Frequency picklists. Does anyone use them?

[Elroy Jetson]

I've played around a little bit with frequency picklists and frankly I have to wonder if anyone actually uses them.

While the general concept isn't bad, in fact, it's not too far off of the way that data for various agencies is stored in the Ericsson/GE/M/A-Com/Harris ProGrammer radio software, its implementation is, in my opinion, absolutely a horror. You can't use it to, for example, create a list of the VHF marine
frequencies, or your local amateur radio repeaters, and just put the list into another codeplug that has other channels in it. The picklists restrict your
codeplug to ONLY having the channels in it that are in the picklist!

The only reason I can think of for this sort of system is to keep loose cannons in your radio shop from adding unathorized channels to a radio that
isn't allowed to have them. But why would you even have a loose cannon like that in your shop anyway? Anyone who'd need to be put on a short leash
like that should be in the unemployment line!

I've picked up a lot of experience with the GE/M/A-Com/Whatever world of radios in the past few years and for the most part I think that they are
decidedly inferior as far as the radios themselves are concerned. But, the ProGrammer software is absolutely the state of the art! It should serve
as the model for all radio programming software. It's quick and easy to use, is easy to learn, and has built-in codeplug portability across almost any
radio platform offered by the company. Frankly I'd love it if Motorola were to license the ProGrammer platform and use it to build a much better,
more usable CPS with it.

Although, it must be said that the CPS (and the RSS before it) gives considerably greater flexibility to customize individual modes. However, this isn't
always a win when you consider how many things you have to attend to.

Remember the older CPS that could show you EVERYTHING in a single Excel-style spreadsheet in the channel assignment screen? I calculated something like 25,000-odd individual data fields if you showed everything and filled the radio's channel capacity up all the way. And I actually did that. 240-something channels and 16 zones.

You don't get that sort of flexibility out of ProGrammer. But it's easier to set up a file with it, too.


Elroy

[akardam]

I've played around a little bit with frequency picklists and frankly I have to wonder if anyone actually uses them.

While the general concept isn't bad, in fact, it's not too far off of the way that data for various agencies is stored in the Ericsson/GE/M/A-Com/Harris ProGrammer radio software, its implementation is, in my opinion, absolutely a horror. You can't use it to, for example, create a list of the VHF marine frequencies, or your local amateur radio repeaters, and just put the list into another codeplug that has other channels in it. The picklists restrict your codeplug to ONLY having the channels in it that are in the picklist!

You seem to be miscomprehending how pick lists work.

Since, in the Astro25 software, most of the frequency configuration data has been moved out of the Conventional Personalities into the Zone Channel screen, it has become less easy to move or copy channels from one zone to another. In the Astro and previous expert tier software, you'd simply insert a new channel, select the appropriate conventional personality, and type in the alpha tag. Now, of course, with the Astro25 software, you'd have to type in channel name, TX freq, TX squelch, RX freq, RX squelch, and so on and so forth. Not exactly the easiest thing in the world.

Because of this, Motorola built pick list capability into the Astro25 software. The pick list acts more or less like a clipboard that you can copy and paste channels to and from (though the Motorola terminology is "import/export"). You can choose either to import to an existing channel, overwriting it, or add/insert a new default channel and import the data into it. No, it's not a real, true copy and paste, and yes, it would have been better had Motorola concentrated more on a conventional method, but that's how they did it, and I find it a usefull feature nontheless.

There's nothing in the way that pick lists work that prohibits you from importing one or more channels in a pick list into an existing codeplug, but there are a couple important caveats. Although the pick list does encode which conventional personality was selected when the channel was exported to the pick list to begin with, it has no way of knowing if the same conventional personality in the codeplug you're importing channels from the pick list into has the same characteristics. For example, if you created a pick list from Radio A, and A's conventional personality #1 was set for analog, and you're importing into Radio B, and B's conventional personality #1 is set for digital, it might produce undesired results. Also, I believe that if the conventional personality number currently selected for the channel you're importing into (in effect, overwriting with data from the pick list) does not match that from the pick list, you'll get a warning to that effect.

To go back to your point about not being able to create lists of commonly used channels and importing them at will into existing codeplugs, I use lists in this capacity on a daily basis, and it works fine. For example, I have a list of the national and state mutual aid repeaters (they used to be referred to in part as the I-CALL/I-TAC channels but are now known differently), and another list for our county's talkaround channels, and I insert them at will into templates when I'm building or modifying them. Works like a peach.

Remember the older CPS that could show you EVERYTHING in a single Excel-style spreadsheet in the channel assignment screen?

You can still do this, even in the Astro25 software. Put any tree list into Table view as opposed to Folder view, and it will do exactly what you describe. If you're unsure how to do this, consult the CPS documentation.

[Elroy Jetson]

I'm referring to the Astro software, not the Astro25 software. I 'm using Astro Sabers, not XTS5Ks. I'll explore the picklists further and see how to make them work for me. I'd like to have the marine channels and amateur repeaters for various states and areas set up as picklists that I can grab and insert into any given personality at will.


I'll play with it some more and see what it'll do. (I've never played with it before today.)


Elroy

[akardam]

I would tend to think just dragging and dropping conventional personalities (or sets of conventional personalities) between codeplugs in the Astro CPS would work better. Just create a "master" codeplug, or multiple codeplugs each with a set of conventional personalities pertaining to a particular grouping or function, and copy them into your radio's codeplug as needed.

Either way you'll still need to setup the Zone Channel screen with the appropriate conventional personality mappings, and channel names.

[RKG]

Actually, I've found the picklists immensely useful, and far more reliable that trying to drag and drop between two open versions of the CPS.

For instance, the regional Interop group for my area has promulgated a master codeplug for all member entities. The codeplug assumes a Zone 1 that the entity can do what it wants with, while the balance of 10 zones are common to all entities. To make a cloneplug for an entity, I read their radio and export their Zone 1 to a picklist. I then make a copy of the master codeplug stored as unique for the entity, import the picklist to Zone 1 of the new master, and I have a cloneplug for all of the entity's radios. Slick, fast, and no typos!

Frankly, I was not originally a fan of the Astro25 CPS, which I regarded as a step backward from the CDM/Waris CPS in terms of functionality. However, the picklist function, the "Fill Down" and "Fill Up" function, and the Clone Express function (which allows channel data to be cloned without changing a radio's MDC IDs) to be quite useful.

[alex]

I'm actually a huge fan of importing to a text file, editing, and then re-importing. I find taking it out of the CPS completely is great sometimes to move around data.

[motorola_otaku]

So "picklist" in this case does not refer to things like PL/DPL and trunked talkgroup numbers that have to be selected from a drop-down list and cannot be entered numerically in CPS? Because that irritates me like what, and is one of the biggest reasons why I still cling to DOS RSS.

And for that matter, would it be too much to ask to return some function to the Function keys? I don't know about y'all, but I'm much faster when I can F-key through everything without having to touch the mouse.