You could hear it on the 800, it was almost as loud as the voice, but you couldn't hear it on the P-25 transmision. One weird thing was when one of us transmitted while standing next to a loud ventilation blower. I also noticed that areas that had multipath on the 800 radio with resulting bad audio didn't seem to have a problem with P-25. There wasn't a huge difference between the two, but the P-25 system always seemed to have the edge in those areas and I don't think the P-25 actually had any real dead spots. The thing that I remember the most was that the analog system had a few dead spots in stairwells and other rooms deep within the prison, but the P-25 system seemed to cover them better. We walked just about the entire prison doing voice tests in both directions using two portables, a Motorola MTS-2000 and a P-25 Motorola, I think it was an XTS-9000, maybe? The receivers were multicoupled from the same receive antenna. We tried to make the systems as identical as possible by making sure the TX powers were the same, and both systems were combined into the same TX antenna. We set up a P-25 Phase 1 800 trunking system along side an analog system at a large prison. Well Good Luck on getting more hams to switch to these two different Digital Repeaters as I believe this is the future of Amateur Radio. Otherwise Digital systems have many pluses compared to the older Analog Repeaters. basically the umbrella effect is the problem. I've discovered that high gain mobile and Base Station Repeater antennas without the proper down tilt can and do cause coverage problems. Two mobiles are communicating on the repeater and either mobile's Digital signaling is being transmitted, the Digital begins to garble because the ones and zeroes start flipping even with Forward Correcting Bits and eventually the entire transmitted signal is Garbled and unable to recover to a normal signal. Another problem is when a mobile or handheld is below high tension lines, the Digital receiver doesn't have the ability to determine whether the signal is Digital or just noise so no receive audio is heard. There are some drawbacks to using Digital, one is multipath Digital signals by bouncing off of water towers, buildings and even mountains therefore the receiver will not pass any audible signals through the repeater and/or the handhelds. I don't think the Chinese even understand "intellectual property!" Well I can understand how some Digital Repeater Owners would be frustrated with Baofeng crowd and setting the units up as Digital mode only. About the only thing holding anyone back are the Patent Rights which equals Dollars $$$$$. I've been waiting for some company to manufacture a Multi-Digital Mobile & Handheld that does DMR, P25, Fusion, D-Star and any other Digital Voice Format. I've heard that the Motorola DMR MotoTrbos are very good too, they use TDMA Digital Signaling and were designed for the Commercial Land Mobile Two-Way Business Band Radio Market although the hams working on those units immediately found the advantage for Amateur Radio. I like the older ASTRO Sabers but when you've got the larger battery attached to the transceiver, it can almost be used a weapon to protect yourself.
#Astro saber test mode software#
BTW, the Analog system coverage was based on 90%, 70% & 50% coverage and with the newer software packages for system coverage, this alone would provide a better understanding of the Las Vegas Repeater System.
You would need to speak with the technical hams that maintain the repeater to understand the RF foot print coverage area but I can say it's amazing the way it's able to detect the Digital signaling even in areas that you couldn't access the older Analog system signals. The RF range for P25 FDMA is 98% of the 50% RF range of the older Analog signal. I would have to say that the P25 Type I Repeaters are all Motorola Quantars most likely set up as Mixed Modes being FDMA & the older Analog thus being backwards compatible. P25 Type I is very popular around the United States as the manufacture couldn't get the FDMA signal to work at 6.25 KHz (Narrow Band) so that's why P25 Type II came into existence for the Public Safety and the Federal Government Agencies as they're using a TDMA format.