PLEASE HELP PROGRAM vertex 231

[margay]

Hello. My name is Sophia and I am about as new to the radio world as a 17 year old can be. I have been learning about radios and I volunteered to program 7 vertex 231 radios to the same channels for a wildlife program starting in a few days. I desperately need help cloning my vertex 231 hand helds. I cannot get three of my 7 radios to clone so I bought CE99 software to enable cloning but I keep getting a prompt saying coms port error when I try to write to the radio. I was told maybe the settings are not correct for my programing cable but I cannot for the life of me find where I select the correct settings for my cable. I am using a px-231 cable and CE99 software. Can someone help me find that setting and tell me what setting I should be using.

Thank you so so much.

 

[cmjonesinc]

If the cable is working with some radios and not the others I would suspect a radio problem and not a com port setting issue. I recently upgraded about 50 radios at work which included a mixture of 231's and several other similar vertex/moto models. I tried reprogramming some of the better looking older radios for other uses but I had about a 50/50 rate of the ones that would actually communicate with my pc. I somewhat suspect my issue was due to damage/corrosion to the mic port from having speakers mics plugged in for years on top of all the other mistreatment. I initially suspected my problem was due to using windows 10&11 with a usb programming cable but I tried the radios that wouldn't read on an old cf18 toughbook with a serial programming cable and the same radios wouldn't read on it either. Maybe it's just me but I've always had some finicky radios with that style programming cable over the years.

 

[margay]

Thank you for your help. NO.. I have not been able to get the cable to work at all. The other radios had already been cloned with the cloning cable type (radio to radio worked fine).. Its the laptop to radio cable where I get the prompt saying problem with com port.

 

[cmjonesinc]

Oh gotcha. So I'm assuming that cable you mentioned in your original post is a usb cable. Can you confirm that the driver is installed correctly and that the cable is showing as a com port device? To get that info just hit your "windows" key and type "device manager". You should see something similar to my screenshot. After that, in the programming software go to "file" and "configure". Make sure you've got the COM port that matches the one in device manager for that cable. If you don't see a com port in device manager you need to install the driver for the cable.

 

[margay]

Hello.. Yes.. It is a USB cable that I bought specifically for this purpose. I am so new to all this programming stuff but eventually I will get it right. I did what you suggested and indeed I did find the port and configuration boxes.. Very exciting. I did all the steps and I saw a green bar activate as if it was loading something.. So exciting.. THEN!... I get another box... Frequency range mismatch!. OK not so exciting. What does that mean? So close.. yet so far..

 

[cmjonesinc]

Hey!!! We're moving in the right direction! So did you just open the software and try to upload the data to the radio? That could be the source of the freq range mismatch. You should take one of the radios that's been cloned with the correct freq data that you need and "read" (I think it's "download data from radio" in the software) it. Then unplug it and plug up the unprogrammed radio and "write" (upload data to radio) to that radio. If you're still getting a freq mismatch error you may have a radio that's for a different band (VHF vs UHF).

 

[margay]

Hi again,, Thank you for sticking with me. Probably pretty frustrating dealing with us newbies.. I started playing around and learned how to manually type in the frequencies I want to match the 4 that talk to each other. I was getting no where. BUT!... I just now discovered the whole frequency band is wrong on the ones that wont clone or manually accept frequencies. The working radios are all VHF and the stubborn ones are UHF.. Hello! Even I know that wont work. I tried editing that box to change from UHF to VHF but cant figure out how to do that.

 

[FFPM571]

did you download the FIF-12 driver to use the USB

 

[cmjonesinc]

Hi again,, Thank you for sticking with me. Probably pretty frustrating dealing with us newbies.. I started playing around and learned how to manually type in the frequencies I want to match the 4 that talk to each other. I was getting no where. BUT!... I just now discovered the whole frequency band is wrong on the ones that wont clone or manually accept frequencies. The working radios are all VHF and the stubborn ones are UHF.. Hello! Even I know that wont work. I tried editing that box to change from UHF to VHF but cant figure out how to do that.

No worries, we were all new at one point. Unfortunately those radios are just a single band. They are either VHF or UHF you can't switch bands.

 

[margay]

Oh NO! Really.. UHG....I swear a read somewhere they could be switched. Gahhhh. Bad day for us.. We are already in the field. Nothing I can do now. Well, thank you for all your help. I learned a lot. So not all is lost.

 

[cmjonesinc]

You're welcome. If you have any more radio questions we'll be here!

 

[kayn1n32008]

Oh NO! Really.. UHG....I swear a read somewhere they could be switched. Gahhhh. Bad day for us.. We are already in the field. Nothing I can do now. Well, thank you for all your help. I learned a lot. So not all is lost.

The VX-231 is a single band radio. They can not be switched because the RF sections of the radio are band specific.

The VX-231 came in three different models
VHF: 136-174MHz
UHF1: 403-470MHz
UHF2: 450-512MHz.

The band splits are identified by the full model number under the battery in the label.

I can't remember the model break down off the tip of my head, because it has been a long time since I have looked specifically at Vertex radios.

If you can gather the model numbers, someone here can help you out and tell you what band split of the radios you have.

I remember being your age, and starting g out into the world of RF. Good luck.