Batboard

I picked up a Spectra Astro yesterday, it a T99DX+099W_ASTRO T04KLH9PW9AN (1 Meg) radio with the siren box, A9 head and a Polaris Model-7 Radio Interface Cable. The Polaris looks like it interfaces with a pass-thru connecter that plugs into the siren box – I guess that plugs into my RIB? The Polaris Industries site doesn’t have any info on the model-7.

I have several maxtrac’s, maratrac’s, HT600’s, MT1000’s, etc., and can program them, but Spectra’s are new to me. I am also the radio officer of my local FD – got XTS2500’s, XTS3000’s and a XTL5000 on our local system here – just giving you my background!

I got it fired up, but haven’t tried talking to it with RSS or CPS yet. I have it on a dummy load, and there’s some local PD and FD freq’s programmed, as well as a P25 digital freq (makes a nice sound and spectrum display on my HP 8924C!).

Where are some good resources for this radio? I see lots of Spectra info, but I understand the Spectra Astro is a different animal. Do the Astro’s suffer the cap time-bomb problem? Any info, pointers helpful!
Lastly, I am in Colorado Springs, I heard there’s a P25 machine in Denver on the ham bands, but I can’t seem to find any good info on the web…

Thanks!

Steve
KV6O

http://batlabs.com/astromob.html
http://wiki.radioreference.com/index.ph ... RO_Spectra
http://www.repeater-builder.com/motorol ... index.html
http://www.motorola.com/governmentanden ... csheet.pdf
http://www.onfreq.com/syntorx/spectra/index.html

Lots of good Spectra info on these sites, much of it not Astro but still
probably useful to you in one way or another.

The Denver P25 repeater appears to be WA2YZT:
http://www.artscipub.com/repeaters/comm ... ,-Colorado

Regards,

Like Tom has provided links to a number of web sites, go do some homework. Read about what you have.

The Astro is normally programmed through the rear DB15 accessory connector. If you don't have a programming
cable that goes to this connector, make one. It is a standard DB15-male that you will need. Depending on
how the radio was programmed and jumpers set and the control head, you may or may not have to supply
a +12 volts to the "IGNITION" pin on the DB15 connector.

Also bear in mind that there are several flavors of the Astro Spectra family. One of the newer ones will be
an Astro Spectra Plus. You may or may not see this marked on the front panel. It takes a different
version of the software to program the radio. This one uses the same as the XTL mobiles and will be
identified as "Astro 25 mobile" and not "Astro Spectra".

Jim

kv6o wrote:I picked up a Spectra Astro yesterday, it a T99DX+099W_ASTRO T04KLH9PW9AN (1 Meg) radio with the siren box, A9 head and a Polaris Model-7 Radio Interface Cable. The Polaris looks like it interfaces with a pass-thru connecter that plugs into the siren box – I guess that plugs into my RIB? The Polaris Industries site doesn’t have any info on the model-7.

I have several maxtrac’s, maratrac’s, HT600’s, MT1000’s, etc., and can program them, but Spectra’s are new to me. I am also the radio officer of my local FD – got XTS2500’s, XTS3000’s and a XTL5000 on our local system here – just giving you my background!

I got it fired up, but haven’t tried talking to it with RSS or CPS yet. I have it on a dummy load, and there’s some local PD and FD freq’s programmed, as well as a P25 digital freq (makes a nice sound and spectrum display on my HP 8924C!).

Where are some good resources for this radio? I see lots of Spectra info, but I understand the Spectra Astro is a different animal. Do the Astro’s suffer the cap time-bomb problem? Any info, pointers helpful!
Lastly, I am in Colorado Springs, I heard there’s a P25 machine in Denver on the ham bands, but I can’t seem to find any good info on the web…

Thanks!

Steve
KV6O

Programming-wise, that radio programs with either Astro Mobile RSS or Astro Mobile CPS for Windows (which is not to be confused with Astro25 Mobile CPS.. they are two different beasts.) You are correct that it programs off the second DB25 connector where the siren plugs into; what most people do is unplug the siren while programming, program using the regular Spectra high-power cable, then plug it back in when finished. I've never personally seen a Polaris cable that allowed the siren to stay plugged in while programming, so it might not even be for programming at all and may be for some data application.

Two caveats: being that you have a 146-174 radio, it won't do P25 below 146 MHz even after bandsplit hacking the software. Analog will work fine, however. Other is that if your radio doesn't have a 2.5kHz-capable RF board (which is usually indicated by a "2.5" on the model/serial tag although it could have been uplifted at a later date outside of the factory) you won't be able to properly program 6.25-spaced frequencies at all or a lot of 7.5-spaced frequencies (like 159.2175, for example) depending on where they land. It is possible to "fudge" a channel into receiving by programming to either side of the target frequency as close as possible and setting that channel to wide spacing, but obviously transmitting is out of the question.