Miami Dade County Police

[Ezra]

So I have a BDC536 HP and downloaded the Miami Dade County system and for the most part it works okay. I'm monitoring the 15XX talkgroups

I have noticed that:

The overall reception and digital is reallypoor regardless of where you are in the county. If the cops are hearing the same thing on their end I feel very sorry for them.
Site 1 - works fine and it is indeed all local government in the county
Site 2 - works fine and is all the police in the county
Site 3 - works fine and only broadcasts Station 3 5 and 8 related traffic and the Miccossugee Indians
Site 4 - I haven't been able to pick up anything (even when by the casino)
Site 7 - Only HQ which is Key Biscayne dispatch and bolos nothing else
Site 8 - haven't tried
Site 9 - Supposed to be Station 6 / City 2 (Sunny Isles, Surfside, Bal Harbor etc.) but I get no traffic
Site 10 - Haven't tried.

So for the intracoastal area that is supposed to be serviced by site 9, I can hear all the Station 6 and City 2 traffic (Sunny isles, golden beach, etc. traffic) on site 2 but reception of site 2 in the Haulover/Sunny Isles/surfside area is horrible. I don't hear anything on site 9. So what am I doing wrong? It behaves as if the published freqs for site 9 are not correct. Or, is station 6 on Encrypted on site 9?

Anyone have any tips on monitoring Station 6 / City 2 Traffic while actually in that part of town?

 

[ElroyJetson]

If you're having general issues with signal strength all over the coverage area, I would be more inclined to believe that the problem is with YOUR equipment. It would seem to me that your scanner is insufficiently sensitive or you have an issue with your antenna, antenna placement, or antenna cable.

The miami-dade system works well with good coverage and signal strength. Not that I'm down in that part of FL very often but I've always found it to be easy to pick up even with a fully stealthed mobile antenna installation in my car. (The antenna is actually completely contained in the trunk. I don't advertise even though I'm 100 percent legal.)

Of course there are some complaints. They're almost always from officers who have portable radios with antennas that are bent 90 degrees or look like they've been used to pick rocks out of tires, and in fringe coverage areas. Officers expect magical, perfect performance out of equipment when they themselves are using the equipment under less than ideal circumstances. Radio on the belt, between metal handcuffs and a metal gun, maybe a keyring conveniently placed over the antenna, withi a low gain stubby antenna tied in a knot or even broken off, in a fringe coverage area, and surprise, it doesn't work right?

No surprises there! I wouldn't have great expectations out of that kind of scenario.

 

[MaximusTheGreat]

I would have to agree with Elroy, it's the equipment that has issues picking up the system. Scanners for amateurs will not work flawlessly out of the box. There is a lot of trial and error with settings, antennas and of course location location... Don't forget the county has a TON of RF interference from everything. That will also play a major factor with reception.

I have also played with dongles, DSD, and unitrunker, with the same result. Now unitrunker works well to trunk and to map out talk groups.

With that said, is it worth it to spend the vast number of hours, days or months to figure it out? That depends how much free time you have and how much you want to learn how to use SDR systems. For me, I spent months learning but being able to monitor or decode from a tablet, laptop, or phone is pretty cool.

 

[Ezra]

more details

Thanks for your help.

I think I ruled out antenna/coax as I have my BCD536 in my truck and My BCD436 I just carry around. The both yield almost identical results depending what part of town I'm in. The handheld is a tad weaker but that's expected as the truck antenna is much better. I have to say both units are exceptional. Really good sensitivity and I'm very happy with both. They both work stellar on the other 40+ systems I'm monitoring. They are by far the best overall scanners I have ever owned (and of course the most expensive). The only issues I have are on the Miami Dade county system. For example I had to set my P25 Threshold levels to 4 (default is 10) to keep the voice from dropping out and I've never had to do that for any other system I've monitored.

For the Miami Dade system Site 1 is local government site and that seems to work great almost anywhere in the county. Same with site 7. Site 2 is PD and that is okay downtown, very spotty on the coast and I definitely have to switch to Site 3 when I'm in the west part of the county. But site 9 is a mystery to me. I'm starting to believe I don't have something programmed right. Both radios are clones of each other.

So if I'm close to downtown (site 2) I can hear everything fine as it carries all traffic (just the digital quality is not great) If I move west site 2 drops off and I switch to site 3 (west) and that's fine but it only carries traffic for west dade stations. Which is expected. I move to the coast and site 2 drops off but switching to site 9 doesn't give me all the "Intercoastal" (east county) traffic. This is the conundrum.

But I'm not sure how these sites are physically set up. When they say "site" is it indeed one physical site? Or can there be more than one location using the same frequencies? Or: if site 2 is downtown is that the only site transmitting those frequencies?

I also did a little more work and it seems that HQ seems to come in fine on Site 9 but nothing else. I need to confirm this as I might have been smoking too much crack that day and got my sites mixed up. I know this system was originally set up for encrypted so there are talkgroups for digital and duplicate talkgroups for encrypted. They had too many issues with the encrypted so they dropped that and reverted back to just digital after a few weeks of getting the new system up. I'm only listening to the digital. Is it possible that site 9 is encrypted for the dispatch channels while HQ (it's a kind of catchall channel for detectives, marine, and other non patrol units) is not? Also can a talkgroup be digital on one site and encrypted on another?

I'll go back up to that part of town and do a talkgroup ID scan for a few hours and see if anything else shows up. I'll also reprogram site 9 and see if it's user error.

 

[MaximusTheGreat]

Good Luck with your new hobby!

 

[JANFINE]

Station 6

If you want to hear Station 6 and anyother PD in the county just use Site 2.
Trying to monitor PD on any other site is making things difficult for yourself.
All PD is on Site 2.

So I have a BDC536 HP and downloaded the Miami Dade County system and for the most part it works okay. I'm monitoring the 15XX talkgroups

I have noticed that:

The overall reception and digital is reallypoor regardless of where you are in the county. If the cops are hearing the same thing on their end I feel very sorry for them.
Site 1 - works fine and it is indeed all local government in the county
Site 2 - works fine and is all the police in the county
Site 3 - works fine and only broadcasts Station 3 5 and 8 related traffic and the Miccossugee Indians
Site 4 - I haven't been able to pick up anything (even when by the casino)
Site 7 - Only HQ which is Key Biscayne dispatch and bolos nothing else
Site 8 - haven't tried
Site 9 - Supposed to be Station 6 / City 2 (Sunny Isles, Surfside, Bal Harbor etc.) but I get no traffic
Site 10 - Haven't tried.

So for the intracoastal area that is supposed to be serviced by site 9, I can hear all the Station 6 and City 2 traffic (Sunny isles, golden beach, etc. traffic) on site 2 but reception of site 2 in the Haulover/Sunny Isles/surfside area is horrible. I don't hear anything on site 9. So what am I doing wrong? It behaves as if the published freqs for site 9 are not correct. Or, is station 6 on Encrypted on site 9?

Anyone have any tips on monitoring Station 6 / City 2 Traffic while actually in that part of town?

 

[APX8000]

I can confirm that if you are using a scanner to monitor MDPD off Site 2 you are going to suffer from LSM. If I'm parked at MIA they come in loud and clear on a PSR-800. Start moving mobile and I get digital garbage 3/4 of the time. I've noticed that with several Harris P25 systems...seems their flavor of CQPSK (which I think is WCQPSK) is more difficult to decode vs Big M. I can tell you that they sound just fine on an XTS5000 and APX7000 using non-affiliate scanning. Pick them up in Broward no problem at the 75/595 split.


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[Ezra]

Thanks for your help. Im slowly piecing the puzzle together.

Im seeing the same thing. Site 2 works fine around the airport but when im around sunny isles its a bit spotty.

Has anyone been able to pick up anything on site 9 anywhere? I havent.

 

[APX8000]

Site 9 covers the Sunny Isles area. You will hear MDPD 6 (talkgroup 15028) on it.


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[APX8000]

Site 3 is out west. That's probably why listeners are reporting only hearing MDPD 3 Midwest, 5 Kendall and 8 Hammocks. I've never heard anything on Site 10 which people are reporting is in the Kendall area.


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[Ezra]

Ah ha!

Thanks for the feedback. Yeah site three seems to work as expected for the west side of town. But now I'll try to find something on 9 now that I know it's possible.

Also with the firmware upgrade and changing everything to FM other than NFM seems to work a little better as well.

 

[Ezra]

Oh yeah, and thanks for the tip on site 10. I have never been able to get anything on that site either, even when parked in that part of town.