DLR1020 problems

[Wicho]

Hello all,

I’ve come across some problems I’ve never experienced with a lot of 9 DLR1020 radios I purchased on eBay and hope someone can help. I’ve factory reset all the radios yet problems persist.

One radio won’t TX at all when you press the PTT button. It gives a single bonk and that’s it. It will RX from another radio if the radio TX’ing is a foot or so away but beyond that range, it won’t RX. I’m thinking bad transmitter so sync is lost with the other radio, but don’t know for certain. And I don’t know what the single bonk means.

A second radio just won’t power up at all, regardless of battery (I tried different ones). Okay, that one is dead.

The other seven radios though are throwing me for a loop. I can see one radio being bad but all? Maybe they were abused or dunked in water, or who knows. They all TX and RX fine if 10-15 feet from each other but get beyond that or toss in a wall between them and no more contact. The talk permit chirp is replaced by the double bonk.

i know it isn’t interference causing the problems. I double checked by using my existing DTR700’s and DLR1060’s in the same place and they worked fine.

As mentioned, I’ve factory reset them all, read them with CPS and everything looks to be in order as far as the factory reset settings. The only thing I can think of is bad transmitters or broken internal antenna connections (radios and antennas are in good exterior physical condition). All radios are 2018 or later production.

Any thoughts in what else I can try? Thanks.

 

[W9WSS]

I know you probably don't want to hear this, but when I worked for a Motorola MSS shop I wouldn't sell the DLR1020 to my account holders. If they did own them in their fleet, we gave them a generous rebate back toward a CP200 or better. I personally refused to sell DLR1020s or BPR40 handie talkies because they performed so poorly. DLR1020s are the bottom of the barrel, lowest of the lowest in quality, unfortunately, our profit was very good because they were sold at twice their cost to the customer.

I cannot give you advice on why your radios aren't performing properly, but I would think possibly they need a firmware upgrade, or totally new version of CPS before they'll operate per specifications.

 

[Wicho]

I know you probably don't want to hear this, but when I worked for a Motorola MSS shop I wouldn't sell the DLR1020 to my account holders. If they did own them in their fleet, we gave them a generous rebate back toward a CP200 or better. I personally refused to sell DLR1020s or BPR40 handie talkies because they performed so poorly. DLR1020s are the bottom of the barrel, lowest of the lowest in quality, unfortunately, our profit was very good because they were sold at twice their cost to the customer.

I cannot give you advice on why your radios aren't performing properly, but I would think possibly they need a firmware upgrade, or totally new version of CPS before they'll operate per specifications.

thx for the reply. As far as I know, the firmware can’t be updated on the 1020. I’ve read there is an update tool that can be coaxed out of mother M for the 1060, and know the DTR600/700 firmware can definitely be updated, but AFAIK, not the 1020.

I’m running the latest version of CPS. Probably just bad/dying radios.

1020’s just suit my needs in this particular instance (if they worked).