Has anyone switched to the Pacific Crest ADL Vantage Pro radios yet? The PDL series is now at EOL, I am wondering about the wisdom of upgrading my 10 year old PDL base radio and 4 year old rover radio to be narrow band compliant vs. replacing them with the ADL Vantage Pro's?
About a year ago, Pacific Crest had quoted me $350 each to upgrade the PDL radios, pretty sure that is way cheaper than buying all new, but is that wasting money on old equipment that has reached EOL status by Pacific Crest? It might be they won't even upgrade any longer?
Anybody who has upgraded to the ADL Vantage Pro's, about what was the cost for the base unit? Rover would probably have to come from Leica, I think those are around $1500 per copy.
SHG
When we upgraded to the VIVA units, we bought the ADL rover radios and programmed it as a PDL since that's what our base radios are. I ordered one ADL 35w last week, so I will let you know after we use it how they work out.
Well some bad news on PDL upgrades, sounds like no more, buy an ADL for $2200 is the solution from the same company that also had a similar fix for TGO, this little FCC mandate is going to cost some cash now, looks like about $5K instead of the $2K I was hoping for. My current equipment is working fine is the bad part, I don't need new radio equipment and it won't help production one bit.
SHG
Shelby,
I phoned the Pac Crest tech support on Monday to inquire about re-purposing the PDL HPB (base) units for narrow-banding and was told, as you are confirming, that the HPB is now superceded with the ADL Vantage modem to conform with the narrow-banding.
I was also told that the PDL LPB (rover) radio with the 25K bandwidth could still be used as the receiver with the ADL since "12.5K can go into 25K but not the other way around".
The ADL Vantage Pro can still output up to 35 watts.
PDL LPB is incorrect, that is the low power base, but, I was told the rover radio could still be used.
That pretty much is what I found too, anything that transmits has to be replaced, no upgrade path, anything that receives only like a rover only radio will still work.
I will be buying a new ADL base radio before the end of 2012.
SHG