P7200 scanning

Hi

I am interested in buying a P7200 radio to scan P25 Phase I and Phase II. I am currently using Uniden. I have a colleague that uses the P7200 and it works well for him. The programming he has does not see the radio scan all the available systems that have been programmed in. You have to manually select the system you want to monitor, and then you sit on that system. The user can then only hear the audio being transmitted on that system.

I am wondering if that is the way the radio and software is, or if that can be changed. I would need the radio/scanner to be able to monitor all the systems that I want programmed in, without me switching between system to system. I want the P7200 when fully programmed to work like the Uniden does, where it goes from system to system on it's own.

Please let me know if what I am looking for is possible and how it can be done.

Thanks

NewsGuy1

Depends on your definition of "systems" and "sites". If you are referring to a single wide-area system with multiple physical sites, as long as the radio has the feature for ProScan and correct programming, it should be able to roam the sites and always track the best site.

If you are talking about multiple systems in a single area, the radio has no way of knowing what its neighbors are without the site telling it, or you programming it in. You can program specific neighbors into the sites being scanned list and it will jump systems when the signal levels get below threshold, but its not nearly as smooth as roaming between sites on a single system.

BTW, Phase2 functionality on the P7200 platform seems to be up in the air a bit, you would probably end up needing to buy the feature for that to work correctly.

Set up correctly tho, radios can track a trunking system dramatically better than their scanner counterparts, it just takes some legwork and tweaking to get it to operate as smooth as possible.

Hi, thanks for the response Radioman96p71.

In your post you said I could " You can program specific neighbors into the sites being scanned list and it will jump systems when the signal levels get below threshold, but its not nearly as smooth as roaming between sites on a single system. "

What did you mean by " not as smooth " ? Please be as specific as possible. Your answer could really impact if I buy the radio.

Thanks

NewsGuy1

In a single system / multiple site configuration, each site broadcasts out over the air who its neighbors is and what frequency the control channel is operating on. The radio is always watching this list, and when the signal on the current site degrades, it will briefly switch to one of the other known control channels from the downloaded list. It will check the signal strength there and then make a decision to stick with the current site or move to the new one. All of this happens nearly instant to the end user.

A multi-system area, where there are several cities all with their own independent system that are not joined in an way, does NOT broadcast information about the other systems. As far as its concerned, its the only one in the world. The radio can have multiple systems programmed, and be told to watch for "system A, B and C" when the signal level gets below the threshold. The problem is, when the radio goes to see what the next systems' signal level looks like, it has no idea what channel the control channel is on. So it has to step thru each channel thats programmed and try to figure out if its active, out of range or too noisy. It will only check one channel one one neighbor every polling cycle. Each cycle is about 1-1.5 secs long. So if you have a system with 8 channels, and the last channel is the active control channel, it will take almost 10 seconds for it to realize its there, then it can finally make a decision. It has to do this every time it moves systems.

So you can see, on a "native" system, roaming happens almost instantly because it already knows the information about the next site over. Using it as a scanner to move around several systems can be pretty annoying if you don't have the radio programmed exactly right or if you move around a lot.

Ultimately, it will probably work better than a scanner, especially in a simulcast area, but it will probably take a few tries to get right.

Try: http://communications.support/forums/21-Harris-M-A-COM

TrooperBruceMichaels and Radioman96p71.. Thanks for the info and the quick replies. It's been very helpful in making a decision.

On that note for anyone viewing this thread, I am looking to get a radio programmed by someone in the Greater Toronto Area. I would need Phase 1 and Phase 2 systems uploaded in the radio. The radio would have to be programmed to switch from system to system on it's own, without me switching settings and truing dials to cause that to happen. If you are reading this and happen to know someone, please send me a PM.

Thanks

NewsGuy1

If you need Phase II, there are very few P7200s that can handle Phase II. Get a P7300 instead. FULLY P25 Phase II compliant, with the right options, of course.

P7200s that can actually monitor Phase II are scarce as hen's teeth. There's some very comprehensive information about them in another topic that's active in this subforum right now.


Getting a scanner WILL be much cheaper and be easier to get programmed than to actually find someone who will program up a P7200 or P7300 on a P25 system.

And if it turns out that you want to monitor a system that has a restricted WACN, you won't be ABLE to use a Harris radio to do it unless you get explicit authorization to have your radio on that system.

NewsGuy1 said:

I am interested in buying a P7200 radio to scan P25 Phase I and Phase II. I am currently using Uniden. I have a colleague that uses the P7200 and it works well for him.

NewsGuy1

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Radioman96p71 said:

BTW, Phase2 functionality on the P7200 platform seems to be up in the air a bit, you would probably end up needing to buy the feature for that to work correctly.

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ElroyJetson said:

If you need Phase II, there are very few P7200s that can handle Phase II. Get a P7300 instead. FULLY P25 Phase II compliant, with the right options, of course. P7200s that can actually monitor Phase II are scarce as hen's teeth. There's some very comprehensive information about them in another topic that's active in this sub forum right now. Getting a scanner WILL be much cheaper and be easier to get programmed than to actually find someone who will program up a P7200 or P7300 on a P25 system.

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NEWSGUY1,

As the person who figured-out the semi-successful hack to get the P7200 radios to monitor Phase-2, I agree 100% with Radioman96p71 and ElroyJetson. If your moniker is an actual description of your profession, a news professional, get a phase-2 capable scanning receiver. It will serve you better in your needs. Yes, a fully loaded P7300 would be nice, BUT, it would cost several times more than a quality scanner.


My humble recommendation …


P7200’s that can monitor Phase-2 appear to be few, and apparently confined to the last few Hardware Revisions ( ~H4 to N2 ??? ). A shortcoming that cannot be overcome with a simple software/firmware upgrade.



My original intent was to allow someone to take their existing P7200 radio, and allow it to monitor Phase-2 trunked communications, at no additional cost to the individual. It was not until other readers of this forum who owned other hardware revisions of the radio, usually earlier revisions, found out that this “recipe” for Phase-2 reception did not work as desired.

If I had known the upgrade was limited to certain hardware revisions, I would have made note of that in my original postings as a caveat, or not have ever published my findings in the first place. I have taken a lot of heat over this not working, and apologize to everyone.

kb4cvn said:

If I had known the upgrade was limited to certain hardware revisions, I would have made note of that in my original postings as a caveat, or not have ever published my findings in the first place. I have taken a lot of heat over this not working, and apologize to everyone.

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kb4cvn- I for one am GLAD you shared your findings. I see no reason ANYONE should give you heat over this. How were you to know in advance that the H/W revision would have such a large impact on this particular discovery? Especially with so many hardware changes over the production cycle of one particular product. I hope this doesn't discourage you in publishing future findings, you by far are one of the most (if not the most) knowledgeable guys out there as far as the inter workings of Harris (and predecessor) products that participate in this forum. In my opinion, no apologies necessary.

KB4CVN, I also want to express my thanks to you for taking the time to investigate exactly what was going on with the P7200 issue. You have quantified the issue in a thorough and professional manner and there is absolutely no way that you deserve anything but praise for you conduct when you found out that your initial findings constituted a rare special case.

You followed the process: Analysis, synthesis, hypothesis. You derived a comprehensive data set from it which fully explains the observed behaviors.

Well done, sir.

KB4CVN, You my friend, have been absolutely most valuable to my understanding and learning about the Harris radios and all their programing issues. I also thank you for all of your help that you have provided to me off the forum. I salute you sir!!! Many thanks!!!

kb4cvn said:

NEWSGUY1,

As the person who figured-out the semi-successful hack to get the P7200 radios to monitor Phase-2, I agree 100% with Radioman96p71 and ElroyJetson. If your moniker is an actual description of your profession, a news professional, get a phase-2 capable scanning receiver. It will serve you better in your needs. Yes, a fully loaded P7300 would be nice, BUT, it would cost several times more than a quality scanner.


My humble recommendation …


P7200’s that can monitor Phase-2 appear to be few, and apparently confined to the last few Hardware Revisions ( ~H4 to N2 ??? ). A shortcoming that cannot be overcome with a simple software/firmware upgrade.



My original intent was to allow someone to take their existing P7200 radio, and allow it to monitor Phase-2 trunked communications, at no additional cost to the individual. It was not until other readers of this forum who owned other hardware revisions of the radio, usually earlier revisions, found out that this “recipe” for Phase-2 reception did not work as desired.

If I had known the upgrade was limited to certain hardware revisions, I would have made note of that in my original postings as a caveat, or not have ever published my findings in the first place. I have taken a lot of heat over this not working, and apologize to everyone.

Click to expand...

Does this now mean that only the latest hardware versions of the P7200 can receive Phase 2 even if purchasing the #47 option?

Can someone here set me straight.

I'm interested in getting a P7100E to scan a system with several talk groups. However, from reading here and there, it appeared to me that the radio does not do this. Instead, you would have to manually select each talk group.

Is this correct?

gcopter1 said:

Can someone here set me straight.

I'm interested in getting a P7100E to scan a system with several talk groups. However, from reading here and there, it appeared to me that the radio does not do this. Instead, you would have to manually select each talk group.

Is this correct?

Click to expand...

I believe what may start to complicate things is if you intend on scanning talkgroups across multiple systems/sites/zones.

You should have no issue scanning the active zone, provided the radio has the feature and is programmed correctly.

Miami Dade County P25 System. One site. Was reading lat night where someone that has the radio and using it for the same system I intend to monitor, said that you could scan across the talk groups but if you heard something interesting, you just couldn't hold onto it because the radio would default to first tg on scanlist and then having to manually move to the tg of interest.

How many button presses that involves?

What I believe NewsGuy1 wants to do is this...

Have a scan list that will let him monitor various groups across various systems. The system where we live has 4 zones, North South East and West. He likely wants to monitor a bunch of groups on North, a bunch on South, a bunch on East and a bunch on West.

This won't work so great in a 7200 (or any radio for that matter), as the radio would be continually switching between the 4 sites. When the radio is scanning on say, West - it won't pick up anything from the other three. That is to say, you will only be scanning groups on a particular site 25% of the time.

The short answer, is that yes you CAN have a radio set up to scan across several disparate systems, but you probably shouldn't as you'll miss comms. The best way is still to have 4 separate radios.

NewsGuy1 said:

I want the P7200 when fully programmed to work like the Uniden does, where it goes from system to system on it's own.

Click to expand...

Just to clarify from my previous post - you'll never get a 7200 (or any commercial radio) to scan the same way as a Uniden does - they're just not designed for it.

The P7200 works amazingly well for what it is designed for, but if you want to be able to have the radio sit there and scan Halton, Durham, Peel, Toronto and York all at the same time, you'll be disappointed with the 7200.

gcopter1 said:

Miami Dade County P25 System. One site. Was reading lat night where someone that has the radio and using it for the same system I intend to monitor, said that you could scan across the talk groups but if you heard something interesting, you just couldn't hold onto it because the radio would default to first tg on scanlist and then having to manually move to the tg of interest.

How many button presses that involves?

Click to expand...

Depends on how many channels you have in that zone, what channel you're on, and what channel you need to get to.

How mine is set up... if I want to "hold" on a talkgroup, I would have to stop the scan, and then scroll to the channel I want in the zone.

gcopter1 said:

Miami Dade County P25 System. One site. Was reading lat night where someone that has the radio and using it for the same system I intend to monitor, said that you could scan across the talk groups but if you heard something interesting, you just couldn't hold onto it because the radio would default to first tg on scanlist and then having to manually move to the tg of interest.

How many button presses that involves?

Click to expand...

As the person who from Harris who (before I retired in 2012) made the technical decision to totally replace Miami-Dade's fleet of P7200's and replace them with P7300's, and who also wrote part of the mobile/portable/desktop station radio programming used during their EDACS to P-25 migration, I can comment on their systems with a bit of knowledge.

Miami-Dade County has two complete multisite simulcast systems. One for public safety users, a second for non-public safety users which also serves as a backup for the primary system.

The simulcast system, to a user radio, appears as a single RF Site. M-D has a absolutely huge number of talkgroups in each radio. I looked at an archived personality I have from 2011-2012, and it contains 1,264 talkgroups! I would guess that 85% are not used, and may never be.

The schema used for all the "extra" talkgroups is a common one for newer systems. The user radio contains every talkgroup they could possibly ever need. However, individual radio access to these talkgroups is controlled by whether or not the radio is 'privileged' to the use the talkgroup by the UAS Computer via the Enable/Disable control parameter, or in secure (encrypted) talkgroups whether or not the radio has the required cryptographic codekey assigned to that specific talkgroup.

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For a monitor only personality file, I would suggest loading only the most needed groups to monitor. And listen to that most of the time. Have a second system in the radio, containing a much larger list of talkgroups, for when the need arises.

For your higher priority/most used talkgroups, I suggest mapping a preset memory button (SG1 to SG16) on the radio's keypad, as a quick access button to that specific talkgroup when needed.

My humble suggestions....

kb4cvn said:

M-D has a absolutely huge number of talkgroups in each radio. I looked at an archived personality I have from 2011-2012, and it contains 1,264 talkgroups! I would guess that 85% are not used, and may never be.

Click to expand...

Indeed. Right now my list is trimmed down to less than a hundred and I'm inclined to trim it even further.

kb4cvn said:

For a monitor only personality file, I would suggest loading only the most needed groups to monitor. And listen to that most of the time. Have a second system in the radio, containing a much larger list of talkgroups, for when the need arises.

Click to expand...

Is this something that the P7100E model can do?
How would you suggest I specify this to the person programming my radio? I want to make sure he is clear on this.

kb4cvn said:

For your higher priority/most used talkgroups, I suggest mapping a preset memory button (SG1 to SG16) on the radio's keypad, as a quick access button to that specific talkgroup when needed.

Click to expand...

How do I access SG1 thru 16?
In looking at the keypad for the P7100E it isn't readily apparent there are that many positions. Would you please clarify?

kb4cvn said:

My humble suggestions....

Click to expand...

kb4cvn, I've been using Bearcat/Uniden scanners for over 25 years. Your suggestion, though, is like me understanding Aramaic

I do thank you profusely for jumping in and helping us/me further understand the subject