Bug

I encountered a bug with the ATU in the X6100 running R1CBU firmware version 0.29.2.

The ATU networking information is stored in both a cache and the params.db file. When setting multiple tunings close to each other (e.g., 7073, 7074, 7075 kHz), the radio would rapidly cycle through them as the VFO was spun. This behavior cluttered the configurations and made it difficult for the ATU network to hold a stable tune near a signal.

Upon investigation, I discovered that while the cache retained all these closely spaced tunings, the params.db only saved one of them. The intention behind the new feature in R1CBU was to remove the hard boundaries between ATU configurations (which were previously every 25 or 50 kHz), allowing a single tuning network to be effective within approximately 25 kHz in either direction. The database would correctly update a nearby frequency to the middle, but the cache’s retention of every tuning caused the “thrashing” effect. Switching antennas or cycling power would reload the sparser collection of networks from the database, temporarily resolving the issue.

I filed a bug report, and submitted a pull request to fix it.

I patched the ATU code to reload the cache from the database immediately, effectively discarding the extraneous nearby networks.

I have my UV-K5 and UV-K6 running aubs 00.07 firmware. I added a simplex frequency (446.100MHz) to use as with my local cross-band repeater in position 110. I added the new channel to scan list 1.

Upon powering on the radio, I could scan lists 1 (local repeaters) and 4 (satellites) together. When I press the up arrow to advance off an active channel, the scan would now skip list 1, and go right to 4, and continue to skip list 1. Before I realized it was happening, I thought the day was super quiet.

I dropping the repeater frequency from scan list 1, and the scanning behaved correctly. I tried removing another channel from scan list 1, and reintroducing channel 110 to the list, but that didn’t fix it, so it’s not an issue with the count.

Much of scan list 1 is lower in the channels, so I moved my new repeater frequency from channel 110 to position 30, right after all my other simplex channels. That seems to work fine, so that’s how I’m leaving it.

I may need to try some more things and figure out a reproduction to file a bug on the project:

• Is it something about the frequency of 460.100?
• Or is channel 110 the problem?
• Would another frequency in that spot be a problem?
• Are there other channels that would trigger the issue?