Batboard

Ok, so what exactly is an "Astro" radio or sysem. I can't find anything to tell me what it really is. I know someone on this forum will probably know

"Astro" is Motorola's name for its digital radio's.

They come in two varities:
VLSEP which is the older "first generation" format
IMBE - which is APCO25 compliant

99% of all new digital enabled Motorola radios are IMBE. The APCO25 standard is written so that digital radios from any manufactuers are suppose to work with each other, but I understand that there are some variations of this.

VLSEP and IMBE radios CANNOT talk to each other. There are some large VLESP systems out there, but all the newer systems are using IMBE.

FYIW: The CSP is an IMBE SmartZone system. It does NOT use the 9600 control channel protocol as previoulsy thought. You can use a trunktracker to track the system, but you will not hear anything but the digital data.

Also digital means $$$$$! I am going thru this right now to convert our conventional system to digtial, and just the bases/consoles we are looking at over $125k (one channel).

Pj wrote: FYIW: The CSP is an IMBE SmartZone system. It does NOT use the 9600 control channel protocol as previoulsy thought. You can use a trunktracker to track the system, but you will not hear anything but the digital data.

I think Michigan State is the only user of a large SmartZone APCO-25 trunking system. There may be smaller systems here or there but I don't recall any.