I have a radio shack pro 652. I can not for the life of me receive wv sirn network and when I receive ohio marcs it is choppy.
How can I fix this?
I am located in weirton on the border of brooke and hancock counties. I am 25 miles north of wheeling which is the closest wv site and 15 miles south east of empire which is the closest ohio marcs site. Will this make a difference and are there more sites that aren't listed on the radio reference site or is there better programming software than arc 500?
I'm completely new to this so thank you.
Medziatkowicz35,
Regarding MARCS. There are two MARCS systems. The first is referred to as MARCS, it is a Motorola Type II Trunking system. The MARCS system is being
retired. The new system is MARCS-IP, which is a Project 25 system.
Looking at the map it appears that you are the closest to the Jefferson County MARCS-IP system. There are two MARCS-IP tower fairly close to Weirton. The MARCS-IP system is setup as a Simulcast site. Which means multiple towers that act as one site. The towers all have the same frequencies and carry the same traffic.
For your scanner, you would setup MARCS-IP as P25 Auto.
Here are the Control Channel freq's for MARCS-IP Jefferson site: 853.66250, 853.23750, 851.41250, 858.46250
When setting up the Talk Groups be sure to add the Group Wild Card and the Private Wild Card. The Wild Cards will allow your scanner to find new system users that are not listed in the RR Database.
Here's the link to the RR Database for MARCS-IP: Scroll down the list to find Jefferson County. There are quite a few Talk Groups listed, here's a link:
Ohio MARCS-IP: Multi-Agency Radio Communications (P25) Trunking System, Various, Ohio - Scanner Frequencies
One note about the MARCS-IP Jefferson County Site. Being a Simulcast Site can cause problems for scanner users that are located close to multiple towers. If you find you are getting a lot of garbled transmissions, it is most likely Simulcast distortion. Your best bet is to try moving your scanner to other locations. Even a small move can make a big difference in reception.
There are two other MARCS-IP sites that might be within range.
Stratton: 771.95625, 771.68125...Which is North 10 miles.
Adena: 774.40625, 772.98125.. Which is roughly South West 10 plus miles.
Last but not least, your software ARC500. To be honest I never liked it. I found it hard to figure out. My preference it WIN500, which I find very easy to use. Making the setup of systems a simple straight forward process. Here's a link:
Win500: WS1040, WS1065, PSR-500, PSR-600, PRO-651, PRO-652, PRO-106, PRO-197, PSR-310, PSR-410 Scanner Software for Data Management, Monitoring, and Control
You can download WIN500 and use it for up to 30 days for a free evaluation. If you like it, you can purchase the KEY to keep it running. I've used WIN500 for the last eight years.
If you have questions specific to monitoring MARCS-IP in Jefferson County please post them in the Ohio Forum. You'll find plenty of folks willing to help.