Harris Radio scan trouble

[motorcoachdoug]

Hi ya
I have a Harris XG100 and our county switched over to P25 phase 2 last thurs from a smartzone system. First the county PD switched about a week and half ago and then the FD side of the house made the switch last thurs. When I have my radio in scan mode , it picks up the FD side of the house with no trouble at all but nada when it comes to the pd side. I can park my radio on one of the PD channels and it received with no trouble at all but if I park it on an FD TG, and in scan mode, it will not pick up any PG TG when they Transmit at all. Yes I have the FDMA and TDMA in the proper slots 1 and 2 and 9 and 10. Also part of the FD TG's are FDMA and the rest are TDMA. Plus when FD Dispatch talks I get a Announce 65 in the bottom of the screen in a green ribbon but when the PD side talk I get the PD ID and displaying the TG for that channel. Anyone have any ideas???

 

[Forts]

These talkgroups are all in the same group set I assume? And you have Scan selected for the PD groups? Do you have the system set as TDMA Capable? What firmware is in the radio?

 

[38258]

Are you affiliating with the site or is this NAS? Also, are the PD talkgroups being used on the same site or a different site?

 

[Maxwell Nyquist]

Be aware, there are some departments that are set up so that dispatch is in the clear, but the field units are all transmitting encrypted.

It could be that.

 

[motorcoachdoug]

If I tune to that PD channel , the PD is clear no encryption and yes i have scan checkmarked as well. I can park it on the PD TG for that district and fire will cut in when it is active but none of the other district PD TG. However if I switch channels to that district PD TG i hear them with no problems at all. It is set up as NAS and I also hear it when the TDMA TG on the fire side of the house are used as well. Not sure if the county has the PD TG to assigned to different towers for that district or county wide. There are 1.4 million people in the county and 6 PD districts as well. I do remember when they first switched over to the Phase 2 from smartzone , they told everyone to turn off the scan function on their radios.I have also updated the radio to the latest firmware and still same thing. It is also a mother moto system and now the county and state have to finish getting the county towers up and running to be part of the MD 1st Respond system which is all the state agencies plus about half to 3/4 of the 24 counties in MD as well. It would not be able to hand the Montgomery County MD on top of everything else if all the county TG's were to be placed on the MD system. Also all the frequencies for the county are in the 800 mhz band as well.

 

[motorcoachdoug]

I had asked that someone do a Astro P25 channel ID check and this is what they posted. I find it interesting that the channel 2 is different then channel 0.
IDEN 0 BASE 851.00625 OFFSET -45 SPACING 6.25 FDMA
IDEN 1 BASE 762.00625 OFFSET +30 SPACING 6.25 FDMA
IDEN 2 BASE 851.0125 OFFSET -45 SPACING 12.5 TDMA
IDEN 3 BASE 762.00625 OFFSET +30 SPACING 12.5 TDMA

 

[Forts]

Do you have another radio/scanner/SDR that you can use to verify the units are indeed on the tower you are trying to monitor? Although the fact that you hear things ok while sitting on the talkgroup would seem to indicate that they are.

One thing to try... in the IDEN table setup try using slots 1,2,3 & 4 instead of 1,2,9 & 10. Beyond that... I'm not sure. I could take a look at the personality file if you like. Oh, and the table you listed above is pretty standard.

 

[AMBE+2]

Un-muting issues are 99% of the time a screwed up IDEN table.

Older firmware placed IDEN table FDMA in slots 1 thru 8. TDMA in slots 9 to 16. This changed in later firmware releases. Your IDEN set is out of order. USE SLOTS 1,2, 3,4

Depending on firmware revision IDEN is compared against the OTA transmitted IDEN table. Different firmware behaved differently in this regard as which is considered correct, personality stored IDEN or OTA. Behavioral change means older firmware used OTA over the personality IDEN meaning you could enter wrong but the radio would update the IDEN table based on what was received from the system.

There is no issue with TG scan on phase II, NONE. They probably asked them not to scan for system loading issues on each site as the system was brought online.

Don't use iden tables that the scanner goofs "decode" . They are usually wrong. System is problem a default motorola Phase 1/2 IDEN table.

Try this.

 

[motorcoachdoug]

I will give that a shot. After the astro p25 info was given to me i made the change to the TDMA 800mhz frequency to what it shows above but will try it in those slots as well in stead of having TDMA in slots 9 and 10 and let you know

 

[motorcoachdoug]

Ok still no joy after putting the TDMA in slots 3 and 4 but I think the county might be running a cross patch right now, or a partial cross patch. When dispatch talks its coming thru 3 D and 4 D at the same time. Other times its not coming thru on both TG's. I wonder then what is going on with county dispatch?? and if that is the case they are having semi trouble then I would think that effects the scan trouble also.

 

[smackdaddy]

Hey Doug, you might be onto something with the patching. I'm not familiar with the XG-100 series, but many previous Harris radio series will not scan patches. On a radio with this limitation the only way to decode a patched group would be to select and remain on the patched talkgroup. This is a limitation on some radios that go back to the EDACS days. Sounds like it might be what you are observing.

Maybe someone with more knowledge of XG100 can comment.

Cheers,
SD.

 

[Forts]

I can't confirm that with a 100P, but I know the older M7100/P7100 etc does not scan patches properly. Another way to confirm would be with the use of an SDR dongle and DSDPlus or Unitrunker.

From looking at your mission plan I also noticed you have quite a few members in a scan list. I know this was also an issue with some older radios... somewhere around 100-120 members it would either stop working or ignore members past that point (I forget which). I'm not sure if this was ever an issue on the Unity or not however.

 

[motorcoachdoug]

Ok thanks will take a look and mabe create a different system with about 25 to 30 tgs in it.. will keep everyone up to date

 

[motorcoachdoug]

Well so far no joy at all. Harris radio will not scan the county P25 phase 2 system at all. I know the system is up because my KNG2 is scanning just fine like it should so now time to figure out why its not scanning. I even tried just for fun i put 851.01250 in 3 and 9 TDMA and still no joy.. things that make you go hmmmm

 

[waynedc]

motorcoachdoug,

I have a new to me XG-100P and went through the same thing initially. It would scan P1 with no problems and it would indicate that it was receiving the P2 system control channel (but that is P1 anyways). I also tried every combo for the IDEN set with no luck. I tried RPM10 and RPM14 and the indicated firmware in the radio was "4.0.12". I was almost ready to return it when I decided to try to upgrade the firmware. I upgraded to what is now indicated in the radio as "XGPRO2A26". The radio now scans P2 with no issues. I used the IDEN plan with the FDMA in positions 1 & 2 and the TDMA in positions 9 & 10 and using all of the settings shown in the image in message 8 above. I hope that helps.

What firmware are you running in the radio currently?

 

[motorcoachdoug]

Hi
My firmware is older then that. Do you have that firmware? I am using RPM14 right now as well. My firmware is XLPRO6G03. Hmm it seems i need to update my firmware then to what you are using.

 

[TRS]

Hi
My firmware is older then that. Do you have that firmware? I am using RPM14 right now as well. My firmware is XLPRO6G03. Hmm it seems i need to update my firmware then to what you are using.

XLPRO6G03 is way newer firmware than XGPR02A26. You would have to downgrade.

 

[TRS]

Hey Doug, you might be onto something with the patching. I'm not familiar with the XG-100 series, but many previous Harris radio series will not scan patches. On a radio with this limitation the only way to decode a patched group would be to select and remain on the patched talkgroup. This is a limitation on some radios that go back to the EDACS days. Sounds like it might be what you are observing.

Maybe someone with more knowledge of XG100 can comment.

Cheers,
SD.

L3HARRIS added support for Non-Harris Style Patch Scanning way back with the release of the XGPR02A26 firmware. That really shouldn't be an issue any longer,but with the XG-100P you never know.

 

[motorcoachdoug]

Hey if i have to downgrade then so be it. Driving me nuts I can not scan Montgomery County MD new P25 system but my KNG2 does just fine..

 

[motorcoachdoug]

Well i downgraded the firmware and still no joy at all and I tried it with the 851.01250 in slot 3 and slot 9 and no joy. It picks up fine on the TG that I have the channel on but does not pick up any other TG while in scan mode and yes i made sure the TG that I wanted to the radio to scan had the scan box checked marked as well.