ws1065 and sullivan county indiana

i can get ems and dispatch on the conventional but not the p25phase 1. any ideas i would really like to be able to here the cops talking to.

The way Sullivan county is setup, you'll need a conventional system with three VHF fire for Farmersburg, Sullivan city, and Dugger in order to be able to hear fire and ems traffic as none of the fire departments use the 800 system for primary, so on 800 fire you will generally only hear the dispatcher, and on VHF sheriff you will only hear the dispatcher as well. You'll need to have the 800 system scanning as well to hear the law enforcement field units and the VHF scanning to hear the fire and ems field units if that makes sense.


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Ok how do I know if it's running both of them? Right now it will scan the hoosier p25 and sullivan ems

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The scanner has to take turns doing both, it can have them programmed to scan at the same time, but can only receive one or the other at any given time.


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The problem I'm having is I can't hear the field units

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like right now dispatch is talking on the vhf channels but I cant hear nothing from the field units. did I program it wrong?

Is the 800 system giving you anything at all? If it's taking too long on the vhf to scan back over to 800 that might be why you aren't hearing anything.


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Ok I'll try taking the vhf out of it. I'll leave the fire department and ems vhf an try that.

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Is the VHF on a repeater system? If it's plain Simplex, with field units talking directly to Dispatch (which will have a pretty high antenna), and no repeater involved, it's not unusual to not be able to hear field units, which the Dispatcher is obviously hearing. The answer to that is to put up an external antenna and get it as high as reasonably possible, something that isn't an option for many folks.

Sullivan Co. is a little too far away for me to hear (unless I'm mobile and south of Terre Haute which doesn't happen that often) so I'm not real familiar with them. Do they simulcast on Safe-T? If so, you aren't going to miss anything by losing the VHF side. Just speaking in generalities here, trying to be helpful.

Dispatch simulcasts on VHF and 800 for transmit only. The VHF is a repeater, but the field units only talk back to dispatch on 800. Fire is the exact opposite for the field units.


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Before they went to the 800 we had a Motorola out of a police car that we had setup as a repeater. Had a 7ft antenna on it. Could hear alot of stuff on that thing. Can I do that with the scanner?

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You mean connect it to an antenna? Any antenna better than the stock one will improve things...to a point. You may experience overload issues from several sources, FM broadcast, cell towers, etc. If you're talking mobile the Larsen NMO-150/450/800 works very well. It can also be used with a radial kit as a base antenna. A cheaper option for a base setup would be a discone, which if you get it up high should work well even though it has zero gain. For a cheaper mobile option the Spectrum Force has good reviews if you won't ever need to transmit on it. If your feedline is more than 15' or so get some good co-ax, RG-58 is going to experience a lot of loss on UHF/800. LMR-240 works well for a mobile setup, for a longer feed for a base such as 50' I'd use no less than LMR-400.

@evfd 1625: That's pretty common practice from what I've seen. Rural VFD's tend to have less of the higher end gear to access the TSYS so that traffic lingers on VHF. But if they're hitting a repeater, he should be hearing them. For the other (LE I presume) that only simulcasts Dispatch on the 800, he should be hearing all of it on the 800 side...unless they're doing something weird. Up to the P25 upgrade Vigo SD still simulcasted Dispatch traffic on their old VHF, but you could hear both of them on the Safe-T side.

Anybody know if I can make a Motorola radius cm 300 a scanner for p25. Or a icom iv82. Parents are giving them to me for free along with the 50 ft antenna they have

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zachb91 said:

Anybody know if I can make a Motorola radius cm 300 a scanner for p25. Or a icom iv82. Parents are giving them to me for free along with the 50 ft antenna they have

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No, and no. The IV82 is a 2M Ham handheld. The Radius is either VHF-Hi or UHF analog. Both are conventional radios, neither will trunk or cover the 800 MHz band, and neither has the ability to decode P25 digital in any form.

Until they start rolling P.2 out, your 1065 should work fine. I have a Pro-197, which is the same radio with a different name on it, and it remains my favorite scanner. It works great on the Safe-T system, as well as what little conventional stuff I have on it.

What kind of an antenna? Presumably it is on a 50' mast or tower, which isn't the antenna itself. You could try using it with your 1065. That should drastically improve your reception, unless you're too close to a cell tower or a radio station.

Ok thank you. I'll just program those to 4 ham radio. An according g to a sherrief friend were not going to phase to for a least 5 years

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most if not all Sullivan traffic can be heard on the Vigo Tower, 859.7125... As stated, ALL LEO's are on 800... Fire/EMS is mostly on VHF