Trunked

just got my 996xt and im a bit confused about the ARMER system I live in west Hennepin and have the west Hennepin system frequency's like Hennepin north main (police) if I go up to Duluth will I still be able to listen to it? or will I have to program the Duluth system freq, when I went to Sherburne county the freq was weak and choppy. how do I listen to the north main while driving "outstate"?

you have to program the local site wherever you are, and also any talkgroups you want to listen to. In duluth you would want to program the duluth simulcast, and maybe some of the ones on the edge like duluth north and arrowhead, then the talkgroups, and put all that in the same system. For instance when traveling up the north shore, i have a system for duluth, with the duluth simulcast, and program the talkgroups for duluth pd, fire ems, and the st. louis south county talkgroups. then I have one for two harbors with lake county talkgroups and the lake co. simulcast, and so on. I have separate systems for places I frequent, and I used to set up the systems so I could turn them on and off as I travel so I'm not scanning the whole state while traveling. Now I use the gps function which is really nice.

I have the Hennepin county west simulcast programmed which has all of my talk groups. why is my audio choppy in sherburne do i need to program that simulcast also and say wright and hennepin east if i travel in the metro?

might be on the fringe, might be simulcast distortion. Wouldnt hurt to program the sherburne/wright simulcast in there too and see what happens. I'm not sure how far out hennepin west reaches, someone down in the cities might be able to answer that better.

anyway to add it to the current site? i use freescan. or do i have to add another system and add the talkgroups to them

you can add another site to the system, or create a new system, whatever works best for you. If you are hanging around hennepin/sherburne counties most of the time you would probably want to just add the site to the system.

this is what I'm confused on if you go here Allied Radio Matrix for Emergency Response (ARMER) Trunking System, Various, Minnesota - Scanner Frequencies
i have all of the Hennepin Co. West Simulcast under my trunked freq if i add say sherburne, wright, henn east, mpls and such will it just pick out the strongest signal/closest tower to air the one TGID i want to hear? say TGID 10002.

you program the individual sites in the system, and then it scans the sites similar to conventional scanning, if it sees one of the talkgroups on the sites while scanning it stops and listens to the talkgroup. then it starts scanning the sites again. Don't program all the frequencies on the same site, you have to program the sites individually. Seems to me there is a create new site button on freescan, just keep putting whatever sites you want to scan in the same system.

You could also create new systems for each site ... just the ones you want, and scan all of them that way. Try both ways and see which works best. Doing it this way forces the radio to scan them separately. If you are in one particular site area, turning off the other sites will scan faster.

Mark
536/996P2/HP1e/HP2e/996XT/
396XT/PSR800/PRO668/PRO652

You may pick up Hennepin North main on Wright/Sherburne you will not be able to get Hennepin North Main while in Duluth. Most mains roam on the systems they boarder with.

I would not create a new system for each site. With the 996XT you can add multiple sites to the ARMER system. Having a system for each site can be less than the most efficient scanning.

You may wish to program all of the sites in the Metro area - Hennepin East, Hennepin West, City Center, Minneapolis NS, along with those counties adjacent to you. Also, those sites for areas you travel to.

I have a 396XT, the portable version of the 996XT that I bring along on trips to Minneapolis and that's how I have it programmed.

The only time creating new systems is beneficial is if you are hitting the limits - 256 sites (not a factor with ARMER) and 500 channels per system. The number of channels could be an issue - that's the sum of control frequencies plus Talkgroup IDs.

You most likely have choppy audio because you are receiving multiple sites on the Hennepin West simulcast system. There are many posts on simulcast distortion.

Some improvement can be seen if you turn site attenuation on and optimize your P25 settings.

Also in reference to another question you asked, which was somewhat explained. The scanner goes through all of the sites, spending a second or two on each. If activity is detected, the scanner looks to the list of Talkgroup IDs that you have programmed. If the active talkgroup is found in your list, the scanner will "play" the transmission.

Given the "magic" of the ARMER system, any given talkgroup could "work" on several sites at one time. For example, the Maple Grove fire talkgroup could be active on both Hennepin East and West at the same time.

Perhaps another way of saying this, is that you program those talkgroups you are interested in hearing. The scanner listens to the sites you have programmed to see if that talkgroup is transmitting. If it is, then you hear it. Whether TG 1 comes in on site A or site B is kind of academic.

If there are a large number of sites then it does make sense to split them into different systems. The scanner will not take a couple seconds to check the sites that are out of range and you will be more likely to hear responses etc on the sites you regularly monitor. You need to put the talkgroups in each system but that's pretty much a cut & paste routine.

If you are normally in range of two sites, it makes sense to put them in the same system and let the scanner figure out which to listen to. Those sites you are less often in range of, I would put in a different system that can be activated when you are in range. That way you can better control the scanner based on where you are and not spend time scanning stuff you can't receive.

Mark
536/HP1e/HP2e/996P2/996XT/396XT/PSR800/PRO668/PRO652

The 996xt has 100 unique quick keys for turning on and off sites or other systems programmed in the scanner. It doesn't make a lot of sense to split up a single system into separate systems since you should assign each site a unique quick key for the purpose of turning them on and off, unless of course you can't resist the urge to program each and every site (most of which you are out of range of anyway).