alkassell
Member
I'm new new to the world of programming radios, so please forgive any misuse of terms - I'll try to describe my question / problem as best I can.
I got tasked a few months ago to update the programming on our FD's HT 1250's. I purchased ( on the behalf of the FD ) CPS from Motorola and a cable, and with some help from another FD's tech guy, I managed to muddle my way through. Everything has worked fine with one exception: The radios seem to open up when they shouldn't.
Here's the history: Many of us use our radios as pagers, using quick-call II, when we don't want to monitor all traffic. Previously they were programmed to make an alert tone without voice, but many of us wanted to hear the voice transmission at the same time ( we have Minitor V pagers as well, but it's nice to have redundancy, and some (especially our Chief) don't like to carry both ), so I changed it over to 'Call Alert with Voice' in the CPS, and cured that. There are also times where we may not be near the radio, and I worried that the automatic timer might reset the radio before we realized there had been a call, so I changed that to 'Manual' in the CPS.
So here's the problem:Occasionally the radio will open up when we aren't being toned. It doesn't give the alert tones, and it seems to happen randomly ( i.e., in the middle of the night I'll hear chatter from a neighboring town that uses the same frequency for dispatch ). The way the radios are programmed, we have to either change the channel, or do a short press on one of the side buttons to re-set it. It's happening on more than just my radio, so I doesn't seem to be a radio issue. When we do get paged, the alert tone comes on, as well as voice, and if we don't re-set it manually, it will stay open indefinitely ( all of which is what I wanted ). It's possible that it doesn't re-set correctly, and we don't notice for a while because there's no radio traffic, but the display doesn't show that there was a call when this happens - it shows the name I programmed in the conventional personalities ( "Page Call" ). When there is a call, it shows "Call Received" ( I think that's what it says ) until the radio is reset. There are other times where it is definitely closed to radio traffic, the way it should be.
So... Am I missing something in CPS? Are we not re-setting the radios properly some of the time? Is it some random glitch? A poltergeist perhaps? I can easily believe it's user error either in CPS or with the radios, but what is it? If it were consistent ( or at least I could find the pattern ), I'd be a little less confused.
Any help would be greatly appreciated - if my chief gets woken up in the middle of the night by some random traffic that doesn't concern us, it's gonna be a bad day for me...
I got tasked a few months ago to update the programming on our FD's HT 1250's. I purchased ( on the behalf of the FD ) CPS from Motorola and a cable, and with some help from another FD's tech guy, I managed to muddle my way through. Everything has worked fine with one exception: The radios seem to open up when they shouldn't.
Here's the history: Many of us use our radios as pagers, using quick-call II, when we don't want to monitor all traffic. Previously they were programmed to make an alert tone without voice, but many of us wanted to hear the voice transmission at the same time ( we have Minitor V pagers as well, but it's nice to have redundancy, and some (especially our Chief) don't like to carry both ), so I changed it over to 'Call Alert with Voice' in the CPS, and cured that. There are also times where we may not be near the radio, and I worried that the automatic timer might reset the radio before we realized there had been a call, so I changed that to 'Manual' in the CPS.
So here's the problem:Occasionally the radio will open up when we aren't being toned. It doesn't give the alert tones, and it seems to happen randomly ( i.e., in the middle of the night I'll hear chatter from a neighboring town that uses the same frequency for dispatch ). The way the radios are programmed, we have to either change the channel, or do a short press on one of the side buttons to re-set it. It's happening on more than just my radio, so I doesn't seem to be a radio issue. When we do get paged, the alert tone comes on, as well as voice, and if we don't re-set it manually, it will stay open indefinitely ( all of which is what I wanted ). It's possible that it doesn't re-set correctly, and we don't notice for a while because there's no radio traffic, but the display doesn't show that there was a call when this happens - it shows the name I programmed in the conventional personalities ( "Page Call" ). When there is a call, it shows "Call Received" ( I think that's what it says ) until the radio is reset. There are other times where it is definitely closed to radio traffic, the way it should be.
So... Am I missing something in CPS? Are we not re-setting the radios properly some of the time? Is it some random glitch? A poltergeist perhaps? I can easily believe it's user error either in CPS or with the radios, but what is it? If it were consistent ( or at least I could find the pattern ), I'd be a little less confused.
Any help would be greatly appreciated - if my chief gets woken up in the middle of the night by some random traffic that doesn't concern us, it's gonna be a bad day for me...