New P7100E User questions

[gcopter1]

Guys, gals, hope you can indulge me here.
I bought the above radio on ebay. Price included programming. I specified the seller what I wanted on the radio, 2 systems and 4 talk groups. One of the systems has it's own talk group, PD. The other system has the rest of the other 3 talk groups.

The seller stated that, from the 16 positions on the knob, 10 of them are programmed the same, meaning, each position had the scan lists scanning both systems and all the talk groups.

What I'm running across is that, only knob position number one has everything I asked to be programmed; PD and the other talk groups (transit, traffic management and aviation department {each have their own talk groups }).

The other 9 positions, have only the channels from the PD talk group.

Basically what I wish to achieve is to give each talk group heir own knob position and use the rest to split up the PD channels.

Sorry if I'm confusing the hell out of all you, I'm totally new to these type of radios, been only using scanners all of my life.

Thanks for any help.

Gilberto.

 

[ElroyJetson]

A typical configuration is to choose whether the rotary control will choose systems, or whether it will choose talkgroups.

In any "normal" application, these are your choices.

You need to be more specific about how you want the radio to operate.

Do you plan to scan ALL your talkgroups at the same time, regardless of system, or do you want
to be able to scan only one agency's talkgroups now, and switch to scanning another agency's talkgroups later?

I would suggest you get a copy of the user's guide. It's available online via google search. If you don't find it quickly, you can find it on the "repeaterbuilder" site. Google it.


For such a capable radio, why do you have so few talkgroups programmed into it? You do know that via the scan, add, and delete buttons, you can pick and choose which talkgroups you want to scan out of a larger list in the radio, don't you?

 

[gcopter1]

ElroyJetson, just gotten the radio the day before yesterday. I mistakenly stated 4 talk groups but I have more than that. The majority of the talk groups are in one system, PD. The rest are on the local govt. system.

What the person who sold and programmed the radio did for me, was to use up the first ten knob positions with both systems and all talk groups. As I played with the radio all day long yesterday, I found out that only on the first knob positions all of the talk groups exists, albeit one has no activity.

The rest of the knob positions, 2 thru 10, only have the PD talk groups, who are on their own system and use only one site.

Knob positions 10 thru 16 are programmed with stuff the seller placed there but have no use for me.

Not sure if my inability to see all of the talk groups over the rest of the knob positions is due to some inadvertent change in the settings thru all of my button pressing yesterday.

I know how to make scan lists in each position. I go thru all the talk groups and add or delete then hit scan.
And like I said before, only knob position one has all of the talk groups that are missing off the rest.

 

[kb4cvn]

Some updated news for you:

Aventura is on their P-25 system. Not EDACS.

Coral Gables is about to shut-down their EDACS system and are moving to their own P-25.

 

[gcopter1]

I'm aware of that, thanks. Wasn't part of my programming request to the seller. He added that on his own.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[gcopter1]

I have another question.

In my radio, a system model, when I press the "M" button, I see in the screen FCC MENU, BACKLIGHT CONTRAST among others. If I select "FCC MENU" and scroll, I come across MDT and HDT.

If either one is on, the other is off. I find that I can select them and turn them on or off at will.

What is "MDT" and "HDT"?
What do they do?
Would having one on or off affect anything on the radio?

 

[ElroyJetson]

They absolutely do not matter if you are not transmitting. They relate to using the radio for data applications, which is not what you are doing.


One limitation of that radio is that you can not scan multiple systems at the same time, unless you use proscan, which I myself have never used. But if I did, I would expect it to be kind of slow.

 

[gcopter1]

Thanks.

 

[gcopter1]

If a radio looses alignment, what are the symptoms? The radio I bought I'll be sending it back to the seller because after explaining him a discrepancy with the stuff I asked him to program, he admits making a mistake. But in addition to that, I'm noticing an ever increasing tendency to hear voices like a robot on p25. Could the radio need alignment to correct this or is this something that pops up from time to time with these systems?


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[gcopter1]

BTW, when I received the radio, p25 was sounding great.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[ElroyJetson]

If voices sound like robots but you can tell what they're saying, that's just how voices sound if they're operating in a digital voice mode. P25 or ProVoice. Nothing is wrong when that happens, in fact, it means the radio is working RIGHT.

Did you expect digital voice to sound like analog voice? Well, it doesn't. And it never will. Commercial and public safety radios operate in too narrow a bandwidth to provide high fidelity digital voice.

 

[gcopter1]

Elroy, I just ask the question because I have a point of comparison.

When I first got the radio last Thursday, all of my P25 talk groups were sounding very clear unlike what I was accustomed to with my scanners. Is just that, with all that have been going on with the radio, I was wondering if whatever threw it out of whack, also managed to degrade the clarity in reception.

For example, I told the seller to program 4 talk groups, PD, Aviation, Transit and Traffic. PD uses one "dedicated" site. The rest, all operate off of another site. They all belong to the county and all are P25. Now, I can only hear PD, Transit and Traffic, with the aforementioned robotic quality, but can't hear Aviation at all, whereas I was able to hear them all, 100% better than my scanners.

Yes, there were times where some transmissions weren't all that but, in that case, one party asked the other to repeat leading me to believe it wasn't my radio but the nature of digital voice.

 

[ElroyJetson]

There's no reason why the quality of digital voice in a P7100 radio should change at all.

In a P25 phase 1 trunking system, voices can be analog OR digital OR encrypted, and analog will of course sound like analog voices. Digital and encrypted will sound the same, not that you will be hearing any encrypted traffic from your radio. If you hear digital garble, that would probably be an encrypted signal that you don't have the key for.

I suspect that you're hearing analog Phase 1 traffic. And digital traffic as well.

 

[gcopter1]

There's no reason why the quality of digital voice in a P7100 radio should change at all.

In a P25 phase 1 trunking system, voices can be analog OR digital OR encrypted, and analog will of course sound like analog voices. Digital and encrypted will sound the same, not that you will be hearing any encrypted traffic from your radio. If you hear digital garble, that would probably be an encrypted signal that you don't have the key for.

I suspect that you're hearing analog Phase 1 traffic. And digital traffic as well.

Interesting. So even though a system is P25 CAI phase 1, analog is mixed in with digital? My county, far as I know, is all Harris. Not aware that the models they bought also do analog voice?


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[ElroyJetson]

Analog voice is available by default. Whether or not your county uses it on your system is a matter of their choice.

Phase 2 is strictly digital voice, there is no analog option. But on phase 1, yes, voices can be analog.

Which is which? LISTEN. You'll know. Digital has a slightly robotic sound to it but voices come through clear with no background noise. Or if there is background noise, it can make the audio virtually unintelligible. Digital does funny things with background noise present. While it's getting better at handling background noise with every new iteration of the IMBE/AMBE codecs, it can still confuse background noise you don't want to hear with voices you DO want to hear. And then things get messy.

 

[gcopter1]

Thank you for that explanation. Learned something new.

 

[gcopter1]

Elroy, I want to know more.

Sometimes during transmissions, I've heard background noises. Invariably, these noises are garbled, like a siren but it is still discernible.

So you stated that, analog is on by default, but it is a matter of choice.

My question is, is this a function of the radio or is it something that the system or engineers decide?

For example, when a user picks up the mic and starts talking, does the radio automatically converts the voice into digital / analog format? Is this something that the system itself decides at random?

Not knowing anything about this, at all, I'm hoping you can enlighten me some more.

I was always under the impression, when these P25 systems started to come online, that the voices were always digital and that analog was something used only on conventional systems and a thing of the past (in a way of speaking).

 

[mikewazowski]

Phase 2 is strictly digital voice, there is no analog option. But on phase 1, yes, voices can be analog.

Phase 1 and Phase 2 are both strictly digital with no analog.

The only difference is Phase 2 supports TDMA.

 

[gcopter1]

I sent the radio to a different programmer who this time, got all of the talk groups I wanted exactly.

The radio receives the PD stuff on it's "assigned" site,great, no problems whatsoever.
I said "assigned" because it has been explained to me that, at times, PD might use another site, which happens to be where the local gvt. tg's are, site 101.

Besides the PD, I also requested 3 tg's that normally use site 101. However, I can only receive traffic from one tg and none from the others.

What this last programmer suggested was to turn off SYSC in order to have the radio look for site 101. However, this doesn't work, and, as he also mentioned, the radio would still look for the strongest signal and lock onto it. As it seems, the strongest signal is for the PD site (102).

How come then, when I received the radio from the seller, who programmed it with the extra stuff, I was getting reception on all tg's; PD and local govt.?

What could the second programmer missed that the first one didn't that is causing the radio to be mostly deaf on the LG groups?

 

[ElroyJetson]

You might not realize this, but MOST people who choose to use a Harris radio as their scanner also make the effort to acquire the programming equipment required and program up their own.

It is such a major hassle to have to send it to somebody else to program it for you every time something changes, or to correct an error, that most people either use a scanner or get their own programming rig and do it themselves.