Albany/Rensselaer county question

[lafd55]

Dave, why don't just wait and listen to when it's in service to figure out what it is.

 

[riveter]

ASTRO is Phase I. I think we really need to hear from someone who is actually building the system. Are you listening, Pittsfield Communications?

Dave.. I know you've been around plenty, but that's a little off the mark.

"ASTRO" is the general Motorola Sales-driven brand for most things involving Project 25 waveforms. As you know well (just setting myself up here), the original Astro series radios (Saber/Spectra) are digital capable in FDMA C4FM only using IMBE. The Astro 25 series radios (XTS/XTL, plus the old Quantar) are capable of the above plus the CQPSK waveform, still using IMBE. The new radios (APX/GTR) are capable of the above plus TDMA DQPSK (P25 Phase II) using the AMBE+2 vocoder.

Despite our departure recently from the technical ASTRO line of products (and the impending doom of the ASTRO 25 equipment in '17), that term has had a way of sticking around in the Motorola vocabulary.

As a result, P25 systems made by Motorola INCLUDING TDMA-enabled systems are still called ASTRO 25 systems because that's the brand name Moto Sales likes. Once a system has a fully IP based backhaul including GTRs at the RF sites to go with the 7.x Zone Core and Site Controller(s), the difference between a FDMA restricted system and a TDMA restricted system is only a difference in programming.

What Thunderknight was mentioning as he was becoming familiar with APX CPS was the section of a Trunking System entry in the subscriber CPS titled "ASTRO 25 Channel ID"... which is merely what sensible people call a bandplan. The CPS section titles sometimes really suck, and it creates this sort of confusion very easily. Sort of like the way RR lists System>RFSS>Zone>Site while Motorola lists System>Zone>Site>Subsite.

The confusion is understandable, but I think that was a bit of a jump to a conclusion.

 

[DaveNF2G]

Sorry about that. I should bear in mind that Motorola has its own English dictionary.

 

[riveter]

Sorry about that. I should bear in mind that Motorola has its own English dictionary.

It really does. Whenever I need some info and go hunting around in LMS my head starts exploding.

 

[crcurtis]

Despite our departure recently from the technical ASTRO line of products (and the impending doom of the ASTRO 25 equipment in '17), that term has had a way of sticking around in the Motorola vocabulary.

At the risk of going further off course, what's going on with ASTRO 25 other than possible discontinuance in favor of Phase 2 equipment?