NAS APX MOBILE P25 PHASE 2

[hudifried335]

I am trying to set up my APX mobile to monitor only to P25 Phase 2 system locally here in my county. I'm on the newer side of this and was hoping someone could help me out.

 

[K2NEC]

XTS-5000 trunking scanner

Hi I’m trying to program my Motorola XTS 5000 to be a trunking scanner when I go into Trunking system in the Astro 25 cps it won’t let me select Astro 25 it only comes up with II ?

forums.radioreference.com

 

[hudifried335]

XTS-5000 trunking scanner

Hi I’m trying to program my Motorola XTS 5000 to be a trunking scanner when I go into Trunking system in the Astro 25 cps it won’t let me select Astro 25 it only comes up with II ?

forums.radioreference.com

Couldnt really fully understand this forum as well as he doesnt actually say how to do it. Just that it can be done.

 

[GTR8000]

Word of advice/caution: The 4A4 system is watched closely, so make sure that if you go down this path of setting up an unauthorized APX to scan the system, you do it right and your radio doesn't attempt to register/affiliate. Otherwise you could end up with an expensive paperweight.

 

[clbsquared]

Couldnt really fully understand this forum as well as he doesnt actually say how to do it. Just that it can be done.

You aren’t going to find many people on this site who are going to help you put an unauthorized radio on a public safety system.
Especially if you are starting from scratch and without any knowledge of programming APX radios.

 

[ElroyJetson]

Take my advice. My advice is to buy a scanner. This is the only GOOD advice.

If you are going to be hard headed and willing to risk possible legal trouble, you'd be better off to switch to a Harris radio, where at least true RX only functionality is formally supported.

To achieve "safe" RX only functionality with a Motorola radio requires intimate knowledge of many specific programming techniques, and they're not all quite the same on a Phase II radio as on legacy systems. And let's be clear about it....to get to that point you WILL be breaking some laws.

 

[IAmSixNine]

To add to what @ElroyJetson said, BK Radios also makes Phase 2 radios with an RX only option in the software. KNG-P800 and KNG2-P800 portables and i dont recall what mobiles will do it. Also there are Unication G4 pagers which are great devices and RX only.

 

[AK4FD]

The issue here is there is no "legitimate" way to NAS any P25 Trunking system, especially a Phase 2 one! What it comes down to is SECURITY and LEGALITY. Even if you knew enough to safely set up each scan list, zone, all your Personalities properly, AND made sure in the Trunking Personality that Transmit Mode is set to TG/AG Disabled, you still need a System Key in order to add TG's and other info. If you need to NAS that means you don't have a legit Sys Key, which makes it illegal no matter how you slice it. And just because you don't see your radio busy flashing red attempting to affiliate, doesn't mean it won't affiliate in the background. Your radio doesn't tell you every time it attempts to speak to the Controller. I am not being the NAS Police here, but I AM a MSI contracted employee and I have seen what happens to people that are caught with rogue radios on a system; depending where you live can either range from confiscating your radio, to a hefty fine, to jail time, or a combination of all 3. Make sure you know what you're doing or just don't do it...

 

[ElroyJetson]

I've reached the point where I will no longer offer any advice to assist anyone in applying the NAS method with any radio. I won't have any part of even any incidental liability or blame. This isn't the 1990s anymore. The stakes (legally) have become much higher.

Buy a scanner. Or at least switch to Harris or BK.

I don't regret the past and the information I've passed on to others, but I'm no longer offering it. I have far too much to protect and far too little to gain (literally nothing) by doing so.

 

[a417]

I've reached the point where I will no longer offer any advice to assist anyone in applying the NAS method with any radio.

"DO NOT ASK ME FOR HELP PROGRAMMING YOUR RADIO FOR NAS, NO."

 

[MTS2000des]

The issue here is there is no "legitimate" way to NAS any P25 Trunking system, especially a Phase 2 one! What it comes down to is SECURITY and LEGALITY. Even if you knew enough to safely set up each scan list, zone, all your Personalities properly, AND made sure in the Trunking Personality that Transmit Mode is set to TG/AG Disabled, you still need a System Key in order to add TG's and other info. If you need to NAS that means you don't have a legit Sys Key, which makes it illegal no matter how you slice it. And just because you don't see your radio busy flashing red attempting to affiliate, doesn't mean it won't affiliate in the background. Your radio doesn't tell you every time it attempts to speak to the Controller. I am not being the NAS Police here, but I AM a MSI contracted employee and I have seen what happens to people that are caught with rogue radios on a system; depending where you live can either range from confiscating your radio, to a hefty fine, to jail time, or a combination of all 3. Make sure you know what you're doing or just don't do it...

All of this is valid for MSI subscribers, but other vendors software has been compromised/modified to not require such keys. Then you have Relm who is the ONLY P25 subscriber vendor who's software, known as Radio Editing Software (RES) can be purchased legally by and end user and allows for a true RECEIVE ONLY P25 trunking system with talk groups and scan lists to be added to the radio, system ID fields become greyed out as does the RID. Radio is a true RX ONLY unit and will in NO WAY emit ANYTHING RF at that point.

Not nit picking, but it is important to note that other vendors' software packages are more "NAS friendly" than MSI. I am in full agreement with you as someone who cares for a large municipal system. If one gets one thing wrong with an MSI subscriber and starts vomiting affiliation requests on my zone controller, they will be in FAFO territory. The FCC is the last thing they'll be dealing with, the first thing would be our DA's office and she has gained national attention for going after people. They are heavy users of our radio system and their lead investigator is no fool and is very aware of the threat of unauthorized subscribers and is chomping at the bit to pop someone and make an example.

The system key creation/possession has always been a very grey area but one that, if circumstances lined up, could also add to one's docket if they were charged. How they get charged? Whacking around with a trunking radio showing up on calls, or poor programming- but all of this could put someone on a savvy investigators' radar.

Let me cue up that worn and overplayed record again: no one ever got charged with programming a scanner. The same cannot be said for unauthorized trunking radios on public safety systems.

 

[AK4FD]

When you get to the point of having to spend $600 or so on a radio to NAS with, might as well just buy a Unication G5. I have several of them and I’ll put any of them up to the same audio quality as a Moto radio. And the G5 is great for handling simulcast distortion. I can hear some systems on my G5 from my house that my SDS200 scanner won’t even pick up. It’s just as good as a radio to NAS with.

 

[GTR8000]

The Unication G series are nice little receivers, however it's a shame that you still cannot do a multi-system scan with them. OTOH I routinely scan 3 systems across 3 bands + a handful of conventional channels across 2 bands with my APX, all stuffed into a single Intelligent Priority scan list. Oh yeah, and it also displays the subscriber aliases from PM as a nice bonus. 😎

So yes, passive scanning with a real subscriber like an APX does have pitfalls and complications and legal gray areas (or black and white according to some), however there are definitely benefits to doing so if done correctly. 🤷‍♂️

Oh and to preempt the "you're scanning too much, won't hear anything!" crowd...yeah, it's for casual listening only, no big deal if I miss anything while the radio is dwelling on a different control channel. 😒

 

[chrismol1]

AND made sure in the Trunking Personality that Transmit Mode is set to TG/AG Disabled

This should be clarified, it does come up of occasionally. some new NAS users will think this is a secret special setting that will prevent transmit disable for that allows being on a trunked talkgroup, it is not. While it will prevent a PTT on a talkgroup as its ability to disable a subscriber to make a voice call on a talkgroup. The feature will still allow a register/affiliate if a trunked talkgroup is selected

 

[a417]

When you get to the point of having to spend $600 or so on a radio to NAS with,

I've never spent over $40 to NAS, yet. (As of right now) I don't need an APX to listen to my local P25, when a clapped out XTL5000 with a W4 works "Just Fine®". Some peoples fascination with drawing attention to what's on their hip or velcro'd to their dash, will never cease to amaze me.

I am sure the pedants will jump in and say "...your ratty ass XTL5K won't do phase 2"...I'm aware, I'm taking some liberties in the conversation to make a point that you don't need to spend tons of money to NAS.

 

[chrismol1]

The barrier to entry is no longer anything more than finding answers. a major reason why this comes up so often nowadays and 'causing concern' to frequent questions is the cheap price of old XTS/XTL radios. No longer is a radio 1000+, 500+. Were only going to see these posts more frequently as time goes on

 

[ElroyJetson]

It's just another generation, nothing really new here. Monitoring trunked systems with radios formerly used by the agencies that used them is as old as trunking, in fact the scanning hobby is as old as radio itself. There was a brief period when trunking was brand new and there were no people using former system radios as scanners, but that ended, in Motorola terms, when MTX and STX radios became available on the used market in the 80s. And it's not impossible that even earlier radios may have found similar usage, though it would have been quite a different matter when the previous trunking radio was the MX-300T, which was R1801 Suitcase programmed if it wasn't factory propgrammed.

My initial scanning adventures on trunked systems began when the STX and GE M-PA were still currently supported radios on their respective manufacturer's systems.

Ever since radios became PC programmable it's just been the same thing, newer generations superseding the previous generations, and if there's been any really significant change it's that there's no longer a robust market for lightly used public safety radios, so their price on the open market has dropped which means more people spend a little money to get them. It used to be that people competed to buy up surplus agency radios in hopes of selling huge lots of radios to other agencies that wanted to expand their radio fleet on a budget, but such deals as that are extremely hard to land these days. Every agency uses government grant money which means only new radios will be bought by them. It's tanked the value of a used radio at surplus auction.

It's also put radios into the hands of people who are much less "radio hobbyists" and more just generally tech curious, which has resulted in a lower average radio educational level of the people acquiring these cheap radios. "I don't know what an antenna is or what it does but I got this surplus Motorola APX6500 CB radio at a flea market and I want to use it as a police scanner!"

I don't think it's a good thing.

 

[Outerdog]

I've reached the point where I will no longer offer any advice to assist anyone in applying the NAS method with any radio. I won't have any part of even any incidental liability or blame.

Pretty odd coming from the guy who regularly claims to have "invented" the NAS method...lol

 

[ElroyJetson]

I may or may not have been the first guy to discover the method but nobody has ever challenged my assertion that I'm the first one who publicized it on this and other forums that were in existence at the time. To the very best of my knowledge I was first to discover and first to publish. Not that it has made me a penny. Not that I ever asked for one. But someone else would have figured it out soon enough, if I had not. Certainly I'm not the only guy with a curious mind and a willingness to try things.

To this day my original instructions as I wrote them are still accessible on the lab of the bats website. I just checked.

 

[chrismol1]

While the older radios were out there back in the day, back then not every county or city was putting up trunking systems. Plenty of places were analog conventional up until 10-20 yrs ago, only the largest of cities/counties/metro areas were put up trunking system. Now they are everywhere, multiple counties, statewide networks, small cities, smaller agencies joining larger networks etc,