Programming The Unication G5 (VHF/800 MHz) For Trip Through Wisconsin

I will be taking a road trip soon from Minneapolis-Saint Paul MN area to the Milwaukee area. If I bring my Unication G5, how should I program it for each county I travel through? If I understand correctly, the Wisconsin State Patrol has switched to WISCOM, but many local agencies have not. So, it appears as if my choices might be as follows:

-Program the WISCOM system and monitor since much of my time will be on the interstate highway

-Program in conventional VHF frequencies and not monitor the Wisconsin State Patrol

-Program in conventional VHF frequencies and WISCOM frequencies, but monitor all of them conventionally

Anyway, for those of you familiar with Wisconsin listening, what would you do?

Wisconsin

From MN to Milwaukee is a lot of ground to cover. I guess that would depend on which counties you plan on going through. I'd say program your wiscom for state. Then fire and ems paging channels only for the counties you'll be going through. You won't be able to hear Milwaukee PD cause they use opensky. But you can hear the sheriff and several other surrounding PD,ems,and fire agencies.

I would program it all as WISCOM as most Scan TGs are active with each county's "main" law channel. That's what I do in my truck with the WISCOM scanner once I step out of my region.

How do you like your G5 and what was the ball park figure?

The Unication G5 does an excellent job with the Minnesota ARMER system. As far as price goes, I "bought" a Minitor, when they had the trade in promotion, and traded it in on the G5, so I suppose the net price was about $750.00.

I am getting ready to program some more systems into my Unication G5. When I program Pierce County, can I program BOTH analog AND P25 into a conventional zone?

I am currently listening to Pierce County on conventional APCO P25 on a Motorola APX7000. I am also listening to WISCOM on my Unication G5. The only thing that I have heard so far is Talkgroup 151 Wisconsin State Patrol Northwest 1 - Eau Claire Post. I am using it in the MONITOR MODE, so I should hear any activity on that site. Has Pierce County ever been carried on WISCOM?

I do not think the scan groups are active right now.

If you're using it in monitor mode, then yeah that's all you're getting. WISCOM activity is hit or miss depending on locations in the state. Where I am, I have multiple counties using it. I have also traveled through the state and only heard scan TGs.

How did your trips go? When I've driven through I've hard a hard time getting my G5 to stay in range. Attaching an SMA-BNC adapter and running an external antenna didn't make a difference-that antenna is clearly 700/800 mhz only. I was getting out of range messages so often I eventually quit trying. I wonder if the drop-in charger with an external antenna would be worth it for this purpose. I do wish an antenna aside from the built-in one could be attached for VHF use.

I took a trip down Highway 53 with my G5 clipped to my headliner. I did get bounced out of range quite a bit. Keep in mind, WISCOM is designed for 95% mobile coverage using a 1/4 antenna. I felt it performed pretty well for those specs. The external antenna is only 700/800mhz.

The drop in charger does improve VHF coverage and would make things better for your monitoring purposes.

The 95% figure is generally going to be referring to talk-back coverage, as mobile (and handheld) transmitters are disadvantaged as compared to base transmitters.

I get 100% overlapping tower RX coverage on my portable with a duck. Usually I can get solid reception on 2-3 towers and marginal coverage from another 2-3 when I'm well into the state (e.g., not by a border). For sure there are going to be some areas where there's just no tower coverage but I haven't run into one that I know of yet.

With respect to the G5, I don't have one just yet, but I will when they roll out TDMA. I did read a post by their rep that mentioned that he had looked at the schematic and thought that the external antenna port actually did feed both bands. While I wouldn't be buying the G5 for WISCOM, this would be nice if true. And adding a true VHF antenna on the roof is going to make reception very nice - as an example, I got bits and pieces of DANECOM traffic while in downtown Milwaukee recently.

sixtytwo said:

For sure there are going to be some areas where there's just no tower coverage but I haven't run into one that I know of yet.

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Come on up to Northern Wisconsin, I"ll show you plenty of areas where your portable will lose coverage.