DeoVindice
P25 Underground
A little bit of background: At my day job, I work at an industrial site with the possibility of lethal H2S exposure caused by our process chemistry. This is not an explosive atmosphere and IS equipment is not required. I'm a boots-on-the-ground plant operator responsible for taking samples, measuring reagent dosing rates, and operating various pieces of non-automated equipment. The plant is a shirtsleeves environment; we utilize individual gas monitors and an automatic distributed sensor system for exposure control and evacuation alerting. The radio system is MotoTRBO Capacity Plus with a mix of subscriber units but predominantly 7550e full-keypad portables. A plant evac was initiated by the H2S sensor system yesterday, which revealed a serious issue with the programming of our radios. Fortunately, in this case the evacuation was triggered by a sensor losing power and initiating evac as a failsafe, but the issue stands. The plant control room radio inadvertently changed talkgroups, cutting off my ability to communicate with the plant control room operator regarding a potentially IDLH situation. Obviously this is completely unacceptable and I'm pushing to have it corrected, so I'd like to get some information regarding the features on our portables. Programming is handled either by our in-house radio shop or the local MSI dealer; unfortunately this isn't something I can fix myself.
As-is, they have a "Keypad Lock" function accessible via the radio options menu. We tested this function and found that it only locks out the menu keys, and still allows different talkgroups to be selected. I'd like to see a keypress or combination of keypresses programmed to lock out the talkgroup selector such that we won't have to worry about our radios switching to the security or electrical talkgroups without our knowledge. Additionally, I've found that the volume knobs on these 7550s occasionally hang up on truck seats or equipment and switch the radios off, cutting the user off from the control room and other operators. My two-way experience is with Kenwood and EFJ; on a 5100ES I can program it for soft power down so that the radio requires an additional keypress to turn off; simply turning the volume knob off will not power the radio down. Can a 7550e be programmed with this same feature or something functionally similar?
(And no, I'm not happy with Capacity Plus. We get "bonked", long delays before TPT, multiple PTT presses before getting a TPT, and occasional missed calls that I have not yet narrowed down to equipment failure or user error. I'd rather be on simplex, our plant area is not large enough to require a repeater.)
As-is, they have a "Keypad Lock" function accessible via the radio options menu. We tested this function and found that it only locks out the menu keys, and still allows different talkgroups to be selected. I'd like to see a keypress or combination of keypresses programmed to lock out the talkgroup selector such that we won't have to worry about our radios switching to the security or electrical talkgroups without our knowledge. Additionally, I've found that the volume knobs on these 7550s occasionally hang up on truck seats or equipment and switch the radios off, cutting the user off from the control room and other operators. My two-way experience is with Kenwood and EFJ; on a 5100ES I can program it for soft power down so that the radio requires an additional keypress to turn off; simply turning the volume knob off will not power the radio down. Can a 7550e be programmed with this same feature or something functionally similar?
(And no, I'm not happy with Capacity Plus. We get "bonked", long delays before TPT, multiple PTT presses before getting a TPT, and occasional missed calls that I have not yet narrowed down to equipment failure or user error. I'd rather be on simplex, our plant area is not large enough to require a repeater.)
