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Motorola

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Contacting/Ordering

To order parts or software from Motorola you can:
A. Sign-up for an account on Motorola Online (MOL)

  • If you do this, you'll need to indicate on the application why you want an account ("to purchase parts, accessories, and software") and whether you're an end-user or business. Don't hesitate to say you're an end-user (assuming you are). Motorola doesn't mind.

Note: Once you have placed your part order the turn around is usually less than a week.

B. Call Customer Service and Parts hotline 1-800-422-4210

Books

Motorola: A Journey through Time and Technology Paperback (Circa 1994) ISBN 1569460116
Motorola: A Journey through Time and Technology Hardcover (Circa 1999) ISBN 1569460051

External Links

Motorola Early Land Mobile Equipment 1938-1946 by WB6NVH
Motorola Mobile 2-WAY Radio Equipment - Part One 1941-1957 by WB6NVH
Motorola Motorcycle Radios 1947-1992 by WB6NVH

Radio Technology

Motorola Radio Index - This is a link to the wiki page listing the individual radio models and their pages.

Trunking System Flavors

Motorola Type I and Type II systems achieve the same thing in a slightly different way. One important distinction between these systems is the amount of data transmitted by each radio when the operator pushes the PTT button. A Type I system transmits the radio's ID, its fleet information, and the subfleet information. A Type II system only transmits the radio's ID.

What’s the difference? In Type I systems, each radio in the trunk group individually transmits its own affiliation. In Type II systems the trunk system maintains a database that determines each radio's affiliation. Another difference between the systems is that Type I systems are arranged in a fleet-subfleet hierarchy. For example, it is possible for a city using a Type I system to designate four fleets, each with eight subfleets. The police department, fire department, utilities group, and city administration could each be a separate fleet. The police might decide to further divide its fleet into subfleets, such as dispatch, tactical operations, detectives, north, south, east and west side patrols and supervisors. All the available police radios would then be assigned to one of the police subfleets, letting the police centralize their communications and control the type of users on a single system. Determining the exact fleet-subfleet hierarchy for a particular area is referred to as fleet map programming.

Motorola control channel is broadcast as a continuous stream of OSWs (Outbound Signalling Words). Each trunking message may occupy one, two, or three OSWs.

Type I systems need only specify the radio ID to also convey the fleet and subfleet information. This is possible because the radio ID and fleet / subfleets are numerically related. Consequently, both call grants and continuation messages fit in a single OSW. In fact, they're the same message. In contrast, Type II systems must convey two separate IDs - a source or radio ID and a destination ID. The destination ID may be a talkgroup or another radio ID. Type II channel grant messages occupy two OSWs - twice that of Type I. Fortunately, Type II continuation messages only consume one OSW - the same as Type I. Type I has a slight performance advantage over Type II at the initial key-up of a call but this advantage disappears once the user speaks.

The chief advantage of Type II is flexibility. Any radio ID can talk on any talkgroup without patching. This is not true for Type I users wanting to talk on a different fleet or subfleet. Establishing a patch incurs addition overhead (messaging) on the control channel.

Prior to the final Phase II standard being approved, Motorola developed and implemented their own TDMA protocol known as "X2-TDMA".

X2 uses the same modulation as APCO Project 25 Phase 1.

Connect Tones

0. 105.88
1. 76.60
2. 83.72
3. 90.00
4. 97.30
5. 116.13
6. 128.57
7. 138.46

P25 Network Access Codes (NACs)

To determine the NAC for a P25 voice-capable Motorola (Type I or Type II) trunked system:

  1. Start with the system ID in hexadecimal format.
  2. Take the right side (lower) two hex digits.
  3. Add the connect tone index number to right side (see list above).
  4. You now have a 3-digit hex NAC.

For example, if the system ID is E726 and the connect tone is 116.13, then we take "26" from the system ID and append "5" for the connect tone index, giving us a NAC of 265.

Digital Voice Types

Miscellaneous Information