Westcom

[Snoopster]

Hello everyone. Been a listener to scanner traffic since my days working in a television news room. Now I enjoy listening to radio traffic at home. Recently, Westcom moved from the West Des Moines Police Department to Public Safety Building Station 19 in far west West Des Moines. Has anyone else noticed that some traffic isn't being heard? Did a control channel change? Even when I was standing next to an officer, only half of his traffic was heard from my scanner. I didn't have much dropped traffic before the move. Can anyone help? And if you're interested, I'd like some tips on setting up RACOM (county sheriff traffic). Been having some problems with that as well.

[newsphotog]

This might be part of your Westcom problem, I think they added an additional frequency recently: Westcom

What do you want to hear on the RACOM system? You should be able to hear PCSO just fine off of any of the towers in Polk County. Be aware that certain agencies are usually broadcasted only on their nearest tower (example: Altoona on the Pleasant Hill tower, Pleasant Hill on the Pleasant Hill tower, Ankeny on the Des Moines tower, etc.). Unless there is a Pleasant Hill PD car in West Des Moines and that radio pings the West Des Moines tower, you won't be able to hear PHPD off the West Des Moines tower. (see also: question about racom)

RACOM is also going through the rebanding process on a lot of the tower sites (see here: RACOM Issues - Polk). I'm not aware of any changes in the metro yet though.

There are a lot of people on this forum that are very familiar with the inner workings of Westcom and RACOM, maybe they can chime in.

[Radioman96p71]

For the sake of hearing the most traffic in the Polk Co area, you would want to program in the Des Moines site. It carries nearly all the GIDs in the area on a regular basis. Pleasant Hill site carries the east side and a LOT of its traffic comes from the Mitchelville prison and Polk co jail. West Des Moines site is what I would consider a 'support site' mainly there for roaming capabilities as the city of West Des Moines and suburbs are exclusively on Westcom. There are a lot of digital GIDs on the RACOM network, but they are not too widespread yet. Glad to have you on board here at RR, hope you enjoy your time here!

KCØGIK