XTS2500

[tsunami_australia]

I've just taken ownership of my first ASTRO handheld and I'm learning some of the quirks now.

My main question at the moment, is it possible to have 40-50 channels to a zone and use soft buttons to shift channel like the 3000 and 5000? I'm doing a lot of googling at he moment but not seeing much about that side. Some of the youtube videos I've seen claiming to show the 2500 vs 5000 differences did not mention this either.

Most of my programming won't give a dam to the 16ch knob limit but my UHFCB zone will care (80ch).

If it is incapable of such I guess I will have to use it to learn and just move on to a 5000 at a later date and sell the 2500 (or encourage the mrs to use it which is going to be like rolling lady liberty or Ularu up a big hill). At least I'm learning abilities and functions for the moment (knobs, buttons, unspoken of functions Q5x etc) so not all is lost and it should retain at least most of it's value I hope.

 

[Alpha]

The 2500 is almost exactly the same as a 5000. The 5000 may have a more channels total capacity (this is easily hackable) but otherwise, the limitations of channels per zone and so forth are the same for the 2500 as the 5000. I am not sure what (if any) the limit of # of channels per zone is, but I do know for sure you can use more than 16, and use the CHUP and CHDN key functions to roll through them as you describe.

You might need to change the knob function to Zone Up/Down so it doesn't conflict or get confusing, if you have 16 zones or less (if more, you will need to use ZNUP and ZNDN button function(s)).

 

[tsunami_australia]

Thank you VERY much Alpha. I thought it would be odd that Motorola would cripple a radio but then Motorola are strange I guess. I wasn't aware we could set the knob to zone, that is great news. I'm not likely to have more than 16 zones.

You've made me a very happy person, I was panicking for a little.

 

[foxtrotdelta]

CHUP/CHDN will work great or you can add the CHAN softkey and then either use the left or right arrows to scroll through them. Or if you have a model III, use the same softkey and then punch in the ch. number directly.

 

[com501]

Save your codeplug often!!, so if you mess something up, you can go back to a previous version and start again. Use different file names.

 

[tsunami_australia]

Yeah fox it's an M3 (won't go otherwise any more, not worth the hassle) so that's great to hear I can do that. Basically within CB zone, CH then 29 or 01 etc.

Com, +1. I learnt the hard way when I was still learning my XTL5000 many years ago (it's 6 odd yo now). I stuffed up something to do with the mute in Astro and would only play audio when monitor was pressed or was off HUB. Took me a few days of tantrums to find an AND instead of OR for the selcall side iirc. Obviously I have much better knowledge and experience now but mistakes can be made by the best of us.

I've also got in the habbit of saving in a separate file again the build of the radio "AS ARRIVED". That has helped me a few times with niggly settings on the MCS Jedis back a bit.

So I usually..
RADIOxxx - AS ARRIVED
RADIOxxx - testing (initial/early codeplug build)
RADIOxxx - 2015 (well year, so each year earns a new codeplug file for "I know that worked last year" referencing).
So far this system has treated me well. If I'm doing some really out of my league experimental stuff I'll open (well save as) a new file so I don't ruin a good CPG when I stuff it up.

Using this I've learnt a bit more about multiple vote groups within the one zone using just multiple personalities and scan groups. It seems each bank of 11 (top 1 found I can leave out of scan and just use with a blank frequency for display and reference when flicking through the say 10 groups then have the 10 actual voters display their towers so rather than say VKG-NOV-MGL being a tower when the tower is something else (mt whatever), when I scroll through the group list (first 10 chans say) I see that and land on it, then it finds the strongest on next rx). I used to have to have an individual zone per area of each service (mess). Though I've found I can't cheap out and have one reference zone to cover 10 vote scans, the scan lists chuck a wobbly it the 11 channels in the zone don't reference to their own group personality and scan group (probably something I've missed). Anyway /rant.