XPR 6350 Question

[Volfirefighter]

Let me start off by stating that I do not wish to be "flamed" for asking this question. I am not a noob and have experience programming both radios and scanners. I do not wish to transmit at all as an unauthorized user. I do not wish to cause any harmful interference with the radio system. I only wish to monitor a single talkgroup on the system. That being said:

Can a Motorola XPR 6350 be programmed to receive only on a DMR Motorola Capacity Plus (TRBO) system. The system uses no encryption as I can scan it just fine on a Uniden SDS200. I wish to repurpose the SDS200 for a P25 system and the XPR can be had for less than $100. If the XPR will "affiliate" at all with the system, then I do not wish to proceed. I do not want it to appear as a cloned radio and do not want to cause any interference. Thanks in advance.

 

[16b]

Yes, you can passively monitor a Cap+ system with a Motorola radio as long as the system does not use RAS. I don’t know if your scanner has the ability to tell you if RAS is in use or not.

Cap+ does not have “affiliation” the way other systems do. I believe you can even enable RX only (or at the very least set the transmit frequency to something bogus) if you want to ensure you will not interfere. I have a few radios set up to monitor local Cap+ systems and they work great with no special tricks or hacks needed.

Of course you will need to know all of the system details since there is no search function, but I’m assuming you have all of that since you’ve been monitoring with a scanner.

 

[Forts]

Yes it will work just fine for that, assuming RAS isn’t being utilized on the system. That will stop commercial radios such as yours, but not a scanner.

 

[natedawg1604]

Yes it certainly can. MotoTrbo stuff does not "affiliate", you just need the version 1 MotoTrbo CPS and all the info to program a codeplug for the capacity plus system (i.e. frequencies, color codes, TG's etc).

 

[Volfirefighter]

Thanks for the replies. Will any of the commonly used control channel decoding softwares out there be able to tell me if the system is using RAS?

 

[natedawg1604]

Thanks for the replies. Will any of the commonly used control channel decoding softwares out there be able to tell me if the system is using RAS?

You need to get DSD+ Fastlane (like $20) and a RTL SDR dongle, that will tell you right away.

 

[Forts]

DSD+ does.

 

[16b]

Dsdplus will indeed tell you if RAS is in use, however I have seen several instances of false decodes indicating RAS when it was not in use (confirmed by monitoring with a MotoTRBO radio). Normally this happens when the signal is weak, but I have seen false decodes on strong signals, too. Make sure you have a good signal, and even then try it a few times if you see it telling you RAS is in use.

Around here (Columbus) there are a ton of Cap+ systems but very few using RAS.

 

[EWC_BDN]

A potential issue is that older FM of XPR6350 don't have Capacity Plus as a free option, but the latest firmware it's free. Just if you run into a very old FM radio it will need to be updated. I think to monitor properly you will need to know the order of the repeaters too. I'm not sure if that data is able to be learnt over scanning the data or not. CC and Call ID can be for sure though. If it's a small number of repeaters you would be able to guess and check the order. especially if you have a scanner confirm a TG is active. The radio would receive.

Unlike a scanner the radio is going to very picky when it wants to receive IIRC.