UniTrunker 1.0.0.9 Voice Follower Dropout

[offsite]

This version seems completely stable and the decoding seems flawless, even on our dreaded San Diego County RCS system, 470F.

There may be an issue with voice following on this system, however.

The setup is: one R8500 for decoding, another R8500 for following, and a 996T for verification, all fed from a Stridsberg MCA204M splitter (thanks to Scott for the tip)... so all three see the same signal.

UT agrees with the 996T most of the time except infrequently when the 996T misses a transmission (so far, I have never seen UT miss one that the 996T detects).

But voice following for my setup is problematic: the voice following R8500 will be switched to the correct voice frequency and will remain there for ~2 seconds. It will then return to the Park frequency. Along with this, in the UT activity window the active TG will be highlighted for about 2 seconds and then not... although it will remain on screen for the duration of the transmission (as determined by listening to the 996T).

This occurs for both analog and digital transmissions.

At first I was running with Option/Listen/Enabled = X and Option/Listen/Priority = 50.

SD RCS is a *very* busy system so I thought the disruption was due to UT jumping to every new transmission that occurred.

To rule this out I set Option/Listen/Priority = 10 and set a small collection of talkgroups to Priority = 10 in order to lower the chance one talkgroup would step on another one, at least for ones in that collection.

It then became clear that the voice following receiver would be re-parked after ~2 seconds even when no other group in that small collection became active.

Using the AR5000 as the voice follower I observed the same issue with re-parking after ~2 seconds.

I tried this with a UHF EDACS group. Here the voice following receiver would remain on an active TG until the next TG became active... at which time it would jump to that TG.

Maybe all this has been addressed before, but I couldn't find it.

One additional question (if I may hijack my own thread for a moment): Is there a flag to make active talkgroups go dark instantaneously at the end of transmission, rather than the slow fade currently in place? This would make hunting down the frequencies in (for instance) a forrest of EDACS systems a lot easier...

Thanks!

[Unitrunker]

Originally Posted by offsite

Using the AR5000 as the voice follower I observed the same issue with re-parking after ~2 seconds.

What is your signal decode rate on 470F? A lack of continuations will cause the voice receiver to abandon the call. I can't remember if the AR5K model provides a live squelch update. If so, the program may prematurely leave the call if the voice signal fades on the voice following receiver. I don't know if either is the case here. I'll some testing.

Is there a flag to make active talkgroups go dark instantaneously at the end of transmission, rather than the slow fade currently in place? This would make hunting down the frequencies in (for instance) a forest of EDACS systems a lot easier...

Not yet. That's a good argument for adding it.

[offsite]

At my location, 470F shows a wavering decode rate from 99 down to 71 depending on what aircraft are where, seagulls on the roof, wind shear, clouds.... LOL!... but, seriously, reception and decoding of P25, for instance, is always problematic on this system. Perhaps the pic below (centered on the CC) would help explain this... (we pray for rebanding here soon).

I tried to correlate dropouts with falling decode rates but dropouts occur during stable periods of 99 too.

For other systems, my observations are spotty, at best, so not very useful... sometimes a signal will hold, other times it will drop in ~2 seconds, or jump to another voice frequency. I've spent quite a bit of time observing on several bands and modes and no clear pattern has emerged...

I'm not sure how, but if monitoring the COM port stream would help, I can do that.

Question: is there a "Hold Button" for groups (or even radios) in 1.0.0.9?

Thanks!

-rb-

[bpsmicro]

That's an interesting pic. I found SpectraVue online, but what process do you use to get a graph like that? Specialized hardware?

Brad.

[offsite]

Hi Brad,

If you mean the image, it's just an ALT+PrintScreen of the active SpectraVue window.

If you mean the spectrum, it's a standard presentation of the SpectraVue app using the SDR-14 by rfspace.

With this you can see a spectral segment up to 30 mHz wide depending on the input mode.

The SV/SDR-14 is a truly amazing system for the price!

-rb-