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Is your DSC really working ...w/an ICOM504>>.MAYBE NOT!!
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Is your DSC really working ...w/an ICOM504>>.MAYBE NOT!!
There is another thread on this site about ICOM 504,DSC and Garmin that I started...
Captain Tom and others have been helping me...there is more info there.
I have an ICOM504 hooked to a Garmin 540...and have been having trouble for almost a year sending "position reports" .... ICOM tech support insisted it was a GARMIN NMEA problem..."garbled sentences". Garmin replaced the 540. I hooked it up a month ago...
and have been trying since to make it send position reports...with no luck.
same answer from the ICOM tech support.
I am 800 miles south of the border in Mexico several of us depend upon the DSC function so that we can help each other....ain't no Coast Guard or tow service anywhere around...
we have all carefully entered MMSI numbers in our directories.....I have been assured by ICOM tech support that no matter what problems I was having with the "position report" on the 504...the DSC function was seperate and WOULD WORK.....well today we tested it with another boat....I can receive his emergency report....he receives nothing from me..
So if you try to send a position report on your ICOM 504 and it requires you to verify EVERY DIGIT of your lat and long and the UTC time...that means you may be pushing the enter button about 22 times before you can actually send a position report...
your DSC emergency call may not be working either...mine certainly is not.
good luck to all
Yes it is ..... I did some more testing tis afternoon. Here is the video. I have exchanged DSC postion requests with others over the last three years ... absolutely no issues. Iunderstand where your coming from but there is conclusive evidence thta all is working as advertised. The issue is just with that one function.
The video actually shows the positional info being auto updated in the ICOM 504 and then being Ack'd both manually and automatically. My test radio on my bench received my lat/long from both my SH and ICOM 504 without issue.
Tom, thank you for all your help and your efforts here...you skills are impressive. And as you said in your video, "you do not understand why we are having to manually affirm the data" sent out in a position report...my radio works just as your 504 does...
this morning 800 miles south of the border my fishing buddy pulled his boat out and turned everything on, I did the same. He then sent a DSC emergency report...he pushed the red button...I am certainly not reccomending that anybody 500 miles closer to the US border do that...as a matter of fact he pushed the red button 3 times...each time my Garmin Lights up with a DSC Emergency message from him and my radio alarm goes off and the radio automatically switches to Channel 16....however when I push the red button for an emergency message....he receives nothing.
I will be here for only 6 more days...then I am headed back to the US. Can I call you from here
thanks
mtidaho
I'm sure you realise that you must press and hold the red button for 5 seconds until you hear 5 short beeps change to 1 long beep. If this is the case, does the radio actually go into transmit? If so, then perhaps there is a problem with your friends radio? More thorough testing needs to be done before warning all owners of the 504 that their radio's DSC function may not be working. As far as having to confirm each entry of information when sending a position report manually, that is normal operation for certain versions of this radio as clearly stated in one of the operators manuals. I have access to multiple 504's that I will be testing tomorrow.
would not sell a DSC radio that hasn't been thorougly tested. I know for a fact of one instance off the NC Coast where an ICOM 504 worked flawlessly in an emergency alerting Coast Guard Hampton Roads of his emergency. Her used the DSC Emergency features of the radio.
The question asked by FB's was a good one ... did you hold the Emergency Button down for 5 seconds and hear the audiable tones as specified in your owners manual? In my videos you see the postional data is being received by ICOM from my Garmin via NMEA as advertized.
Yes, I did hold down the button for the 5 seconds..the radio actually beeps the second out for you......it appeared to have worked. But the other boat was unable to receive any report. We tried this 3 times. His ICOM 422 hooked to a Garmin 182 worked perfectly. My concern is that if the ICOM could not send the data in a "position report" it might not be able to read it for an emergency DSC report. This is the 6th ICOM I have bought or installed and the first one that has had this problem. Tom, Thank you for your videos, I have no problem responding to a position request. It can be done with the Auto Acknowledge or by simply pushing the enter button once, just as your videos show. My manual and the ICOM Tech folks have told me that is how the Position report should work in the same manner with my radio as well....unless the NMEA data from the Garmin is corrupted. I do not think that the data is corrupted or it would not be displayed correctly on the ICOM screen. Eric, you and Tom both seem quite knowledgeable and Tom you are going above and beyond to try to help. Thank you. I have been involved in the search in 4 may days...one of those ended in 2 deaths....in all those cases we did not know the position of the ones in need. THanks for your efforts
mtidaho
Was his Icom 422 on channel 70 during the test? That radio is not a class D radio and therefore only has a DSC watch function vice a separate channel 70 receiver like the 504. With just a watch function, it can easily miss the first part of the emergency transmission and not respond.
Good Question, Eric, I will check on that..but..I do not think he had it on Channel 70. Thank you for pointing that out....it is good to know so many are working correctly
Let me know what you find with the other 504s. thanks
My 504 transmitted on it's own when i turned my battery switches on yesterday! the weird thing is that it never did anything to alert me that it was sending. i was only alerted because the Coast Guard called me. In the future I will manually turn the radio off before killing the batteries.
Is the NMEA sentence for position on the Garmin set correctly? If mem serves, you can change or setup how many digits will send/display. I wonder if this is confusing the Icom...?
The testing technique is flawed. You have only two radios, A and B. So far you say:
A sends to B OK
B sends to A and not OK
From this we can tell:
A sends to B OK --> means that A's transmitter and B's receiver are working.
B send to A and not OK --> means the either one of the following is true:
--B's transmitter is not working, or
--A's receiver is not working
You cannot further resolve this unless you introduce a third radio. By using three radios in a systematic process of sending and receiving to each other, you can generally deduce where the problem might be. Of course, this assumes that at least one of the three radios has proper function on both receive and transmit.
Hewesfissher, the Icom tech folks say that the Icom is being confused by the Garmin NMEA sentences.
Icom said, the 504 only needed one sentence to fix the location. I was told by ICOM to turn off all of the NMEA sentences and turn them on...one at a time until I could find the one that the Icom was happy with.
I tried that....that did not work. Garmin provided me with a link that further defined the NMEA sentences and the data in each. That gave me some clue as to which sentence might be used for what purpose...ICOM's own specs calls for RMC, GGA, GNS, GLL, and VTG, in that order if my memory is correct. I spent a week trying various combinations without any luck..
But if someone has the correct sentences to turn on or off......I will be happy to try it..
At the moment on the Garmin all of the Sounder sentences are off. SDDBT-SDDPT-SDMTW-SDVHW are all OFF. On the Garmin all of the route sentences are off. These are: GPAPB-GPRTE-GPBOD-GPBWC-GPWPL-GPVTG-GPXTE---they are all OFF. On the Garmin under System GPRMC-GPGGA-GPGSA-GPGLL are all ON-----GPRMB,GPGSV AND WIMWV are all off, these are also in the System section of the Garmin. These Proprietary Garmin sentences are also ON>>PGRME,PGRMZ and PGRMM are all on.
jhebert, you are right, my science teacher would have flunked that experiment on the spot...I will try and introduce C and D into the equation tomorrow. The frustrating several months I have spent fooling with this issue caused me to take a bad short cut. Thanks
To determine if your getting incorrect NMEA data from the Garmin to the ICOM is to turn the DSC functionality off on the Garmin. Then manually enter your position/time data into the ICOM before transmitting your test DSC emergency. In other words take the Garmin positional/time data totally out of the equation.
I have tested several 504's this morning as well as a couple of 502A's. With all 504's, when transmitting a position report with GPS (Furuno NavNet or Garmin 152) connected, you must confirm each position/time entry. With the 502A, you only need to do this confirmation when you enter your position manually. If your connected to GPS, you do not have to do this. That step is skipped. All radio's transmitted the distress signal with position without position confirmation required when connected to GPS. My conclusion is that Icom screwed up the programming of the 504 and instead of fixing it, they just re-wrote the manual to say "Regardless of a GPS receiver connection, the current position/time information appears in steps 4 and 5. If the information is not necessary to be changed, push [DIAL-ENTER] or [16-9] several times to skip the data input steps." It is ridiculous in my opinion to have to do this. I even tested a brand new 504 serial no 0119966 and the "problem" still exists.
Icom is known for giving bogus information to people who call in with technical problems. Another issue I have with Icom is with their M802 SSB marine radio. They advertise it as having greater "talk power" due to it's DSP speech compression. The fact is that this feature is not even enabled because when it is enabled the radio no longer meets FCC regulations concerning transmitter spurious emissions. It has less "talk power" than their 700 series radio's. There was also a problem with the Automatic Power Control circuitry of the transmitter that took Icom over a year to admit to and come up with a fix.
Well Eric, I don' t know where the hell you and Tom are but if I ever get there the whiskey is on me...and dinner too!!! I have pulled damn every hair out of my head....taken all the connections apart and put them back together again....3 times...NUMEROUS LONG distance international calls....Replaced entirely the Garmin 540, cussing it the entire time because it "was giving corrupted data" to the ICOM.....Call ICOM they tell me over and over and over...those extra steps are NOT needed...it is my problem..
and finally you and Tom Confirm.....that at least I am not alone in this...Thank you both and the others for all the extra effort you have spent on this...and your guidance....on this. If it seemed to you like a jumped the gun...a bit....well if this would have been the first one of these I had ever done....or if I had not spent months in emails and phone calls from 800 miles south of the border trying to solve this...only to hear things like, "No, shouldn't be a problem."
I have an M502A serial # 0115685 sitting here....how do I tell if it is class D radio?
Well let me put it this way....I think this DSC is one of the greatest things happening for anybody on the water...
I just think that something so important should not be so complicated...
Maybe the solution is spelled Standard Horizon...or do you have a better reccomendation?
Again my gratitude and appreciation...for all you guys have done...and hopefully it was a good thing that so many checked their gear to be sure all was working well....
Icom has been really screwing things up lately. Ever since the M502/502A screwup. They used to be top notch hands down. I now have an Icom M504 and a Standard Horizon GX5500s. I reluctantly bought the Standard because the icom didn't fit size wise in my available space on helm, and Jim at BOE assured me they were good radio's. Now almost 2 years later, I now prefer the Standard over the Icom. And their support is unmatched lately, especially on THT.
Is your DSC really working ...w/an ICOM504>>.MAYBE NOT!!
