PSR500/600 suggestion for improvement

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wa8pyr

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How about the capability to enter up to 50 control channels per Motorola or P25 trunked system, rather than 32? Many wide area ("SmartZone" and "OmniLink") systems have this many control channels per zone, and it is very convenient in combination with the ROAM feature to simply enter all control channels assigned in a Zone to a single TSYS object and be able to roam normally.

Currently I must split the control channels into two separate TSYS objects, with duplicate talkgroup lists. This unnecessarily uses a great deal of extra memory, which problem I believe could be eliminated by allowing more control channels per system. I assume the unused channel spaces, if any, would not take up extra memory...

BTW, I have found the ROAM feature to work quite well and am very pleased with it. I did tweak the settings a bit and have gotten it working very nicely indeed.
 

n4jri

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wa8pyr said:
I assume the unused channel spaces, if any, would not take up extra memory...

Unfortunately, that's the issue. A TSYS object takes up more space than other objects...10 blocks, I think. I don't know why the size can't be flexible, but that's the current state of OOUI.

The good new is that the GRE guys are watching and listening. You never know what the future might hold.

What I generally do with really large systems, is to edit them by region--both in terms of talkgroups and of control channels. This can minimize the pain if I have to enter it twice into a V-scanner. But generally speaking, my V-scanner files don't cover enough geographic are to make this necessary.

73/Allen (N4JRI)
 

Patch42

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wa8pyr said:
How about the capability to enter up to 50 control channels per Motorola or P25 trunked system,
If they made the control channel data a database object like the others then it would both reduce the size of the TSYS object and allow an unlimited number of control channels per system. There might, however, be some issues with the auto-sorting of LTR systems and probably some other things I haven't considered. Still seems there should be a way to use the flexibility of the database to allow more control channels without making every TSYS object bigger.

Personally, I'd like to see the display re-worked. Currently, when a talkgroup is active, the display shows a number of things about which I care not at all. This forces the things I do care about into a rotating display on just one line. For my money, in most situations you could eliminate the top three lines of the display and I'd not miss them. The second and third line should be something you can pull up if you want via softkey, but otherwise the space is used for TSYS and TGRP description data.
 

mikey60

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n4jri said:
Unfortunately, that's the issue. A TSYS object takes up more space than other objects...10 blocks, I think. I don't know why the size can't be flexible, but that's the current state of OOUI.

The size of the TSYS object varies from 4 blocks to 10 blocks depending on the type of system being defined.

The issue with changing these now would be the compatibility of the current data to a changed format. Not to mention the three software packages that are out there now for programming these radios would all have to be adjusted to handle the new format.

Can it be done? Probably... Will it change? You never know..

Mike
 

Patch42

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Another missing feature occurred to me on the way to work. Unless I'm missing something, the PSR-500 really needs an auto-store function for search and sweeper objects. It would be useful with the Analyze function for trunking systems as well. It should record in some way any new talk groups or frequencies that become active during the search or analyze.

If I've overlooked some way to do this someone please correct me.
 

EricCottrell

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Hello,

Since I travel and "Dx" trunked radio systems I like the PSR-600 feature of decoding the system ID and subaudible data from trunked systems when in Tune mode. Tune in a Motorola Voice Channel in Tune Mode and it displays the VC and Talkgroup from the Subaudible data.

However I was disappointed that it only decodes PL, DCS, and NAC when doing limit and service searches. So another improvement is to also decode trunked system data during limit searches. Then I can tell if a frequency is either part of a trunked system or carrier squelch when a tone does not display. I could also do searches for control channels.

73 Eric
 

Curfew

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A new option to limit search talkgroups, for example 0-2000, 50000- 52000, 16300- 17500 etc. Basically narrowing down searches to talkgroups in use in certain talkgroup ranges.
 
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rdale

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Just curious - why? Why not lock out the talkgroups you don't want to hear, then open up?
 

Deeke

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EricCottrell said:
Hello,

Since I travel and "Dx" trunked radio systems I like the PSR-600 feature of decoding the system ID and subaudible data from trunked systems when in Tune mode. Tune in a Motorola Voice Channel in Tune Mode and it displays the VC and Talkgroup from the Subaudible data.

However I was disappointed that it only decodes PL, DCS, and NAC when doing limit and service searches. So another improvement is to also decode trunked system data during limit searches. Then I can tell if a frequency is either part of a trunked system or carrier squelch when a tone does not display. I could also do searches for control channels.

73 Eric

Same here. Also i'd also like the ability to manually enter a talk group to be able to listen to without having to find and unlock it. I scan several different systems and types of systems. Running unitrunker, sometimes if i'm locked onto a particular talk group and i see activity on another talk group that i want to listen to, i could manually enter it quicker. I know i can use Unitrunker to control it but, these are two features that i use more on the 996 than i actually realized until i got the 600.
 

wa8pyr

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n4jri said:
What I generally do with really large systems, is to edit them by region--both in terms of talkgroups and of control channels. This can minimize the pain if I have to enter it twice into a V-scanner. But generally speaking, my V-scanner files don't cover enough geographic are to make this necessary.

Already did that. Unfortunately, 3 of the 4 Ohio MARCS zones have enough primary control channels after editing out duplicates that the list gets quite truncated, so I have to split it up into two separate TSYS objects.

Bummer....
 

tglendye

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rdale said:
Just curious - why? Why not lock out the talkgroups you don't want to hear, then open up?

That method works the best for me.
 
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