XTS 5000 and Astro P25 Trunking - I have some questions...

[mainegrw]

Hello all,
I've been in and out of the radio hobby for many years, having dabbled in both amateur and commercial radio, both conventional and trunked systems. Recently, I was afforded an opportunity to explore the world of P25 digital trunking, something that's been on the list for a while, however the cost of equipment has been a barrier to entry. This changed just in last couple weeks with the acquisition of a good condition 700/800mhz XTS 5000 along with its requisite Astro 25 CPS for the low, low price of $80. After sourcing a new battery (aside: Anyone else have a supposed OEM NiMH XTS battery that won't charge on an Impres charger with the radio attached, but will on its own?) and a program cable, I've begun to delve into programming the radio to run a non-affiliated scan on a local P25 Phase I system.

I have read all of the information I can find here and elsewhere about non-affiliated scan, and I think I'm doing everything right on that end, including the syskey stuff, though I don't hear anything at all. It's also worth mentioning, that I have all the flashcode options I should need for P25 digital trunking along with conventional mode for setting up the non-affiliated scan setup. What I'm not too sure about is whether I'm programming the data trunking right. I'm pulling my data right here from the database, which is where I run into my first couple questions: With regards to the system frequencies, the system I am trying to monitor has two sites, and for the closest site to me, only control frequencies are listed. Would I be correct in my assumption that I can get away with just entering the control frequencies for the closest site and omit the frequencies listed for the other site? Next, when programming talkgroups, the database lists talk group numbers in dec and hex values. Which value should I be using in CPS? I seem to be able to enter either value in the field, however I'm wondering if CPS requires one value over the other?

Beyond that, my concern is that I may not have all of the settings set right. The radio came to me used with some basic programming in it, so I'm not sure what in the trunking configurations may have been messed with by a previous owner. What settings might I need to investigate if I'm not receiving anything from the system?

Please forgive me if these questions are rather simple to solve, my experience with programming trunking radios has been mostly LTR and DMR radios, P25 is totally new to me, and it's exciting.

 

[Outerdog]

You can omit the site you don't want, that's fine.

Hex.

Where did you get the Astro 25 Channel ID information from? If that's not accurate, you risk affiliating with the system.

 

[mainegrw]

You can omit the site you don't want, that's fine.

Hex.

Where did you get the Astro 25 Channel ID information from? If that's not accurate, you risk affiliating with the system.

All system info was pulled from the Radio Reference Database. Could you elaborate on how getting the Astro 25 Channel ID wrong might cause affiliation? I was under the impression that as long as I had the talkgroups programmed at channel 17 or above on the radio and no way way to access them directly, the radio should never try to affiliate.

 

[code3kid]

Message me if you want help. I wouldn’t play around with it if you’re not familiar with non-aff.

 

[mainegrw]

Message me if you want help. I wouldn’t play around with it if you’re not familiar with non-aff.

Thank you, I would love some help, however I cannot message you directly apparently at this time... It seems that despite having joined the forums 8.5 years ago, I haven't posted enough content to earn the right to message another member directly. Any way the forum admins could fix this sooner rather than later?

 

[code3kid]

Text me at (509) 885-5394

 

[wardaddy]

Do you have the site id set correctly?

 

[code3kid]

Do you have the site id set correctly?

You mean system ID?

 

[Outerdog]

I'm not normally a "buy a scanner" guy, but OP, you have no idea what you're doing. You seriously risk causing your radio to transmit and attempt to affiliate with the system if you continue.

 

[mainegrw]

Update: I spent the last month and change reading up on non-affiliated scan, which honestly was a bit disappointing seeing as most of the how-to info has been removed or hidden away with most of the remaining info being warnings to not try it. I gave up on that method, and I will mention that I did take steps to prevent accidental affiliation from the beginning by setting incorrect repeater offsets and dialing the radio's TX power down to its minimum, still not ideal l, but less risk than the potential of causing serious harmful interference to the system.

Instead, I found a new monitoring technique that seems to work well without any risk of affiliation. Instead of programming a trunk system, I instead have inputted the listed system voice frequencies as RX only conventional channels. For each voice channel, I set the NAC to F7E to admit all traffic. Next, the conventional profile I set up is configured for Astro mode only, and I strapped the profile with a single Astro talk group, set at 65535 (unmute for all talkgroups). I then set all the voice channels, 8 or so, on a scan list. Essentially, I have each channel configured as a P25 conventional channel, and low and behold, it actually works pretty well. The trade-off is I dint necessarily hear everything I want to, or hear traffic I dont necessarily want to listen to, but its not too busy of a system, so it's been pretty good so far.

Has anyone tried this? I'm curious if I were to program the astro talkgroup list with the talkgroups I'm only interested in, will it filter out the rest properly?

 

[hitechRadio]

Has anyone tried this? I'm curious if I were to program the astro talkgroup list with the talkgroups I'm only interested in, will it filter out the rest properly?

Yes, I scan this way. I prefer this way, because I hear everything. And absoultley NO chance of affiliation, NO messing with unmentionable software/s.
No, you cannot filter out specifc talkgroups as far as I know. But I am very satisfied with it.

I have caught some great conversations,,,etc.. the cool stuff I have found, is usually not going on the primary TG's. And I scan several sites in my coverage area. works great. I prefer this way over NATS.

 

[wardaddy]

You mean system ID?

No, I meant Site ID. He mentioned it was a two site system and having the wrong site ID will cause problems.

 

[code3kid]

I've done a lot of non-aff trunking on Phase I, II, and type II systems. And I've never seen a field called "site ID" you just gotta have the correct control channels for each site. And if you have SmartZone coverage off on a multizone system, make sure the RFSS number is correct for the zone (sub system) you want to listen to.

If you're talking about preferred sites, that's the only field where specific site ID's come into play along with site aliasing (affiliated programming feature only)

 

[mikewazowski]

And I've never seen a field called "site ID" you just gotta have the correct control channels for each site.

Trunking System/General/Coverage Type/Site ID or

Trunking Personality/Preferred Sites (Type II only which doesn't apply here).

For P25 trunking systems:

Selects the 2-digit hexadecimal number which identifies the Site ID of the site having preferred status. This number must match the Site ID assigned to a valid site. This selection applies while operating on the current Trunking System.

Requires a few conditions to be satisfied before the field becomes editable. There's a very, very, very slim chance that this field is even accessible to him or anyone else.

 

[snoopyII]

@code3kid - I know in this context he's talking Astro25 gear, but Site ID (and Site NAC, FWIW) comes into play in certain scenarios if you're using Harris gear in either a NAS or subscriber scheme.

 

[code3kid]

Interesting. Thanks for the info. @snoopyII @mikewazowski

 

[code3kid]

While we’re on the topic of site preferences. I’ve heard several people say that site preferences do not work in NAS. I’ve found the opposite to be true when the preferred status for a site is “always”

 

[wardaddy]

The Site ID is under (when coverage type is set to disabled) is under Trunking Systems > Astro 25 tab. It will default to 01, which will generally work in a single site system, because they mostly use 01 by default. In a multi-site system, if you program control channels from say site 03 and leave the default Site ID to 01, the radio will (in a lot of instances) start sending logoff packets to the controller.