APX 6000XE Scan/Transmit Issue

[mrkage]

Our county is doing a P25 upgrade and our FD was issued APX 6000XEs. When we were trained on them, we were told of an issue where if we are scanning and the radio stops on a channel, we have to wait for a channel to clear, before we can transmit on our channel that the radio is set to.

As an example, let's say that a zone has 10 channels, A through J. I have my radio set on our FD channel, which for this example is channel B. While I am on a fire scene, I am scanning to pick up dispatch, our Tac, and an neighboring department's channel. Someone from the neighboring department keys up on their channel, which is channel D. If you watch the screen, Channel D stays on the screen for 4 to 5 seconds after they are done transmitting. What we were told during training is that even though our radio is set to channel B, if we press transmit while the screen is still displaying channel D, we will transmit on D. Does anyone have experience with this? Is this a setting somewhere or just the nature of the radios? With our previous Motorola radios, even if someone was actively talking on Channel D while we were scanning, and our radio was set to Channel B, we would immediately transmit on Channel B upon keying up the radio. This new way just doesn't seem right. But maybe it is. Thanks for any input.

 

[y85csm]

Your radios are programmed for Talkback Scan.
They can be reprogrammed to TX on Selected Channel which will make them work like your old one did.

 

[mrkage]

Awesome. Thanks! Forgive me because I know nothing about this, but some features are being set by the employees at the dispatch center and some have to be programmed by Motorola. Is this just a setting I can tell the dispatch center to set? Or do you think Motorola will need to set it? Thanks!

 

[kayn1n32008]

Our county is doing a P25 upgrade and our FD was issued APX 6000XEs... While I am on a fire scene, I am scanning to pick up dispatch, our Tac, and an neighboring department's channel. Someone from the neighboring department keys up on their channel...

Why are you scanning while on an active fireground? Why would you not only be listening to your fireground channel?

 

[mrkage]

Why are you scanning while on an active fireground? Why would you not only be listening to your fireground channel?

This would mainly be for incident command. Even though operations have moved to an assigned channel on the scene, like a Tac, dispatch will not talk on the Tac and stays on their dispatch channel. The IC has to listen for dispatch traffic and only knows things like what additional equipment is in route, additional calls coming in, etc., by monitoring the dispatch channel, but needs to be on the Tac for the incident.

 

[W2PDX]

Your radios are programmed for Talkback Scan.
They can be reprogrammed to TX on Selected Channel which will make them work like your old one did.

Exactly, simply a drop down in the CPS. If the radio is really hanging on a channel for 4-5 seconds, the hang time can also be lowered (default is usually 2000 ms).

 

[davidzimmerman]

i never did understand why fireman scan at a scene or working fire i worked for Motorola Shop 11 years i told the fireman take the radio out of SCAN lol

 

[IAmSixNine]

i never did understand why fireman scan at a scene or working fire i worked for Motorola Shop 11 years i told the fireman take the radio out of SCAN lol

I had experience with a slow department that always had their units in scan to listen to other stuff and they would "forget" the unit was on scan in the excitement of getting a call of their own. It happens.

 

[ME801]

It's a pretty simple fix in the CPS. And as an Incident Commander I would want to be scanning at least a couple of different channels for situational awareness. As a DivSup on a wildland fire they have to scan at least 4 channels, your div tac, the div tac on either side of you and A2G.