Satel Radio

I tested one for a month and it worked like a champ but we haven't purchased any.

There are two things that cause the TDL to overheat - the power level and the length of the duty cycle. We're in South Louisiana and we stopped having problems with the ADL/TDL radios when we did the following:

- Made sure the firmware was current;
- Ran at 16 watts instead of 35;
- Ran CMRx corrections instead of CMR+;
- Switched our batteries to 35Ah sealed gel cells - the ones we buy are made for Hoveround chairs

There's a slight drop in distance / penetrating power at 16W, but radio power is logarithmic so it's not as much as you'd think. We could probably run at 25W but again, it wouldn't make that much of a difference. We run TT450S at 8000 baud over the air; I'd like to go to TMIII at 9600 but not all the receiver radios we have support it and I want everything to be interchangeable. I'd avoid using 4800 over the air, especially with GNSS.

We found (and there is plenty of supporting documentation from Pac Crest to back this up) that the battery you choose has a huge impact on the performance. An ADL / TDL will look like it's working - lights flashing, etc. - but if the voltage drops below a certain level during the duty cycle nothing is actually coming out. Car and truck batteries, and even marine batteries, are not made for that type of use and perform very poorly.

Thanks, I will try swapping batteries before I invest 3k in a new radio set up. I have been using the Gel cel deep cycle marine batteries for a trolling motor.

On your existing ADL radio, the current firmware is 4.01.120.

If you don't have this version, then the radio has a known intermittent problem and will suffer the issues you describe. This firmware version has been available since March 2013, so you most likely have already installed it, however it is worth checking (just press the down arrow after turning on the radio.)

Next, check the cables and battery terminals. Sometimes you can pull the wires out of the spade lugs that connect to the battery. That is not good.

On the antenna, check the cable, the TNC connector end and the top of the NMO connector: if you unscrew the antenna from the mount, clean the brass-top center connector with a pencil eraser (or a toad stabber) and do the same for the bottom of the silver clip. Adjust the silver clip so it makes contact with the brass top. A miss-matched or damaged antenna or cable will result in output power being reflected back into the radio, which will make it heat up even more.

Another common failure here (I am in Wyoming today) is the wire that comes out of the NMO mount. If you don't secure it to the pole that is holding the antenna, the antenna wire will shake back and forth (like a million cycles over 12-hours) all day in the wind (yes Loyal it is windy in Wyoming) and the cable will break where it goes into the connector.

The ADL radios, when set to 35-watts, really are 35 watts. (The old PDL's rarely made the full output power.) So the ADL's use more power. But they are also more efficient than the older radios.

In my area, on sunny days (105 to 110 deg F) I use a piece of cardboard to keep direct sunlight from hitting the radio. Everything will heat up like a cheap pistol even when turned off at 110 deg F.

There is also a small [ FanCage] fan cage available from PC. I have found that something like this:

does the same thing for $20.

The reality is that even with a perfect antenna and cable, the radio is not 100% efficient. If you broadcast 35 watts with a 90% duty cycle and the radio is 60% efficient, then the radio case is going to need to dissipate 18.9 watts, plus a few watts for the operating electronics. On an already hot day, in dead still air, with the sun beading down on the case, physics will not support this happening--regardless of the brand name printed on the radio label.

So to summarize:

o Use the most compact format your device will support (CMRx, Atom-Compact, RTCM)
o Use the fastest protocol speed that your radios will support with decent range (9600 is good)
o If you are using EOTT, consider turning off FEC and Scrambling, it will reduce the message size and the duty cycle
o Make sure you have a great antenna cable and antenna
o Check power connectors and power cables
o Put / make shade for radio

BTW, when I was replacing PDL radios with ADL radios a couple of years ago for narrowbanding (I did more than 50) at least 1/3 of the antenna cables that I encountered were c-rap. Bad TNC connectors, poorly spliced breaks where the cable was closed in a truck door (or whatever), the wrong antenna (1/4 wavelength with no ground plane is common), corroded spring clip, missing spring clip, mismatched antenna lengths (actually very common). I am not saying that this is your problem, but it often is.

Mark

ADL Radios

One other thing (not hot related, but cold). This is a very old issue, but it is a killer in the winter (assuming you live someplace cold). Even if I lived in Arizona and it never got colder than 50 degrees, I would still make sure my radio (in suspect SN range) had been looked at:

ADL Vantage Pro Radios in Serial Number Range 1212 through 1231

On another ADL Vantage Pro note, if you have an ADL Vantage Pro radio with a serial number that starts with 1212 through 1231, and it has not been back to Pacific Crest to be ‘rebuilt’ you probably should consider sending it in.

There is an known problem with the radio not starting below 25 deg F. I believe that radios above this temperature will eventually fail.

Contact your dealer or PCC directly for confirmation:

1.408.481.8070

support@pacificcrest.com

Thanks!

Good post. It also reminded me that Pac Crest recommends that the power cable be terminated with eyes and secured to the terminals with a nut rather than using alligator clips.