[Motorola] Reverse Burst Incompatibility - SOLVED!

[Eric Lemmon]

I have made a number of postings on this topic, on this list and others,
and the responses have ranged from "I've never HEARD of such a thing!"
to "Yeah, I've known about that for YEARS!"

At issue is the fact that there are two schemes for CTCSS Reverse Burst
specified in EIA/TIA-603, and Motorola uses one of them while Kenwood
and the rest of the world use the other.  I first learned about this
when I added a Kenwood mobile radio to a fleet that was entirely
Motorola.  On every transmission, the Kenwood caused squelch crashes on
all Motorola radios, and vice-versa.  It became such an annoyance that I
converted the entire fleet to DCS, which has just one standard scheme. 
I was going to change the PL tone anyway, due to a match with a distant
co-channel user.

I made some very critical phone calls to Motorola and Kenwood, noting
that my employer was a significant buyer of two-way radio equipment, and
we were not happy with this incompatibilty issue.  Kenwood's response
was to offer to flash my radio to work with the Motorola reverse burst
scheme- but I had to ship it to a service center.  Motorola's response
was that they were using the "standard format specified in EIA/TIA-603."

Now, it seems that Motorola has acknowledged that the incompatibility IS
an issue, and has done something about it.  The latest issue of the
Professional CPS (HVN9025K R06.02.03), released a few weeks ago, now has
an obscure box in the Personality Configuration - Advanced page labeled,
"Non-Standard Reverse Burst."  When you check this box, the radio will
encode and decode CTCSS reverse burst in a Kenwood-compatible format,
but will not mute properly with Motorola radios.  I tested this
"feature" with a brand-new HT-750, and it works perfectly.  The
capability will likely appear in future RSS releases for all radio
models.  Whether Kenwood will add a similar function to their RSS
remains to be seen...

73, Eric Lemmon WB6FLY