The majority of Pender County transmissions have shifted over to the VIPER system because even though I live in the ILM, I do pick up the Pender County stuff on VIPER and believe it or not, some of the communications do come through the Wilmington VIPER tower and also the Holly Ridge VIPER tower. I heard one this morning and heard when they switched over to ops. Here is what I would do if I were you (reference
Voice Interoperability Plan for Emergency Responders (VIPER) Trunking System, Various, North Carolina - Scanner Frequencies)
make sure the frequencies for the following towers are programmed in your scanner
wilmington - NEW HANOVER
carolina beach - NEW HANOVER
penderlea - PENDER
Burgaw - PENDER
holly ridge - ONSLOW
kenansville - DUPLIN
kornegay - DUPLIN
Chinquapin - DUPLIN
wallace - DUPLIN
make sure all the tgid's in the "Pender County Talkgroups" are programmed, they are accurate
add the following tgid's
61936 f1f D DPRR PENDER DPRR 3 TG9 PENDER COUNTY
58016 e2a D PENDER BURG Pender Memorial Hospital Burgaw VMD12
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at the same time, keep your old conventional frequencies programmed in the scanner because many of them are still valid per the FCC license search engines and many of the old towers are still functional as a backup plan in case VIPER does break down. Case in point - Hurricane Irene - the base station equipment for the SHP went down for a three hour span during the storm and the SHP ended up resorting back to their old traditional 42 MHZ frequencies until the equipment was repaired
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also since you hint at being more around Sloop Point, you may want to look at either an external antenna or a better internal antenna. Many people for a better internal antenna get the radio shack Model 20-032 and place a steel cookie baking sheet underneath for a ground plane with the magnet in the center.