ION2G ALE and Relay Clicking in 6000 Series Radios

marwalk

I've recently installed the ION2G ALE software and have it working on my two Flex radios, a 6600 and a 6400. As long as you have an unused slice for it to grab when you start scanning, it will lock the other slice for transmit while it switches through the receive frequencies on the main ION2G slice scanning for the ALE frequencies that are selected for that particular scan. It also does sounding fine for SHARES. All good with that.

I'd noticed when the room is quiet I can hear some faint clicking of what sounds like small relays as the scanning switches through its frequency list. Does this faint clicking harm the radio? I haven't been able to find any references either in the Flex Community or in a general web search on this topic. Although I would like to think that the ION2G developers would have made provision to not harm the radio, I would like a second opinion on that subject. In other words can you do sustained ALE scanning (with the second, transmit, slice in operation) over a longer period of time (e.g. overnight) without damaging the radio?

Thanks, Mark, AC3EW

marwalk

Solution (thanks to Glenn Depp, WT3R): The light clicking is the result of different level settings for the receive antenna preamp for the slice doing the scanning as it moves through the different band segments. The solution is to go through all of the frequencies that ION2G scans and set the ANT RF Gain to the same level on each of them; then there will be no preamp changes to cause any light clicking as the scanning slice moves through the ALE frequency list. Although the same ANT RF Gain setting may not be the best for every single frequency scanned, this is an optimal and practical approach to remove the associated light clicking while scanning a set of frequencies that spans several band segments. For clarity, the setting in question is shown in the accompanying screenshot. The approach above answers the mail for me on this question.

Mark, AC3EW