Radio Voting System FAQ

[E=MC2]

Gday all, I am not sure where the best place is for me to ask for a good above basic faq on how a Radio Frequency Voting system works, I have done a few searches and have found a heap on polling type voting but very little on RF multiple frequency multiple repeater sites over a large area for one channel operation. I would be very grateful for any help in finding a good informative site that goes into RF voting in detail. Well thats all for now, thanks for your time and help it is greatly appreciated. Drink lots of water not Grog and have great week. 73z Richard E=MC2

[centralcoastscanman]

do you mean similar to the way in which nsw police have their vote group systems setup for general duties ?

[ivahri]

Hi Richard,

There are two basic forms of voting, mobile voting & base voting. The Police tend to use base voting, based on each base in a network having a common receive freq, hot or very tightly designed switched links in to a central site (or hub), at which there is a SINAD voter that compares the signals measured at each of the sites. It then selects the one that had the best received signal. That is the most common form of base or race voting but there are many variations.

Mobile voting, something I've had to become very experienced in, depends on a heart beat pulse (usually a dead carrier of about 1 second every 60-120 secs, generated to key each of the bases simultaneously. The mobile does the RSSI measurement constantly scanning a group of sites until a signal is detected, then the strongest one is chosen to transmit on. This system does work but it depends on the bases being keyed simultaneously (ie. no link or base key up delays), the frequencies chosen carefully to avoid interference from other sites not being scanned, and lastly the mobile's voting set up being correct.

I prefer base voting personally but sometimes you do what you gotta do with the money you have...

Cheers,


Richard

[Longreach]

hi richard, im interested to know then why the heart pulse disappeared from channel W not long after VKG 1 took over the channel. wouldnt that pulse help the radio's vote? quite often late at night you could go 10-15 minutes without a transmission, would the radio still vote so they could pick up the nearest base given in that time they could have driven from say Goulburn to Marulan?
cheers

[ivahri]

Hi Longreach,

I don't know how their system is configured but if they are using mobile voting then the voting will be unreliable without it.

Cheers,


Richard

[E=MC2]

Gday to all, thanks for the information, I am in the RFS we use a 4 frequency PMR set up, I own a xts3k mk3 and I have set it up as a voting setup with the Moto software. I will need to read all of the responders to my question about voting and see how it will effect what I have done. For now it has worked very well on the 3k but that has only been in shire. I am very grateful for your time and help with this as I have not had much luck with a G spot search. but I will keep on searching. 73z Richard E=MC2

[ivahri]

Richard,

I wouldn't use voting on an XTS3000, particularly an XTS3000. I would manually select the best channel because these radios don't have a particularly good conventional voting. I don't believe any handheld is particularly reliable for voting but at least radios like the Tait have what is called "fast vote". Fast vote allows a signal threshold to be chosen (we use -70dBm) so that when a base exceeds that level the scan stops.

Regards,


Richard

[citabria]

Hi Richard,

Could you expand on the XTS3000's poor voting as I'm curious as to why they aren't that good - Is it due to the scan speed being too slow?

Cheers,
Matt

[ivahri]

Hi Matt,

Two reasons. One is the lack of a fast vote capability in this generation of Moto radios (MCS2K, MTS2K, and then the XTS3K). The second is a general weakness in using any handheld in a mobile voting situation- if the antenna can't be kept vertical & in free space the radio is not going to vote reliably. Handhelds get held at all different angles, clipped to waists, shoved in centre consoles etc voting with them has all the science of Chook Lotto. Reason 2 makes the need for reason 1 even more important in a handheld than in a mobile.

Cheers,


Richard

[centralcoastscanman]

I assume this issue of voting has now been fixed with the XTS5000 ?