Scanning on Astro Consollette & CentraCom Gold Elite

[TXCAP]

I have a question...
We need to monitor several new Narrowband Interop channels and one wideband channel without adding new feed line at multiple tower sites.
Can an Astro Spectra or XTL Consollette be controlled by an Elite Gold to scan these four channels and show what channel is active at the console so the operator knows what channel respond on? Current budget will not allow adding new base stations and feed lines for each frequency, so we would like to scan these channels. These consollettes will be co-located locally with the CEB.


TXCAP

[resqguy911]

I have a question...
We need to monitor several new Narrowband Interop channels and one wideband channel without adding new feed line at multiple tower sites.
Can an Astro Spectra or XTL Consollette be controlled by an Elite Gold to scan these four channels and show what channel is active at the console so the operator knows what channel respond on? Current budget will not allow adding new base stations and feed lines for each frequency, so we would like to scan these channels. These consollettes will be co-located locally with the CEB.


TXCAP

I don't think so. In order to control a consolette with an Elite you need to use TRC and are limited to 8 channels to select from. Since the TRC board on the consolette doesn't report back to the Elite whether or not it's status has changed, there is no confirmation that anything has occurred. At best, you could set the radio for talkback scan with a long landed channel hold time and hope for the best. Is it fiscally and technically possible for you to use an MC3000 deskset instead? That would allow for what you want, but not be integrated into your console.

[d119]

There is a way to do this, but there are caveats and it isn't pretty.

Do the consolettes have a control head? If so, they are likely tone keyed. You could wire an Aux I/O to the physical button on the front of the control head that would allow you to enable/disable scan (if you can get the aux I/O up the wireline to your site, it would be a contact closure).

If it's an ACIM-based v.24 control link to the consolette, well, you're screwed as those consolettes don't generally have control heads (though I believe there are exceptions).

Full radio control was implemented in CommandStar Lite and MCC 5500, but Gold Elite lacks those features. It's still a maximum of 8 steerable modes, and no scan.

[kb0uxv]

You could set a personality to auto scan, name it SCAN on the console for one of your 8, and have that as an option. But no indication of active channel unless you use priority alert, that would alert to one of them. If you have a control head - What if you moved the consolette to dispatch and connected it to console to be keyed on selected mode? That would give you full control of the radio (all modes and zones from the face) and also the ability to patch on the console resource (set to selected mode tone table).