed out of range.

It is not a 7.9 system.

The Id is provisioned, and not cloned.

Thanks again for trying!

[Wowbagger]

Silly question: are all the talkgroup IDs properly programmed? Could it be that the radio is defaulting to a talkgroup the system doesn't recognize?

[Jim202]

No one has asked this yet.

Do you have the correct control channels programmed in?

If you can hear other radio units talking, that makes me wonder about just how you have the radio programmed.

Jim

[alex]

If everything is programmed properly - try retuning the radio.

[K8TEK]

Check your RSSI values.

[fallspolice]

Silly question: are all the talkgroup IDs properly programmed? Could it be that the radio is defaulting to a talkgroup the system doesn't recognize?

All ID's are correctly programmed...that was one of the first things I checked.

Check your RSSI values.

RSSI values are correct

No one has asked this yet.

Do you have the correct control channels programmed in?

If you can hear other radio units talking, that makes me wonder about just how you have the radio programmed.

Jim

I have double checked the control channels as well

[Wowbagger]

This is where it would be good to be able to log what is going on between the radio and the site. You wouldn't happen to have access to an Aeroflex 3900, would you?

<edit>
OK, let's review:
1) The radio is indicating out of range.
2) If a call goes through on the talk group the radio is programmed for, it follows onto the traffic channel.

That would indicate to me the radio is receiving the control channel, and is seeing the group call grant message. Prediction: if you select a different talk group, the radio will NOT follow the original talk group. If that is true, then the radio is correctly receiving the control channel. If the radio unmutes, I would suspect the radio is NOT listening to the control channel, but rather is parked on the traffic channel, and is just unmuting when it sees voice frames rather than trunking data frames.

IF the radio is correctly receiving the control channel and correctly following onto the traffic channel, then the receive frequencies are correct. Thus, the radio should have the correct channel maps from the control channel IDEN_UP messages on the control channel, so I'd suspect the TX side is wrong - the radio is not correctly tuning the TX, and thus is NOT getting an ack from the register and group affiliate messages it will send when first turned on.

You can watch the TX LED - if all it does is blink twice, then the radio IS seeing a response from the site (if it didn't see the response it would keep retrying for several times before bonking out). That was why I asked about the group IDs - were the radio getting an ACK on the register, but a NAK on the group affiliate, it would very likely do what you are seeing.

[CTAMontrose]

This behavior can also occur if either the radio ID or the Talkgroup are not allowed on the site(s) the radio is in range of. The radio will attempt to register, the system will give the not allowed on this site message.. then the radio will invalidate the site and attempt to find one that will allow it to register. It is how we handle loading here.

[judoka]

Sounds to me like the frequency plan table isn't correct so you aren't calculating the correct transmit frequency from the received frequency in the terminal (control channel might look correct but the terminal will take the received frequency and then calculate the transmit frequency using the offset and sign).