Changing from Analog to P25 back to Analog.

[Looplow]

Alright so I recently have been using Motorola Sabers for my Airsoft games. Great audio and great battery life, plus bought some MT2000 and HT1000.

Then I heard of the Astro series of the Saber and the XTS systems.
So insight 6 Astro Sabers, 3 XTS3000 and 3 XTS5000 and one XTS2500.

Here’s where things go wrong.

•So on our first milsim in November we decided to run our own encrypted comms on our own system. So we used P25 and uh if you were in a conex it would be just dead air.

If you were far away you would just hear mixed messaging. Heck even someone was asking for fire support on the radio because he was getting over run. I didn’t hear it, but a close team mate heard it from a long way enough from the field.

Then we had a maday I called out and no one heard me in the field.

So what I did I comeplety switched from P25 back to our analog stuff like our Sabers and our MT2000 and some Xts3000 that are analog completely.
I even wrote a google doc to our Airsoft team on P25 issues.

Is there any problems with the radios or is it p25 the problem.

 

[mikewazowski]

You've got some real antiques there. When was the last time any of them were calibrated?

 

[Looplow]

You've got some real antiques there. When was the last time any of them were calibrated?

In October.

 

[RFI-EMI-GUY]

Tuned how and by whom?
P25 radios have very strict requirements for setting the deviation. You also must have the modulation AKA deviation compensation set correctly . The RX should be set for C4FM for simplex and non simulcast repeater. The TCXO must be spot on. The IF BW set properly. The RX front end must be tuned. The manual for the RSS is over 450 pages!!!!

Even if everything is adjusted carefully and the proper options set, these radios do not receive well with strong co-channel traffic, so if used for tactical operations and you have others keying at same time or others with analog radios at same location, the P25 decoder just shuts down and you lose large chunks of a message. At least with analog radios you can hear the interference.

Also if your radio is worn on your body along with all kinds of metal doo dads and EDC, the metal-metal scraping creates radio noise that shuts the RX down. Take a key chain and rattle it near the RX antenna and you will notice the choppy static on a marginal signal. Have the guy on the TX end do same near his antenna and it is even worse. P25 is the shiite..