AZScanner
Member
Some PD action in the nearby vicinity of my apartment complex the other day provided a unique opportunity to try an experiment that I thought I'd share:
First a little background. I have an old BC250D scanner that I don't use much because my area uses 9600 baud trunking, not the 3600 baud that the BC250D can track. Now, I have a BC796 which CAN track 9600 baud CC's, but there's something funky about the Phoenix system and the decode on my 796 is sort of hit or miss. There have been times when the scanner just flat out refused to switch to the appropriate frequency, even when locked on a particular talkgroup. Very frustrating, especially when there's something going on right down the street and I want to keep up with the action.
So, I came up with an idea - a sort of "close call" for this scanner and it worked GREAT, even better than the 796! Here it is:
First, I made note of all the frequencies in use on PRWN Simulcast A, which is where the PD comm's for my area reside. I then subtracted 45 MHz from them, resulting in a list of mobile inputs. I programmed them in frequency order from lowest to highest as conventional frequencies.
Next, I initiated the scan on that bank and waited. Sure enough, I was close enough to snag the input comm's, although that decode was hit or miss due to the fact that you have to be pretty close for those frequencies to work, obviously. Now, here's the trick - whenever the scanner paused on any activity I pressed the REVERSE button and the scanner switched over to the repeater frequency. Sweet! I was able to keep on top of the whole incident easily on my 250D without having to wade through a bunch of unrelated traffic (including the massive amounts of encryption on this system). In fact, due to the constant issues ANY scanner has decoding our control channel, this method even snagged some comm's my BC796 missed. I was impressed to say the least.
While I was sitting there experimenting my only lament was having to press that button everytime the scanner stopped, that was a bit of a bummer. But, thanks to the wonders of computer control, I can create a little VB program to handle that for me.
Infact, that's what prompted me to post this trick. Since I'm going to be writing this little program anyway, is there any interest in me releasing it into the public domain for other BC250 or 750 users who don't have the $$$ to upgrade to a more current scanner, or just want something fun to do with their old digitals? What the program will allow you to do is to track any close by activity on your digital trunked systems so that whenever there is DTRS activity near you, you can listen in without having to camp out on the scan button. It will also automatically skip over encrypted comms whenever ENC appears on the display (who wants to listen to that stuff anyway). The downside is you'll have to keep your scanner tethered to your computer, but if that's not a problem then this program will be your ticket. Of course, it'll be a freebie, no sense in charging any money for such a simple program.
So, any takers? Post a reply here if you want it and if so then I'll make sure to code it a bit more robustly than I would if it was just for my own use.
-AZ
First a little background. I have an old BC250D scanner that I don't use much because my area uses 9600 baud trunking, not the 3600 baud that the BC250D can track. Now, I have a BC796 which CAN track 9600 baud CC's, but there's something funky about the Phoenix system and the decode on my 796 is sort of hit or miss. There have been times when the scanner just flat out refused to switch to the appropriate frequency, even when locked on a particular talkgroup. Very frustrating, especially when there's something going on right down the street and I want to keep up with the action.
So, I came up with an idea - a sort of "close call" for this scanner and it worked GREAT, even better than the 796! Here it is:
First, I made note of all the frequencies in use on PRWN Simulcast A, which is where the PD comm's for my area reside. I then subtracted 45 MHz from them, resulting in a list of mobile inputs. I programmed them in frequency order from lowest to highest as conventional frequencies.
Next, I initiated the scan on that bank and waited. Sure enough, I was close enough to snag the input comm's, although that decode was hit or miss due to the fact that you have to be pretty close for those frequencies to work, obviously. Now, here's the trick - whenever the scanner paused on any activity I pressed the REVERSE button and the scanner switched over to the repeater frequency. Sweet! I was able to keep on top of the whole incident easily on my 250D without having to wade through a bunch of unrelated traffic (including the massive amounts of encryption on this system). In fact, due to the constant issues ANY scanner has decoding our control channel, this method even snagged some comm's my BC796 missed. I was impressed to say the least.
While I was sitting there experimenting my only lament was having to press that button everytime the scanner stopped, that was a bit of a bummer. But, thanks to the wonders of computer control, I can create a little VB program to handle that for me.
Infact, that's what prompted me to post this trick. Since I'm going to be writing this little program anyway, is there any interest in me releasing it into the public domain for other BC250 or 750 users who don't have the $$$ to upgrade to a more current scanner, or just want something fun to do with their old digitals? What the program will allow you to do is to track any close by activity on your digital trunked systems so that whenever there is DTRS activity near you, you can listen in without having to camp out on the scan button. It will also automatically skip over encrypted comms whenever ENC appears on the display (who wants to listen to that stuff anyway). The downside is you'll have to keep your scanner tethered to your computer, but if that's not a problem then this program will be your ticket. Of course, it'll be a freebie, no sense in charging any money for such a simple program.
So, any takers? Post a reply here if you want it and if so then I'll make sure to code it a bit more robustly than I would if it was just for my own use.
-AZ