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Astro Spectra on Harris P25 system

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yhssenior05

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Hmmmm this is all good info... I'm a little sad I was super pumped about buying that m7200 in New York off ebay. Mainly because of the price. We use m7300's in our command post. Were on a 800mhz Harris p25 system. I think it's a 9600 baud control channel. Are there any radios that you all could recommend for me that are somewhat affordable? I was looking at the astro spectral but they are still like $450 at that price I'd rather spend an extra $100-200 and get a nicer newer more up to date radio. But perhaps there are some options out there like icom, vertex, or kenwood that I haven't found that will work. Feel free to educate me.
 

yhssenior05

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I volunteer with a local emergency management department and they just went to this system and are phasing out VHF as of right now we have both as options but that will be changing soon. Eventually they will drop the VHF side altogether and be strictly operating on the Harris digital P25 trucked 800 system.. So far what I've gathered is the Motorola astro spectra will be my cheapest option. I'm not necessarily against that radio I'm just wondering if there are other option in the same price range or cheaper. Those astro's run about $450. Our command post and county trucks all have Harris m7300's in them that's why I was leaning towards a Harris mobile.
 

yhssenior05

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Another main concern of mine is I do not want to have to buy a new radio when phase II P25 rolls out and with the astro spectra I think I would have to. Forgive me as I don't have a ton of knowledge with trucked systems and more so P25 digital and their inter workings. It's all new to me and I'm learning as I go. I bought an 800mhz MCS2000 not long ago but it doesn't do digital or p25 so now it's a paper weight.
 

snoopyII

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I wont get into any legalities, system admins, programming, what you should do or not do etc. on this forum, this is solely to answer your request for a compatible radio. Just a FYI, a 800 P25T phase II capable radio is not going to be cheap.

M A com Harris Opensky M7300 7 800 MHz P25 Trunking Radio w Provoice Aegis | eBay

I will say, I have bought three of these from this seller, and they are exactly as advertised, and the free shipping is a bonus. They are phase II upgradeable.
 

yhssenior05

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Well I'm glad To hear all the input. I was about to drop the hammer and buy one of them and if I had done that it would of been totally useless to me. I guess I will continue my search. I've found several astro spectral for around $450 I could pick one of those up but I might hold out and save a little more money and purchase one from the seller that snoopyII mentioned in his link.
 

Radioman96p71

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Be advised you will not be able to program up a Motorola radio on a P25 trunked system without the advanced system keys. You can't "generate" these like you could the old TypeII ones.
 

mikewazowski

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M7200 questions

Be advised you will not be able to program up a Motorola radio on a P25 trunked system without the advanced system keys. You can't "generate" these like you could the old TypeII ones.


Advanced system keys are not needed. You can use a regular system key to load a P25 system.
 

Radioman96p71

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Hmm this isn't the right thread for this but I was told by several different Motorola people that they went to ASK with the newer radios making it much harder to program for P25-T. I'll go back to my Harris stuff then!
 

mikewazowski

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Nobody has said that.

It's not impossible but it would be hard to do.

You'll need a special version of firmware to do 9k6 and somebody to put it into the radio for you.

Then you have to make sure the Harris system doesn't use an odd bandplan as I don't think the bandplan on an 800MHz Astro Spectra is adjustable.

Bottom line, you'd be better off getting some sort of XTL.
 

gesucks

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Not only that, but there have been a ton of things in firmware updates to allow Motorola radio to work better on Harris systems. Pretty much none of those updates were applied to the ASTRO (XTS3000, ASTRO Saber and ASTRO Spectra) radio. Most have been applied to the ASTRO25 line and all applied to the APX line. Not only that but you will have to have approval from the System Admin and an ID issued and a template approved to have it put on the System. Most System Admin's do not let private owned (not agency) radios on the system and may not let a radio that old on either unless you can show that it has all the needed firmware fixes
 
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