Knobs on an Astro Saber III

[Dale Earnhardt]

HI all, just wondering, does the channel selector on an astro, countious? or does it stop dead on channel 16? cause when i was working with the LAPD Detectives for summer, and was using there astro, it was countious, and talk with other people with astro, says, there dont do the countious, only up to 16, then you have to go by zones, am guessing this was made for LAPD??? am not sure, hope somebody can replay.

Thanks

[Elroy Jetson]

It is possible (but not particularly convenient) to convert the channel selector switch for continuous rotation with some surgery.

The LAPD radios do NOT have have continuously rotatable channel selectors. Maybe someone modified a few, but it's not a standard feature.


The way the LAPD radios are set up, the radio has one zone...period. Every channel in the radios, all 200-odd ones (Actually it's 57 but some are analog and some are repeated in digital) are in that one zone.

The radios use the OTACS/OTACR system, which steers the sixteen most-used active channels in any given area to the sixteen positions on the channel selector switch. If a radio moves from, say, Hollywood to Burbank, the system reassigns the appropriate channels in the radio so that the local Burbank channels are available directly via the channel selector.

If the radio user needs to get to a channel that's not in the first 16 positions as assigned to the channel selector knob, he can
press the CHAN button and directly select the one he needs. The radio will stay on that channel until he moves the channel selector knob.

This information is applicable to the OLD LAPD codeplug. I don't know if the new version is the same or different in that respect but I'd guess that it's about the same in order to avoid having to retrain all ten thousand officers.

Elroy

[Dale Earnhardt]

Thanks for the Info Elroy, it was helpful,I guess they did modified them then, because it was a good countious motion, around and around, on all of the freq they had, and other agencies too. maybe that is the reason for the LAPD having those, "low profile knobs" as I heard them, so for them to change many channel easier.

[Tom in D.C.]

"Dale:" You are probably missing a part which goes under the plastic inner knob guide. This "thingie" has several location settings which stop the knob at the desired position, like the 12th or 16th position. It's in the exploded diagrams for the Saber, but I'm not certain that the Astro uses the same arrangement.

Also, low profile knobs are great, except for when you try to reach inside an SVA to change the channel within a zone. At such times I wish I had a long, standard, channel selector knob on the radio!

Tom in D.C.

[Tom in D.C.]

"Dale:" I replied to the personal message you sent me, but your prodigy address bounced.

Tom in D.C.

[Elroy Jetson]

Astro Saber channel knobs do not use the index washer setup like Sabers do. Instead, there is an indexing pin which is part of the channel selector switch itself. That pin is an internal part in the switch so you would actually have to disassemble and modify the switch, which is virtually impossible.
I tore one apart (out of a scrapped frame) and believe me, this is the truth. It'd require a special switch. Not like the good old days of the synthesized MX radios where you could reposition the stop pins yourself if you had the patience and some good tweezers!

By the way, I have two authentic LAPD radios (long story but they're legally mine..private message to me if you want to know..) and they have low profile knobs and the channel selectors are standard 16 position with stop.



Elroy



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Elroy Jetson on 2001-09-19 14:49 ]</font>

[jmr061]

Can someone e-mail me the part numbers of the low profile knobs and maybe send a pic too. Thanks.

Jason