TPS Narrowbanding

Hi Lee,

What kind of range can you get from these? Also, are you still required to license the channels with the FCC?

I've gone up to 4 miles between base and rover with these 2 watt radios. I'm not certain if an FCC license is required. I think it is required for radio larger than 5 watts. But I do have FCC license and an external 35 watt radio.

As for Hiper Pros, the operators manual shows the following on page A-7:

As for the channel spacing, it would appear that units made for the German market would have the 12,500 khz spacing, whereas units made for the U.S. and other markets would have 25,000 khz spacing:

I don't know much about narrowbanding, but would that mean that the Hiper Pros are not supposed to be used after narrowbanding goes into effect?

Doesn't look good....

[msg=171496]SurveyorConnect thread on narrowbanding Hipers[/msg]

Yes the Hiper pros are narrowband compliant. According to the second to last line on your table you can set the data speed to 19,200 at 25khz. FCC allows this.

Well, that's great news for a change. I'll look that up. Thank you.

I spoke with Satel a few months back and they said they can modify the radios to comply with narrow banding. However, the board must be sent to the factory in Finland for the modification.

Dan,

You said "they can modify the radios to comply with narrow banding", are they going to enable 12.5kHz spacing to be compliant? Sounds correct since the manual says 12.5kHz was originally only on boards shipped to Germany, which is closer to Finland than the USA.

Or are you saying the 19,200 baud can only enabled by a tech in Finland? If so, I find that hard to believe.

From the user manual it appears the Satel radio is already FCC narrowband compliant by using 19,200 baud transfer rate with 25kHz spacing.

Lee Green

Thanks, Danny. I also had contacted Satel just recently and got the following reply from its rep:

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It is very likely that the internal radios of your Hiper Pro are set at 25Khz, which used to be the common standard in the US until now.
In order to comply with the FCC rules, which will come into effect on Jan 01, 2013, you will need to modify the existing internal radios.
This can be done by the Satel factory in Finland. Please let us know the exact model and year of your Hiper Pro (or the serial number of the radios if you have access to them) and we will send you a quote for this modification.
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There appear to be two avenues toward compliance regarding the narrowbanding 1) to switch to a narrow band (i.e. 12.5 kHz), and 2) to switch to a faster data rate (i.e. 19,200) and apparently both are supported by FCC. Given my Hiper Pros are working at 19,200 bps, modifying the existing internal radios looks to be unnecessary.

Another statement from the Satel rep I've been dealing with:

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Regarding the narrowbanding rule, I agree that the FCC made it quite unclear, and confused everyone with the issue of the so called "equivalent efficiency standard" which is related to the 19200bps speed you are referring to, but the reality is that no 25Khz transmission will be allowed after Jan 01, 2013. In any case it is up to you to decide which action to take. We will assist you in whatever we can.
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I've seen written materials from FCC indicating that using equivalent efficiency technology (25 kHz, 19,200 bps) will be allowed, so am confused by this statement "no 25kHz transmission will be allowed".