Monthly Archives: June 2012

June 12, 2012 · 4:38 am

ADL Vantage Pro – Powered Cooling

The Pacific Crest Vantage Pro 35 watt radios (Part Number 75450-43 ADL Vantage Pro) get hot. Really hot.

Luckily, they include a software feature that reduces the output power. This keeps them from melting. As it gets hot this summer, I expect to get a lot of calls from customers with range that reduces as the days heat up.

Last Friday, I received the first cooling fans for the ADL VP radio. They bolt on to the back, include a hook to hang on a tripod and a nifty ‘Y’ cable for powering from the same lead as the radio.

The ADL Cooler's Fans

The Pacific Crest part number is “82218-16 ADLVP Fan Mount with Wall Bracket”, the price is reasonable and should keep the radio running at full power.

 

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June 12, 2012 · 4:20 am

Narrowbanding your GPS Radios

I received some great documents on narrow banding RTK radios from Pacific Crest a while ago:

Pacific Crest Product Bulletin – Narrowbanding Update

FCC Narrowband FAQs

Configuring radios for narrowbanding

Applying for a 25 kHz FCC license

Coupled with my previous comments: [ Narrow Banding RTK Radios ] and the update [ Chapter 2 ] there is a pretty good knowledge base.

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June 12, 2012 · 4:05 am

MobileMapper 10 microSD Cards

The ‘User’s Manual’ for the MobileMapper 10 recomends that you use SANDISK Micro SD cards.
After some user complaints, last week I purchased a few (nearly 75) cards:
and it is my personal opinion that the ‘Transcend’ brand is a MUCH BETTER CHOICE. Here are the SD Card Facts as I know them:
  Most 2-GB SanDisk cards work
  Some 4-GB SanDisk  cards work, some don’t. I can’t visually tell the differnce.
  No (none) 8-GB SanDisk cards work
  EVERY SINGLE Transcend 4 GB and 8 GB card that I tested worked with no issues
For background, there is a little ‘C’ on the cards:
Inside the ‘C’ is a number: 2, 4, 6 or 10. (In the image above, there is a 6). The number is the ‘Class’ and higher is faster. ‘6’ indicates that the card will write 6 million bytes per second to a card in a fragmented state.
The HC stands for ‘High Capacity’. The original cards were ‘Standard Capacity’ (SC). There are also SDXC (eXtended Capacity).
There are reportedly over 400 brands of SD Cards and over 8,000 card models. I only tested SanDisk and Transcend. Unless  you are able to try out SanDisk cards at the point of purchase, it may be best to stick with other brands.

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