[MRCA] Sunair RT-9000B/9500/9310 power setting issue

Fri Apr 20 10:10:12 EDT 2018

Nah, mostly its just fun having high powered equipment! Although I will say earlier in my hamming days I really enjoyed 20 meter DX. And at the time with a 100W transmitter, believe me, I wished I had more. I usually heard the DX station perfectly but they could never hear me. Sure if I installed a rotatable beam that probably would have solved that but alas, that is not to be. It is easier to put a 1KW amp in the shack that the XYL will never have to see vs a big monstrous antenna in the backyard. But I get your point.

________________________________________
From: Ray Fantini <RAFANTINI at salisbury.edu>
Sent: Friday, April 20, 2018 8:55 AM
To: W2HX; mrca at mailman.qth.net
Subject: RE: [MRCA] Sunair RT-9000B/9500/9310 power setting issue

I have always held the belief that life is too short for QRP but have to say that having 125 watts is plenty for normal Hamming. If you get the 1 kW amplifier how often do you think you will be using it? Couple years back when I was running an old RCA Broadcast transmitter on 160 I was generating around 375 watts of carrier for a peak around 1 kW and started having a problem where after calling CQ would have people respond running there little Yahoo/Kenwood radios that generate maybe 25 watts of AM and have to struggle to hear them when they were able to have solid copy on me, perhaps there are times when you can have too much power? Then again when I would talk to another high power AM station it was nice to have solid copy all around.
Another issue may be that you may have the same affliction that I have. I spend huge amounts of time, money and labor building complex systems and only a fraction of that time is spent on using them once completed. On air operations may only account for five percent at best and often some huge projects are sold off within a year or two after completion. It's the process of finding, learning and getting everything together and working and not necessary the results at the end of the process for me. Suspect there may be a lot of that about here too. Otherwise there would be a lot about making DX contacts and what's hot on what band.

Ray F/KA3EKH

-----Original Message-----
From: mrca-bounces at mailman.qth.net [mailto:mrca-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of W2HX
Sent: Thursday, April 19, 2018 10:07 PM
To: mrca at mailman.qth.net
Subject: Re: [MRCA] Sunair RT-9000B/9500/9310 power setting issue

Hi all,

I wanted to give you a quick update on this issue. I contacted Sunair (GREAT guys there!) and showed them the video of what was happening.

Well its quite simple really.  The problem is caused by a known bug in the RCU software. The RT-9000 series radios were intended to operate either as a 125 watt system or as a 1000 watt system, and the software was developed with this in mind. They were never intended to be used with 500W systems.

Apparently, Sunair had a request from a customer to develop a 500 watt system (the LPA-9500), and they spent some time adapting the RT-9000 software to control the LPA-9500. This system was really an afterthought, and since the customer did not purchase any RCU's, they didn't devote any effort to changing the RCU software.

The system works as follows. The RT is able to read the power level of the amp. But it is not able to command a specific power level. It can only send a pulse to say "change power levels" This pulse causes the LPA to switch between bypass, 500W, 1KW, bypass, 500W, etc.  The RT reads the power level and if it doesn't like it, it will send another pulse until it does like the power level.  Since the RCU thinks its being used with a 1KW system (all it was designed to work with) it allows the user to select 1KW and the RT dutifully keeps pulsing the LPA waiting until it gets the 1KW it requires. But being a 500W system, it never occurs so the system continues to switch over and over again.

So what next? Well I have to courses of action. First is I may look for a 1KW amp and put the whole thing behind me hihi. Alternatively, I am investigating modifying the firmware of the RCU to eliminate the 1KW option from being selectable -- with a little help from my friends. OK, with a LOT of help from my friends!

If I end up modifying the firmware, I'll report back
73 Eugene W2HX

-----Original Message-----
From: mrca-bounces at mailman.qth.net [mailto:mrca-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of W2HX
Sent: Saturday, April 14, 2018 7:44 PM
To: Ray Fantini; Peter Gottlieb
Cc: mrca at mailman.qth.net
Subject: Re: [MRCA] Sunair RT-9000B/9500/9310 power setting issue

>From some suggestion on the sunair list and some insight from KA3EKH below, a few interesting things and some comments. First remember that the RT works 100% correctly when used with the LPA. The RT cycles between 125W and 500W and never attempts to put the LPA into 1KW mode. This tells me that communication between the amp and RT is working correctly and my problem is between the RCU and the RT.

Based on suggestions from Ray and N8DNX  to look at the firmware produced some interesting results.  I have two RCU units. They both behave exactly the same, which is to say, they attempt to put the RT into a 1KW mode when by itself (without RCU) it will never try to go into a 1KW mode).  Here are the firmware versions:

RT-9000B s/n 2192   REV: CPU - N1B   IO - N1D (different)
RCU-9310B s/n 1082  REV: CPU - N1B   IO - N1B
RCU-9310B s/n 904   REV: CPU - N1B   IO - N1B

While they all seem to have a CPU version of N1B, you will notice that for the IO firmware, the RT is N1D (as in delta) but the RCUs are N1B (bravo).  And considering both RCUs have the same IO revision and both exhibit this problem, I wonder if this could be the cause? Maybe both RCU's are not 100% compatible with the RT?

Now the $64,000 question. What is the likelihood that the communications modules in the RT are the same ones used in the RCU? It is conceivably possible. They made one communications module and reused it.  If this is true, then I wonder if I could simply swap io modules (or maybe just the firmware eprom) from one of the RCUs to the RT. In which case at least I would have the same revision on both the RT and the RCU.

I have NO IDEA if that could work or not and I am hesitant to try it until I've done a lot more research on the subject. Anyone have any thoughts/opinions?

73 Eugene W2HX

-----Original Message-----
From: Ray Fantini [mailto:RAFANTINI at salisbury.edu]
Sent: Saturday, April 14, 2018 5:52 PM
To: W2HX; Peter Gottlieb
Cc: mrca at mailman.qth.net
Subject: Re: [MRCA] Sunair RT-9000B/9500/9310 power setting issue

Quick look but somehow don't think that radio is that smart. 1A2AB is the communications card located on the back of the CPU card. that weird little daughter board. that's got a couple serial ports and its own CPU and ROM that determines things like how to deal with the remote. but don't think it talks to the amplifier. The radio provides information on dedicated lines to tell what band its on for the antenna tuner or the amplifier so it has an idea where its at prior to transmitting and the amplifier somehow sends signals back to the CPU on J1 19, 28 and 54 but without looking they may just be analog and that's maybe where they determine what power level its set to? there are also lines for tune and ready that come back to the CPU card but better check because they may loop thru the opto card first.
There is something funny about this family of radios that i cant put my finger on, somehow it just don't appear to me to be as solid as the old eight hundred series it replaced but perhaps i have more experience with the earlier set and i am predigest?
will say that it has better filter assemblies and they appear to be trouble free unlike the Harris RF-350 family.
Maybe this is all there is going to be now that they are pushing all this joint service SDR junk and don't see that ever becoming surplus?

Ray F/KA3EKH

________________________________________
From: W2HX <w2hx at w2hx.com>
Sent: Saturday, April 14, 2018 3:54 PM
To: Peter Gottlieb; Ray Fantini
Cc: mrca at mailman.qth.net
Subject: RE: [MRCA] Sunair RT-9000B/9500/9310 power setting issue

I put some docs up:

http://w2hx.com/x/Sunair/9000/

thanks everyone for your ideas. I'll have to dig in a bit w/r/t/ the communications. There is a massive cable between the RT and the LPA so I am guessing it may be parallel communication. But between the RT and the RCU is def. serial. Either RS232 or RS422. Mine is wired up for 422.

Eugene

-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Gottlieb [mailto:kb2vtl at gmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, April 14, 2018 3:18 PM
To: Ray Fantini
Cc: W2HX; mrca at mailman.qth.net
Subject: Re: [MRCA] Sunair RT-9000B/9500/9310 power setting issue

Are there ID lines between anything or is communication serial?  There must be some method of option identification whether it is by switch setting or sensing or communicating.

Peter

> On Apr 14, 2018, at 2:44 PM, Ray Fantini <RAFANTINI at salisbury.edu> wrote:
>
> On the 1A2A1 control card you may want to look at U13 and 14 being they are the operating system ROM for the radio. U2, the 80C85 CPU reads them first and runs there program. U8 is a EPROM and used for storing things like the memories, presets for AGC and modes and would speculate when using the amplifier that's where the information is stored. But be warned i have never seen one of the amplifiers up close before so i may be wrong.
> Just for fun look at S1 on the CPU card, my 9000B manual only refers to things like the TXCO and pre selector options on that switch with a lot of stuff being undefined, perhaps that's where they place a setup note for the difference of what external amplifier is applied on other versions of the software?
>
> Ray F/KA3EKH
>
> ________________________________________
> From: mrca-bounces at mailman.qth.net <mrca-bounces at mailman.qth.net> on
> behalf of W2HX <w2hx at w2hx.com>
> Sent: Saturday, April 14, 2018 11:39 AM
> To: mrca at mailman.qth.net
> Subject: [MRCA] Sunair RT-9000B/9500/9310 power setting issue
>
> Hello again, friends.
>
> The issue I had before seems to have corrected itself after powering down everything and disconnecting the power for a few hours. I suspect there might be some config that is held up while the AC power is applied even if the power is off. Not sure. Either way that seems to have been resolved. HOWEVER!
>
> I would like to resolve one issue while using the RCU remote unit.  When the RT alone is operating with the LPA, the RT correctly knows that the only power levels available are 125W and 500W. When toggling through the PWR/LVL correctly the amp alternates between Bypass and 500W.
>
> However, when using the RCU it thinks the amp is a 9600 not 9500. And therefore thinks there is a 1KW option as well. So it will rotate between 125W, 500W and then 1KW which of course the amp does not have. The amp gets confused and the RT also gets confused. The video below shows the exact behavior.
>
> https://youtu.be/zJNTSs-cSFU
>
> Apparently the RCU does not learn what power levels are available from the RT when communicating with it, which would seems to be a sensible thing for it to do.  I have looked through the manual for the RCU and I do not see any option to tell the RCU that 1KW is not available.  Does anyone know how to prevent the RCU from cycling through a 1KW option when it isn't available?
>
> Thanks all!
> Eugene W2HX
>
>
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