Our township recenty converted from a conventional UHF T-band 2 channel repeater system to a digital trunked system. I'm a member of the first aid squad, which was also upgraded from VHF simplex to this new system. Supposidly it's a 5 channel trunked system with digital encryption full time. We have Astro Spectra (from what it looks like, I could be wrong) and XTS5000 portables. Now, I was under the assumption that this system would sound simmilar to that of a cell phone, but for some reason we're picking up a lot of static on the radios, like it's operating in analog. It sounds like our voices are digital, but there's just a lot of background noise, kind of like operating on a conventional repeater system just getting out of range, with that "white noise" sound. Is this a normal thing, or could there possibly be something wrong with either our system or radios? I don't know too much about the details of the system, and all I have access to right now is an XTS5000 portable that was given to me to use on the system. Just want to know i this is what to expect, everyone is coming to me asking these questions, but I have no clue about digital systems.
Any input appreciated!
Question on Astro system
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ScannerDan
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Re: Question on Astro system
601 wrote:Our township recenty converted from a conventional UHF T-band 2 channel repeater system to a digital trunked system. I'm a member of the first aid squad, which was also upgraded from VHF simplex to this new system. Supposidly it's a 5 channel trunked system with digital encryption full time. We have Astro Spectra (from what it looks like, I could be wrong) and XTS5000 portables. Now, I was under the assumption that this system would sound simmilar to that of a cell phone, but for some reason we're picking up a lot of static on the radios, like it's operating in analog. It sounds like our voices are digital, but there's just a lot of background noise, kind of like operating on a conventional repeater system just getting out of range, with that "white noise" sound. Is this a normal thing, or could there possibly be something wrong with either our system or radios? I don't know too much about the details of the system, and all I have access to right now is an XTS5000 portable that was given to me to use on the system. Just want to know i this is what to expect, everyone is coming to me asking these questions, but I have no clue about digital systems.
Any input appreciated!
Maybe your using DES-XL which dosen't sound too hot on a conventional system.
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I hate arguing with stupid people. They just bring you down to their level and beat you with experience.
I hate arguing with stupid people. They just bring you down to their level and beat you with experience.
I don't think it's analog, we haven't been able to monitor any transmissions yet through it. with an ordinary scanner. As far as I know, the entire system is supposed to be digital, the only ones staying analog trunking is the FD. And if we are running anolog, I see an incredible waste of money spent here, purchasing XTS5000 portables and supposidly digital mobiles, and making us upgrade to a UHF paging system.
Out of curiosity, I have an XTS5000 sitting right here, would any of the numbers on the back give any clue as to what this radio does without having to read it with software?
Out of curiosity, I have an XTS5000 sitting right here, would any of the numbers on the back give any clue as to what this radio does without having to read it with software?
Power it on and press the button just about TX five times as soon as the bootup completes. Of particular interest will be anything prefaced "KG" and the flashcode (a 13-digit number in the format 000000-000000-0). That will at least tell us a. if the radio is even capable of digital and b. if the radio has a crypto board in it.
I'm wondering if you're running digital and the techs turned on the "weak signal"/fringe area indicator, which, as far as I can tell, injects "fake static" as the bit error rate increases on the receiving end.
I'm wondering if you're running digital and the techs turned on the "weak signal"/fringe area indicator, which, as far as I can tell, injects "fake static" as the bit error rate increases on the receiving end.
Definitely not dES-XL... with that configuration, you have the options of running:
Analog clear
ASTRO clear
ASTRO secure
An AES-only board won't encrypt for the old-school securenet (CVSD) like a DES-XL board would.
I'm betting the "weak signal indicator" crap is turned on. Or, it could be a defect in the firmware version you're running in the radios (though not as likely... the digital radios don't Just Work like the analog ones did... there's all sorts of fixes that have been introduced in the firmware over the years.)
Analog clear
ASTRO clear
ASTRO secure
An AES-only board won't encrypt for the old-school securenet (CVSD) like a DES-XL board would.
I'm betting the "weak signal indicator" crap is turned on. Or, it could be a defect in the firmware version you're running in the radios (though not as likely... the digital radios don't Just Work like the analog ones did... there's all sorts of fixes that have been introduced in the firmware over the years.)