Well, it's the weekend , the time to feel good and have a little fun!
Here's the great news I had always wanted to deliver! I have
determined the way to get those 150-174Mhz MRK'S on the ham band with
NO HARDWARE CHANGE! That's right, who really wants to take a chance
on screwing up their radio up by attempting the delicate resistor
replacement procedure that a few have done so far to get their MRK
down to the ham band, not me! Well enough rambling and on with the
good news.
As some of you noticed , the MRK tends to shift the ham frequencys
up when you attempt to hex them in. Well , I brain stormed and
worked on it until about three in the moring and finally came up with
the calculations of the shifts. The 150-174 Mhz MRK will shift out
of band transmit frequencys up by 34.685 and out of band receive
frequencys up by 34.515. Here's how I got my radio operating on ham
frequencys and it worked with three MRK's I've done it on so far.
You take your desired receive frerquency and subtract 34.515,
example: 146.640 Mhz would end up being 112.1250 Mhz . You take your
desired transmit frequency and subtract 34.685 from it, example :
146.040 ends up being 111.3550. Now create your self a "Special"
bandsplit codeplug for 110.00 to 115.000 Mhz in the DOS software at
the bottom select 150-174Mhz radio. Now go in and enter your transmit
and receive frequencys using the formula described above and then
save it. Now open your 150-174Mhz codeplug in a good hex editor and
open up the "Special" Codeplug right next to it and now hex in all
the frequency info into your codeplug and save it. Now when you dump
in your codeplug the radio will do the describedshifting on the
transmit and receive frequencys, the 111.125 RX frequency will be
shifted up to 146.640 Mhz. I have donehe hex edit mod with three of
my MRK 1's and they all work fine and are right on frequency, and the
best part is you can still modify the codeplug and add anything you
need above 150Mhz just by opening the hexed codeplug in the DOS
software. Below are some of the frequencys I have in my radio and
their conversion to get you guys started:
146.040 TX ----111.3550
146.640 RX ----112.1250
146.175 TX ----111.4900
146.775 RX ----112.2600
146.280 TX ----111.5950
146.880 RX ----112.3650
147.870 TX ----113.1850
147.270 RX ----112.7550
Just remember to always subtract 34.685 from the transmit frequency
you want and 34.515 from the receive frequency you want and then hex
edit the results in the channel info.
I'm sitting here now tired as crap from staying up until 3AM working
on this but I really wanted to crack this thing for good.
One additional thing I did notice when I programmed the modified
codeplug into the radio is that a message popped up saying "Searching
disc for special radio code" and the on one radio i got a message box
that popped up with that and it was followed by " Preparing to write
special radio code, erasing flash to write special code" and then it
erased the flash count off to 100 and then dumped in the codeplug and
when the radio was finished porogramming I was hearing and talking on
the local ham repeaters here in Raleigh.
Hope this information makes some of you happy !
Regards,
Frank
AD4XE
Here's how to program your MRK 150-174 on Ham Frequencys!!!!
F.Y.I., I think I have Isolated this "Special Code" the program looks for before writing the radio. I am now working to make that special code accessable to the end user without doing the above described hex mode but for right now the above described method is the way to go. As soon as i have cracked the "Special Code" file i'll be sure to pass that a long.
Frank
Frank
Actually, maybe not. I have not tried it on the Orion, I don't have one anymore. I did hear from someone who has tried it on an Orion and it seems the Orion has a different shift process, it's close but it's not exactly the same. Someone with an Orion will have to sit down for an hour or two and just try to figure out th exact shift the Orion puts on out of band frequencies and go from there but we could be very close to cracking it.abbylind wrote:Frank
Seeing you've mastered the OOB for the MRK and the Orion uses the same software. It sounds like your plan would on Orions too!
Fowler
Frank
d119 wrote:Would someone please send Frank a 153-174MHz Orion to play with so he can figure this out?!?!! If I had one, I would!
If someone out there has an Orion and the time they could figure it out in about an hour or so. You'll need the folowing:
Calculator,
DOS based Orion software,
Orion radio -154-174 split,
Service monitor, you could get by with just a frequency counter, the service monitor would be the proper way to go.
Now sit down and program the out of band stuff and caluclate the shift and go from there.
Frank