APX Monitoring Harris Trunked System with Motorola APX8000HXE

[KD2UVY]

Good afternoon all.

I have an APX8000HXE I use for personal use - Primarily Ham & work (simplex, in-building comms). I'm fairly familiar with Non-Affiliate Scanning and have done it multiple times successfully on Motorola manufactured trunked systems (phase I & II). I'm trying to program the radio to NAS a Harris phase II system and cannot for the life of me get it to work. I've scanned and skimmed every forum thread I can find on almost every forum site I can find and have tried every recommended fix, checkbox, adjustment, etc - to no avail. I've quadruple checked the system information across RR & confirmed via SDR the frequencies, WACN, Site ID, bandplan and all other (I believe to be) important information and the radio just sits there laughing at me with each new attempt. I have Moto Proprietary, WUID Validity and NAC Validation all disabled.

Do note: I have yet to setup NAS on a multi-site (cell) system like this. All other systems I have setup already were single site (cell) simulcast, single county systems (Cattaraugus & Chautauqua counties) so the issue might just be something I haven't really had to think about before with those systems compared to this one.

I am attempting to NAS monitor the Genesee/Orleans County Public Safety System - primarily Genesee County.

Am I just a raging idiot and missing a simple step or is there some other complicated issue that I haven't thought of yet?

-Thanks in advance

 

[KevinC]

Are you sure you entered hex vs decimal in the appropriate fields? Common mistake is to enter site and RFSS as 10 hex.

 

[KD2UVY]

Are you sure you entered hex vs decimal in the appropriate fields? Common mistake is to enter site and RFSS as 10 hex.

HEX is entered as A for both Site and RFSS

 

[KevinC]

HEX is entered as A for both Site and RFSS

Which site are you trying to monitor? I'm a million miles away, but I'm a little suspicious of the Genesee County site NAC of 469.

 

[KD2UVY]

Which site are you trying to monitor? I'm a million miles away, but I'm a little suspicious of the Genesee County site NAC of 469.

The Genesee County site. I'm usually too far away to hear the Orleans County site. As for the NAC, thats what was spat out and picked up by my SDR

 

[GTR8000]

Make sure your ASTRO 25 Channel ID table has elements 0 and 1 (FDMA) and 8 and 9 (TDMA) populated with the correct entries.

The NAC for each site was verified ages ago, and tbh doesn't really matter as the APX isn't doing any NAC validation for a Harris site.

 

[KD2UVY]

Make sure your ASTRO 25 Channel ID table has elements 0 and 1 (FDMA) and 8 and 9 (TDMA) populated with the correct entries.

The NAC for each site was verified ages ago, and tbh doesn't really matter as the APX isn't doing any NAC validation for a Harris site.

In APX CPS, there is no "0". Only 1-16 so I assumed everything was 1/2 and 9/10 rather than 0/1 and 8/9. Was that an incorrect assumption?

 

[KD2UVY]

This is what the SDR picked up and this is the channel ID table and control channels I put in

 

[Outerdog]

In APX CPS, there is no "0". Only 1-16 so I assumed everything was 1/2 and 9/10 rather than 0/1 and 8/9. Was that an incorrect assumption?

That's correct.

 

[GTR8000]

In APX CPS, there is no "0". Only 1-16 so I assumed everything was 1/2 and 9/10 rather than 0/1 and 8/9. Was that an incorrect assumption?

Ah yeah sorry, had a brain fart there. 1/2 and 9/10 are correct for APX CPS.

 

[nikronzo]

WUID validity should be checked off and make sure your roaming is set to Smartzone Omnilink. Is the behavior simply no audio but the TGs are still showing up or is literally just stuck on the conv channel and not scanning at all.
Also 8000HXE, how luxurious!!

 

[Outerdog]

Also 8000HXE, how luxurious!!

I see what you did there.

 

[SCFDCOMM]

HEX is entered as A for both Site and RFSS

What coverage option do you have selected for the system for both site and rfss to be editable? Disabled and both are editable or SZ Omni and site is editable?

 

[KD2UVY]

WUID validity should be checked off and make sure your roaming is set to Smartzone Omnilink. Is the behavior simply no audio but the TGs are still showing up or is literally just stuck on the conv channel and not scanning at all.
Also 8000HXE, how luxurious!!

There was no activity whatsoever. No talkgroups showing up, nothing.

The issue was resolved as of last night. It was actually a physical issue with my antenna. In the process of programming, when I upload the codeplug when programming a new NAS system, I take the antenna off in the event I mess up and it attempts affiliation. In doing that, I must've bent or twisted it beyond its limits and damaged it. As soon as I tried a new antenna, worked beautifully.

It's always the simple things that complicate the complicated things

 

[chrismol1]

What coverage option do you have selected for the system for both site and rfss to be editable? Disabled and both are editable or SZ Omni and site is editable?

Disabled allows manual entry. smartzone & omni won't allow to be editable. no changing of talkgroup but everything else was correct. It was starting to sound like a signal issue. I'm glad OP figured it out. Sometimes these stupid things happen that makes you go doh what the hell