Batboard

I've only been program Astro 25 radios for a year or so, and I work almost exclusively on my own gear. There seem to be a number of different ways you can organize a code plug for a series of conventional channels... and I'm wondering how the "pros" do it.

What's considered "best practice" for programming a series of conventional channels? Is it to create one channel per conventional personality (like in the Astro Saber and XTS-3000)? Or do you create a "conventional personality" to represent a set of common characteristics (P25, mixed, non-P25, MDC, etc)? Or do you tend to create one personality per agency, even if that agency has similar characteristics to another in the radio?

And, once you've got the codeplug organized and the radio programmed, how do you keep track of what you've done... That "Conventional Personality - 5" is P25, MDC... etc? Do you just make good notes (that's what I do now for my own radios).

Maybe everyone does it differently? ANYHow, I'd like to know how experienced folks organize their code plugs.

Thanks for whatever info and guidance you can provide,

Peter
K1PGV

One could probably write a book on this subject, but after recovering from the shock of seeing the familiar MTSX metaphor abandoned in the Astro25 CPS, I've sort of gravitated toward this approach.

First: start with a pencil.

Second: figure out how many different MDC IDs (treating the difference between pre-ID and post-ID as different systems).

Third: create a pair of "conventional personalities" for each MDC "system." In each pair, the second "personality" is a clone of the first one, except that it is RXO. Keep a paper list of these "personalities" handy (it would be nice if they could be given alpha identifiers, e.g., Medford FD Tx, Medford FD RXO, Dist13 Tx, Dist13 RXO, and so forth).

Fourth: begin listing your channels, by zone, and assign one of the "personalities" to each channel. Where you encounter a channel that would use one of your existing "personalities" except for use of a different scan list, clone the original pair of "personalities" changing only the scan list.

The MTSX metaphor used "personality" to mean a complete set of channel parameters, except for alpha, so that basically each channel was a personality (though a personality could be dropped into more than one zone/channel slot). This made programming, and updating, pretty easy. The "Professional" metaphor is basically the same, except that it includes the alpha in the "personality" -- even easier still. The Astro25 metaphor abandons all this; "personality" now means a partial set of channel parameters that can be invoked as a group, but which do not define RF data (freqs and tones). So there is no reason to have one "personality" per channel.