XTL/XTS5000 TMS and paging while scanning

[KD9RTX]

I have a few XTS radios each with a zone with 4 digital channels. I had gotten TMS set up between all of the radios and it works great so far. However I noticed some interesting behavior while scanning (scan list containing only those 4 channels) in that TMS and paging wont work while scan mode is on. I've tried various settings in the scan list and made sure that the radios are set to the same channel but nothing seems to work. Interestingly the call function works fine.

Is this a limitation of the XTS radios or P25 in general? Or is there some combination of settings I haven't found yet?

 

[chief21]

I can't answer your specific question, but given that paging depends on the precise timing of the tones, I believe that scanning multiple frequencies would likely interrupt the timing of the pages.

 

[KD9RTX]

I found that if I double tap the PTT when paging it will work but the TMS still doesn't. Oh well, neither is a critical feature, just something I noticed and was experimenting with.

 

[Semedar]

I had the same exact issue and asked for help on the Commercial Radios Discord channel.

I got a new SRX 2200 and was trying to pull it into our agency’s radios by click and dragging to fill the CodePlug with our correct CodePlug and it showed it copied everything successfully.

But upon testing, it would receive TMS, Pages, Calls, and everything else. But when you want to send out texts, pages, or calls from the radio, it would not work. I had the same issue where you had to press the PTT twice really quick for it to actually page another radio. Oh and it Tx and Rx perfectly. Encryption wasn’t the issue.

Eventually I just pulled up the stock CodePlug that the new radio came with and set it to how it should be one option and setting at a time and it worked. I don’t know what was wrong because I did the CodePlug comparator on the CodePlug that was giving me issues and it showed that it was exactly the same. Maybe APX CPS was being weird and maybe a bit of the CodePlug was corrupt? Not sure but by setting up the CodePlug manually it resolved itself.

Hope this helps!

 

[KD9RTX]

Meant to comment on my thread a while back but forgot. I did manage to get it working by increasing the preamble time and changing a couple other things. I'm traveling back from vacation today but hopefully I'll have a chance to look at it sometime this week.

 

[a417]

Any time you incorporate scanning, you increase the time radio will not be on the channel may want it to be on when it is scanning. The doubletap of the PTT likely lets the first PTT grab the radios attention, and the second sends the TMS as the radio is now on that channel.

I'll bet that if you don't scan at all, and the radio is sitting on that channel all the time - the TMS goes thru the first time.

This is precisely the same reason that I have flatly refused to configure scanning or the ability to enable it on channels that are considered life safety or alerting.

 

[KD9RTX]

Your explanation for the double tap makes sense. But that only worked with paging. TMS wouldn't allow the second push of the ptt while it was trying to send the message.

If it's sitting on that channel all the time then there is no problem at all with TMS or paging. This is just something I wanted to figure out how to get working in conjunction with scanning over simplex. No life safety issues here.

 

[a417]

This is just something I wanted to figure out how to get working in conjunction with scanning over simplex. No life safety issues here.

You'll have to deal with <100% efficacy then, as long as you scan...you will miss something.