XTS2500 Astro ID

[KG5HHS]

Hello,
I Work for two different EMS Agencies that both use VHF P25 Conventional systems. I Have an XTS2500 FPP. For one county I need the Individual ID to be "53334" and for the other county I need the Individual ID to be "196869". I have gone into the ASTRO 25 Portable CPS to Conventional>ASTRO Systems>ASTRO System. I have two systems listed, ASTRO System - 1 (ID: 53334) & ASTRO System - 2 (ID: 192869). However, when I go to Conventional Personality>ASTRO>ASTRO System, It will only allow me to select system 1. When I select System "2", it defaults to "1". Are there other things I need to change?

Personalities 17-32 need the "192869" ID are in Zone 2. Personalities 33-48 need the "53334" ID are in Zone 3.

 

[lacoscannerguy]

Just to clarify: all of the personalities are set to ASTRO (not non-Astro)?

 

[mm]

It's been a long time since I worked with a XST2500 or XTS5K but I'd bet that your radio has FPP.

If it does have FPP and you only have 240 FPP personalities then all 240 FPP personalities must use Astro system 1.


If you require a second Astro system, system #2, then you need to add another personality above the last FPP personality 240.

This new personality will be #241 and it is a non FPP personality and it gets assigned to a new non FPP zone which you need to add and this will be zone16.


You will notice that all newly added non FPP personalities above the last FPP personality, #240, will then default to using Astro system #2, you will then be able to change the Astro Sys ID for #2.


To summarize things :
All 240 FPP personalities must use Astro system #1,

All non FPP personalites above personality #240 can then be assigned to use as many new Astro systems, Astr system #2 or gereater, that you want to use but only as many Astro new systems up to the CPS limit for permitted astro systems which I don't recall what this number is.



And of course initially I was reading off of a small micro-miniature dell tablet with a screen that only a ant could read, but now after rereading your description using a full sized Toshiba PC with excellent readability, I now see that are indeed using a radio with FPP and this is your problem.

 

[mikewazowski]

I'll go with mm's answer. FPP severely limits what you can do with the first 240 personalities.

 

[KG5HHS]

I was afraid of that. Creating more than 240 is a pain. If I didn't use this radio for amateur use I'd get just a regular XTS2500, The FPP Makes things ALOT MORE DIFFICULT!

 

[mm]

It's really very easy you don't even need to create a bunch of new personalities for channels using Astro system 2, if all features are the same then 1 personality will work.

while in the personality screen simply add personality #241 and assign it your Astro system 2 ID, then in the zone screen add in zone 16.

Then you can use personality 241 in every position of zone 16, just enter in whatever frequency you desire in each channel of zone 16 that uses personality 241.

As an example If you need 16more channels above your 240 FPP ones and if these 16 channels all use astro ID YYYYY which is a different Astro ID than the Astro id used in your FPP zones, then you only need to use one single personality to do this, personality #241.

Assign personality 241, which is using Astro ID YYYY, to each channel in zone 16 and you are done, each frequency using personality 241 in zone 16 can be a different frequency.

 

[SCPD]

One alternative is to make a zone 16 or 17, 19 etc after the fpp. Then you can resume the sharing of the mdc ids systems. It'll limit the one or two used for fpp if I recall right. So in short time you could add 2 personalities in your conventional systems and 2 mdc systems seperate from the first 15 zones of fpp. This way you can use it sooner and in down time work the fpp zones as you decide to. I have always used the fpp zones as zones needed for immediate channel changes, etc. Then made zones after so if one zone needed just 1 system of perosnality and signalling it was easier leaving the fpp zones open for game to change or add without having to go back later and revert home channels back. Like mentioned while fpp has advantages a few losses exist but nkt really major. Just be sure for the first 15 or 16 zones of fpp you have your empty scan scan lists assigned for each zone, signalling option enabled, and other settings per personality for each channel in the fpp zones so when you do enter fpp you'll have mdc, mixed mode, or whatever you think you'll need. While the type can be selected later we would have the fpp zones set so it was just tx and rx frequencies and the selected tones needed. Basically we knew the area mainly used analog so we would have mdc enabled with a pre set I'd in our home county or city which typically was fine. That way when someone entered 16 chsnnels in fpp, it could scan, have mdc, quick call 2 in specific zones etc.

 

[KG5HHS]

I just tried creating a Zone 16 and a personality 241 that I was planning on using for the second ASTRO ID (192869) however, I got the attached error message.

 

[Project25_MASTR]

FPP causing fun…what's your firmware revision?

Reason why I just opted for MPL (25 pairs and 5 tones covers 60% of the 2m repeaters in Texas, New Mexico and Colorado).


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[rescue161]

FPP causing fun…what's your firmware revision?

Reason why I just opted for MPL (25 pairs and 5 tones covers 60% of the 2m repeaters in Texas, New Mexico and Colorado).


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Agreed!

The XTS2500 will hold 870 channels. FPP is cool, but it isn't worth the loss of other features.

 

[KG5HHS]

Agreed!

The XTS2500 will hold 870 channels. FPP is cool, but it isn't worth the loss of other features.

So does that mean that the FPP XTS2500 are limited to 240 channels?

 

[N4KVE]

Can't you set up the radio so it only has 16 FPP freq's. Zone 1 only. That's how my friends & I do it. Then you don't deal with so many personalities.