Orange County Trunking and Rebanding

[cj5]

I was curious if anyone has programmed the Uniden BC898T for Orange County's rebanded trunked system? I have been trying to get it to work but seems I only get conventional frequencies, no ID's when I scan, and often times I get control channel noise even when in trunk scan. I have downloaded and installed Uniden's firmware upgrade to the scanner and have set the bank that has the OC frequencies as E2-Cus with the default rebanding tables programmed in as well as spacing and offset settings, but still no luck. Can anyone offer me a walk through on how to set this up correctly?

 

[2wayfreq]

I'm not too familiar with that one, you will need to confirm that its re banding compatible. Also it does not appear to have digital receive capability so you will only hear OC fire and a handful of other groups.

 

[cj5]

The scanner is definitely rebanded, because it has the E2-Cus selection in the trunking menu. Before I did the firmware update it wasn't there. I went through the update instructions on Uniden's site. Also, the BC898T is one of the radios that is in fact compatible for rebanding. I know that it doesn't have APCO-25 capabilities, and I am not looking to monitor OC's police, etc... I am pretty much passed all the technical stuff, at this point I just need an explanation as to what I am doing wrong, and how I can go about getting the trunking to work successfully. Anyone have a good answer for me?

 

[Mick]

I'm not aware of any Orange County, California TRS being rebanded yet. Which one are you trying to receive on your scanner? Thanks in advance.

 

[cj5]

US Trunked systems to be rebanded - The RadioReference Wiki

 

[JoeyC]

Orange county TRS has not rebanded as of this date.

 

[Highpockets]

I'm not going to get in the middle of if it's been rebanded yet, but, when you run the update, there are directions on "Entering A Rebanding Table" in the upgrade directions. Did you enter it?

BC898TFirmwareUpdate < UnidenMan4 < TWiki

 

[cj5]

I'm not going to get in the middle of if it's been rebanded yet, but, when you run the update, there are directions on "Entering A Rebanding Table" in the upgrade directions. Did you enter it?

Yes, yes, and yes! I have followed the directions on the rebanding page to the T. Not quite sure I understand it though, but the tables are in the scanner. I think I mentioned this in my inital post.

 

[cj5]

Orange county TRS has not rebanded as of this date.

Can you refer me to an authoritative source on this? When will the rebanding take place if it has not been done yet?

 

[kenjicam]

The Orange County TRS has not been re-banded at this time. It is in the last wave of systems to be re-banded, so it could be a while. How long who knows, but the next time I ran into someone who may know I'll ask.

What is often over looked in the re-banding process is that sometimes it's more then just putting in new frequencies into radios, and/or getting new radios. There's also infrastructure upgrades that may need to occur for the whole thing to work.

Also, all the agreements with Mexico have not been finalized yet. This doesn't mean that OC isn't already getting their ducks in a row, and planning how to re-band and upgrade their infrastructure without impacting subscriber units on the system.

Kenji Luster

 

[cj5]

The Orange County TRS has not been re-banded at this time. It is in the last wave of systems to be re-banded, so it could be a while. How long who knows, but the next time I ran into someone who may know I'll ask.

What is often over looked in the re-banding process is that sometimes it's more then just putting in new frequencies into radios, and/or getting new radios. There's also infrastructure upgrades that may need to occur for the whole thing to work.

Also, all the agreements with Mexico have not been finalized yet. This doesn't mean that OC isn't already getting their ducks in a row, and planning how to re-band and upgrade their infrastructure without impacting subscriber units on the system.

Kenji,
Thanks for the info. OK time to reset the scanner, and just try E2-800. I just can't get trunking to work on this radio.

 

[cj5]

OK, so I entered all of the control frequencies listed here Orange, County of (CCCS - Public Safety) Trunking System, Orange County, California - Scanner Frequencies into bank A

Then I hold TRUNK down until it beeps, select Bank A, and select E2-800, and press E

Then I select Prog F, and press E

Then I press TRUNK, SCAN, SRC...

All it does is sits on a control channel, and nothing, if I hit that series of buttons again, SEARCH show up on the right, but there is an Error displayed on the screen. Help!

 

[Markb]

Looking at the manual, it would appear that you are programming the control channel frequencies as conventional frequencies. If you look at the manual on page 42, #5, it says to program the control channels at this point and not prior to entering the trunking programming mode. Did you do this? This is the only way for the scanner to know that this is a trunking freq and not a conventional one. Also, I would take the time to program the talkgroups in because if you are in search mode only, the p25 and encrypted stuff will drive you crazy.
Also, if you want proof that OC hasn't rebanded, just check their FCC license. It probably won't be until 2011 at least before the agreement with Mex is completed.

 

[cj5]

Looking at the manual, it would appear that you are programming the control channel frequencies as conventional frequencies. If you look at the manual on page 42, #5, it says to program the control channels at this point and not prior to entering the trunking programming mode. Did you do this? This is the only way for the scanner to know that this is a trunking freq and not a conventional one. Also, I would take the time to program the talkgroups in because if you are in search mode only, the p25 and encrypted stuff will drive you crazy.

MarkB,

Thanks ever so much! I just ignored the order of things, and that's what was botching everything. The next step is how do I get the ID's from the talkgroups into the bank? Do I select Prog-ID, and enter in the desired numbers there? If so, I've done this, but when I hit SRC it searches and id's briefly flash on the screen (no audio), and if I hit SCAN again it shows SCAN id scrolling, but no audio is coming through.

 

[cj5]

OK, well it's all figured out finally. Somewhere I read that you only had to enter the control channels for Motorola Type II systems, but apparently for the BC898T all the frequencies listed for OC have to be entered in for a certain site, and then search and scan will work for that particular bank.

 

[kma371]

Moved to LA Forum...