ASK questions

[Jay]

I've got an opportunity to add another trunked system to my xts5000, and this particular system is insisting that they use an ASK to load it up. To give you a little background, the codeplug is a very custom template that has about 13 other trunked systems in it, across a large geographic area. All of these are accessed routinely for legit operations. I do want to work with these guys to add their system, but I'm obviously less than thrilled about it being hit with an ASK.

What I want to know is...

What exactly will be locked? All trunked systems? Just their own system? Conventional too?

If I let them do this, what are my options to recover it to a state where I can continue to manage the other systems that I am responsible for? With rebanding happening all over the place, it is essential that I have the ability to manage those other systems as needed to update parameters.

I've spoken to another tech that believes that you can override the ASK by having the correct software key on the PC. Can anyone verify this?

 

[Magnus]

If it is a write protect key, it will full write protect the radio and you will not have the option to do any programming changes without at least a ASK connected. If the key they are using is set to not write protect the radio, then you would only need the ASK to modify their trunking system and associated personalities. The second is the proper way to do it, but a lot of ASK's are not setup this way.

 

[Alpha]

Depending on how your system is set up you might be able to use something like SKEYGEN to create a soft key with the proper system ID. The IL statewide system originally was intended only to use ASK's but they had troubles and switched to normal system keys using the same ID's the ASK's generated. I'm not sure if they had to change something at the controller end to allow this or if any ASK system can be "emulated" using soft keys, I'm not 100% sure on this. Also, if the system uses the "shuffle" feature, as far as I know there is no way around having to use an ASK to set up and turn on the "shuffle" plan.

 

[Okie]

What exactly is the "shuffle" feature and how does it work?

I have limited trunking knowledge and i have never heard of it.

 

[Alpha]

In it's simplest form, it's inverting the "channel" numbers. The 800 MHz band is "channelized" with Channel 0 being like 806.0125, channel 1 is 806.0250, etc. in 12.5 kHz steps up to a maximum of some 800-odd channel numbers, IIRC. I could look up the exact values, but for sake of illustration, those values will do. When "shuffle" is used, basically the channels are inverted, so channel 0 becomes something like 812.9875 (the last "channel" frequency) and channel 800 (whatever the last one is) becomes 806.0125.

This only applies to 3600 baud Trunk systems, it does not affect 9600 baud Astro Trunking. RR had a few good threads on this since most of the scanners now have a "custom sequence" feature where you can enter a non-standard channel scheme of your own choosing. Based on what I read there, and I'm not completely sure of this, but I think it's possible the shuffle scheme might be able to be more complex than simple inversion of the channel numbers, to further complicate things.

The CPS gives no clues about how this is set up, or implemented. The shuffle bit is greyed-out in the System parameters menus, and gets checked when turned on by an ASK but is still greyed-out even if checked. I would assume whatever is used to program or authorize an ASK would have the ability to enter a "shuffle table" or something like that if more than just turning it on (assuming simple inversion only) is required.

Finally, you can tell if you're on a shuffled system if you program it without the shuffle turned on like a regular TRS, you'll get a FLASHING "OUT OF RANGE" indicator! It will be in range for a half-second as it grabs a control channel, then it will fail as it tries to jump to a non-existent voice channel, so it errors out and jumps back to the control channel where it finds it, turns off the "OUT OF RANGE" indicator, then tries to go back to the voice channel again... Rinse and Repeat...

 

[apx]

ASK and Shuffled Band Plan

View attachment Motorola_Rebanding_Subscriber_Programming_Guidelines_V1_1.pdfAttached is Motorolas Rebanding ProgView attachment Motorola_Rebanding_Subscriber_Programming_Guidelines_V1_1.pdframming Guidelines. StArting on page 29 is what information I have been able to find re: ASK and Shuffle.

Well that was my first attempt at adding an attachment and it looks like it...