Barry / Allegan County

[GorbGuy]

Hi All,

First time poster, long time reader. Anyways, anyone else in the Barry/Allegan County area? I've had both of these counties programmed for a few weeks now in my PRO-2096, and now... or just this week it seems, Barry County seems to be operating on Allegan's frequencies. I know the MPSCS system is nifty like that, but just thought it was odd. At first I thought my new antenna was the culprit (I had Allegan off and was only scanning Barry,) but the one that came with the scanner has similar results. Opened up Allegan and was constanly hearing "Barry Central."

Thanks all!!

Gorb

[digitalpimp_n]

GorbGuy, I think that you are misunderstanding how the system works. I will say that in the digital scanner its all about the talkgroups. They can share the same frequencies, but not the same talkgroup. Take the Barry Counties talkgroup out of that bank and close it and it will be fine. Hope this helps!
DIGITALPIMP_N

[HobbyTalk]

I'm a new Pro-96 owner too (basically the same as a 2096) and moving from an old Uniden scanner really had me messed up for awhile. I live in the Plainwell area.

What I have found is that the vast majority of all transmissions come from the Plainwell tower or the Allen Park tower. If you are further north you may want to include the Wayland tower and drop the Allen Park tower. That will pretty much include everything from the Kzoo DPS, Kzoo Co/Twp., State PD, DNR, Ft. Custer, etc.

What I have found to make sense for me is to program in the same tower freq in 4 banks and the talkgroups I want to monitor in the first 3 banks. Then close the forst 3 banks. Leave the 4th bank open.

On the closed banks you will only hear the talkgorups you have programmed in. On the open bank you will hear any talkgroups that you don't have programmed in. You can then watch the display and if you see any talkgroup numbers being displayed (Instead of the Alpha Tag) on the 4th bank, write them down and look them up in the database here. You can then program that talkgroup into one of the closed banks.

I also have one Convental bank for the EMS services.

I am far from an expert on this but that was the only I way I could make heads of tails of this new trucked system. I thought I would throw out my experences from another newbies point of view. Of course other more experenced people may have a better suggestion

I would suggest you get the Win96 program and become a supporter here. It makes programmin sooooooo much easier!

[GorbGuy]

Thanks for the replies all.

Currently I have Wayland, Plainwell, and Nashville programmed into the scanner (along with Kent County airport, USCG, fire and rescue, and the company I work at.) Before this weekend, all of the Barry Central traffic I was hearing was coming from Nashville. Last night I noticed that I was no longer recieving any police traffic, so I turned Wayland and Plainwell back on (I had those two groups disabled... Wayland guys seem to jabber a lot ) and I was once again receiving police traffic. My first thought was that my new antenna was goofy, but hearing Plainwell and Allegan (I even picked up some Ionia county traffic,) was more or less proof that the antenna wasn't the issue. I sat around a little later than I should have last night, and notta coming from Nashville.

Here is a question for the guys in the know though. Do I need to program in all of the channels associated with a specific tower on the MPSCS system, or only the Control and Alternates? I've seen this being mentioned as being a "yes" but my results seemed to vary when doing that. Perhaps I wasn't being patient enough. ops:

FYI: I'm in Middleville on a HUGE hill. I can pick up just about everything and I am totally loving this new scanner. Still learning some of the quirks and gotchas, but I like it so far. I also have Win96. Heh, just too much stuff to program in without it.

[mikey60]

You only need the control channels to track the system. Alternates are only used when something is wrong with the primary control channel, but it's a good idea to add those also.

One concept that I think is throwing you for a loop is the concept of a smartzone/omnilink system like the MPSCS. One thing you need to keep in mind is that any agency can concievably show up on any tower in the system at any time. Agencies are not limited to towers that are in their own county or city.

What towers an agency can be heard on depends on what users (ie PD Units, MDOC units, EMS, etc) are using a particular tower. There will be certain towers where you will almost always hear certain agencies, and others where you will hear them some of the time and not others. This is probably what is happening here.

When a user turns on their radio, it will search for the strongest control channel it can find. Once it does so, it will register (also known as affiliate) with that tower. This affiliation includes a talkgroup ID and the Radio ID. This process tells the system that the radio is using that tower, and the tower should transmit that specific talkgroup for that radio (and any other radios using the same talkgroup on that tower).

As the user starts to move out of range of that tower, the radio will again search for a tower with a stronger signal. Each tower transmits as part of the data stream on the control channel a list of tower that are close in proximity to the current tower. These towers are referred to as neighbors. If one of these towers has a stronger signal than the current tower, the radio will un-affiliate with the current tower and then affiliate to the new tower. If there are no other radios on the first tower using that talkgroup, then the tower will no longer transmit that talkgroup.

I hope this helps a little. It's a concept that can take awhile to grasp but once understood, can help tremendously.

Mike

[GorbGuy]

Nope, I understand fully how the system works. It kinda reminds me of Nextel's two-way feature. I can be in Canada, Washington DC, Florida, where ever, and still be reached at 131*blahblahblah. The thing I thought was odd was that there is zero traffic coming from any of the Nashville frequency group. I mean notta. I know that sometimes, some of the officers will be nearer Wayland... like when in Yankee Springs, Middleville, Orangeville, etc. But I would have to imagine that there would be at least some traffic coming from that group.

One thing I have noticed, and I'm not fully sure what this means; but when I manually goto a control channel, the bottom line on the scanner will sift through number/letter combinations and show a % while doing so. Perhaps signal strength? Anyways, while on the Wayland control, it's almost always in the 80% to 90% range. Nashville is shows anywhere from 0% to 70%. Anyone know what this % indicates? It only seems to show up on digital systems, afaik.

Attached is a copy of my config, just cuz.

[mikey60]

The % indicates the decode rate on the signal. The higher the percentage, the better the radio is able to decode the control channel data, and indirectly, an indication of the signal strength.

The Letter combinations are:

96:SY796 System ID 796
96:T0309 Zone 3, tower 9 (This is shown in Hex representation)
96:92493 WACN (Wide area communication network)

Mike

[rdale]

"I had those two groups disabled... Wayland guys seem to jabber a lot"

I think you must be scanning in open mode... Program the ID's you want to listen to, and then close the bank. If all you want is Barry Co, you'll hear the same conversations no matter what tower the transmission is on.

[GorbGuy]

I think I figured out the problem... or problems thanks to everone's suggestions.
http://radioreference.com/modules.ph...=128374#128374

Originally Posted by mikey60

Normally, the Pro-96 will scan the bank until it finds the first control channel, monitor that control channel for activity, and then go on to the next bank. There is a trick that can be used with the Pro-96 to get it to scan all of the control channels it finds in a bank. To do that, place a conventional FM frequency beween each tower's control frequency (I use I-Call, 866.0125 for this). This will force the radio to check any and all control channels it finds in the bank.

First I'd like to thank everyone for their posts. If I hadn't taken the advice given on using open and closed groups, I probably would have never gotten to Mikey's suggestion on adding in an FM channel between the controls, and I'd still be wondering why this scanner thing-a-ma-jig seemed off. Once I seperated things out into closed groups and did the FM trick for control channels, it seems to be now picking up a LOT more activity!

Thanks guys! And happy scanning!

P.S. - HobbyTalk - I travel to Plainwell quite a bit to snowboard (when there is snow.) Where abouts is that tower? Near Bittersweet (because of the larger hills in that area??)

[HobbyTalk]

The tower is on M89 by EB Ave. It's actually in Barry county almost on the Kalamazoo county line.