State police in Monroe and Adrian

I live in Adrian MI and seem to suddenly have problems with picking up the State Police. I used to get a fair amount of traffic from them, not a lot but some. I can pick up the local post (14 out of monroe) which covers monroe and adrian. I can catch them logging off at night and on in the morning. So I can get it them, I know that. However since Friday before the races I suddenly stopped getting any real traffic from them. I could here them logging on and saying where they would working but I never hear them after that. Like for traffic stops or hourly check ins.

Anyone else experiencing this or have any idea why? I have an outside mounted discone antenna about 20 feet up, so I don't think reception is an issue. I don't have any trouble picking up Monroe or Lenawee county sheriffs at pretty far distances. And like I said, I can here them log in and off with dispatch, and the signal are clear and strong. I just don't hear anything after that. And it just started Friday.

paulmohr said:

I live in Adrian MI and seem to suddenly have problems with picking up the State Police. I used to get a fair amount of traffic from them, not a lot but some. I can pick up the local post (14 out of monroe) which covers monroe and adrian. I can catch them logging off at night and on in the morning. So I can get it them, I know that. However since Friday before the races I suddenly stopped getting any real traffic from them. I could here them logging on and saying where they would working but I never hear them after that. Like for traffic stops or hourly check ins.

Anyone else experiencing this or have any idea why? I have an outside mounted discone antenna about 20 feet up, so I don't think reception is an issue. I don't have any trouble picking up Monroe or Lenawee county sheriffs at pretty far distances. And like I said, I can here them log in and off with dispatch, and the signal are clear and strong. I just don't hear anything after that. And it just started Friday.

Click to expand...

My quick guess is a lot of the MSP units in the district (and others) worked the NASCAR race. After checking in/off duty they switched to a State Events channel. With the depleted number of units the traffic may have be so reduced that they combined D1North and D1South dispatch. So it is a matter of switching talk groups. They had an event channel for traffic device control (sign company) and I heard another but being out of range most of the time for that area I'm not sure what channels they used. I also hear HVA's OPS on their channel set aside for the event. Their dispatch is near where I live so I will hear them.

Also, just wondering...which talkgroup do you listen to? I see one for D1South and D14 Monroe but I don't monitor them often since the D! cars I generally listen to are on D! North and Washtenaw.

I have all the ID's for south central State police programmed in, but normally the only thing I hear anything on is D1south. Which is State Highway Patrol for monroe, hillsdale, lenawee and jackson from what I hear. Those are the locations they units normally give when checking in for their shift.

I thought the same thing about the races, most of them were being assigned to MIS. Then I figured they were using a channel I couldn't get or switched to a tower I couldn't receive. However it is now Tuesday, the races are over and I am still not hearing any general traffic. I still here them sign on and off for their shifts, but nothing in between.

I get all of the Emergent Health group HVA stuff, so much so that I put it on its system so I can shut it off lol. Same way with Monroe, if I turn everything on for Monroe I get so much chatter I miss most of the local adrain stuff. Monroe is fun to listen to though, they get some rather interesting calls and get into more car chases.

I am thinking it might actually be an antenna issue. I took a drive today and brought my scanner along with the little stubby stock antenna. Driving around I was picking up the state cars, but I don't know if it was shift change and that is what I was hearing though. I just got home so I am going to listen with the stock antenna for a while and see. My new antenna system might somehow be over powering something and it just isn't grabbing them reliably. I may have to play around with antenuating some channels or something.

I have been playing with a lot of antenna set ups and amplifiers/cabling lately trying to see if I can pull in Monroes multi cast towers. I came really close, but no cigar lol. I can lock onto every frequency around the control channel, but not the actual control channel lol. I drive a few miles east and I can pick it up with the crappy stock antenna, go figure.

In lenawee county almost everything is still analog, except the State Police. If for some reason I can't get them anymore I might as well sell this fancy digital scanner and get a 90 dollar analog one, or something from a flea market. But we all know the day after I do that they will switch over to digital lmao.

You get the channels I want. I want to get washtenaw and wayne highway patrol but can't.

My bad, it is D1North I pick up. So there is where my issue lies, I was getting D1south, which is post 13 and 14 for monroe and adrian. Now for some reason I am getting D1north which is posts 11 and 12 out of lansing. Weird, I wonder how that happened. I used to not be able to get those at all. I wonder if something to do with the ID's changed?

If you look at the database on radioreference under the mspcs district 1 you will see at statement just under the section headline that says most of the time D1North and D1South are connected.

There was also a discussion back in February that said the same thing.

I don't get race traffic except for HVA but since the dispatch is in Ann Arbor I pick it up. The traffic control had someone say POCO which I believe is the sign/traffic people. The state probably gives them portables for the race since the traffic control covers a large area. Since traffic control gets awful close to Washtenaw's system that I can hear them. But MSP units seem to stay off during this period unless they get closer to Washtenaw then the simulcast will pick it up. .

paulmohr said:

I want to get washtenaw and wayne highway patrol but can't.

Click to expand...

The Washtenaw MSP units are dispatched by Washtenaw Metro Dispatch, on 81 Metro West.

Sent via Tapatalk

krokus said:

The Washtenaw MSP units are dispatched by Washtenaw Metro Dispatch, on 81 Metro West.

Sent via Tapatalk

Click to expand...

Interesting, I think I can actually get that one. I did an ID search and it popped up. I had to search that hole darn data base to find out what it was lol. If anyone is interested I am working on a spread sheet that lists all the id's in numerical order. Makes it a lot easier to track one down if you don't know what system it was in. There are only 3,838 of them to sort through lol.

And I completely missed the notation about the north and south being patched together, but sure enough there it is lol. Thanks for the tip.

Is what really gets me, is if you look at coverage area for the state police district 1 it shows it being like 70 miles. So the way I understand it I should getting all of that off my local Adrian tower, not just D1north and south, but I don't. Obviously I understand it wrong lol.

State Police traffic for MIS race weekends can be found on Statewide EVENT channels. The last race I was at, they were using GEVENT 01-GEVENT 08 (TGs 1010-1017).

paulmohr said:

.... If anyone is interested I am working on a spread sheet that lists all the id's in numerical order. Makes it a lot easier to track one down if you don't know what system it was in. There are only 3,838 of them to sort through lol.

Click to expand...

Save your time. On the MPSCS database page, at the top of the System Talkgroups heading, you will see "List All in One Table". If you click on that, it will display all TG's on the system in numerical order, without the department headings.

drdispatch said:

Save your time. On the MPSCS database page, at the top of the System Talkgroups heading, you will see "List All in One Table". If you click on that, it will display all TG's on the system in numerical order, without the department headings.

Click to expand...

Thanks, I found that last night by accident. Of course it was AFTER spending about 3 hours editing stuff in a spreadsheet program lmao. I clicked on it and it spit out a list just like the one I had just created. Needless to say there was a fair amount of swearing on my end.

By the way, you guy's suggestions did the trick. A few days ago I created a new data base just for local channels and streamlined the channels and order to help it scan quicker. I discovered while in doing so I left out D1north since it was post 11 and 12 and I was specifically looking for post 14. I never noticed the note saying they were combined. My guess is they used to use D1south for both which is why I was seeing it on my log list in Freescan. They must have switched it up and started using D1north or something. I went ahead and loaded all the channels for District 1 and now it seems to be working. I also never thought of adding 81west from wasthenaw since I figured it was on their tower and I wouldn't pick it up. I added it and low and behold it works lol.

Thanks for all your help guys.

paulmohr said:

I also never thought of adding 81west from wasthenaw since I figured it was on their tower and I wouldn't pick it up. I added it and low and behold it works lol.

Thanks for all your help guys.

Click to expand...

If you are in Adrian and you are using anything other then the stock antenna then you should have little to no issue picking up the actual Washtenaw Simulcast towers. I can pickup the Washtenaw Simulcast using an outdoor 800mhz Yagi antenna pointed that way from Ferndale.

Nope, and believe me I have TRIED lol. I have a discone about 20 feet in the air, and I have tried using a home made yagi tuned to 850 mhz about 15 feet in the air on a pole I can turn and aim at various towers. Also with various amplifiers, pre amps with fm traps and uhf/vhf combiners built in. The only trunked site I can catch is the one in Adrian about 5 miles away. I can't get the one by Round lake, which is the closest. I can't get any of monroes, and there is one near Sylvania Ohio and I can't get Washtenaws. If I drive a few miles east I can pick up monroes with my stock antenna lol.

Whoever designs they 800 mhz systems knows what they are doing because the range is very accurate and drops off very fast when you leave it. I can grab analog signals from over 50 miles away in any direction, but not a trunking site. If I use the bandscope mode on my 325p2 I can see where I can pick up every frequency on the trunking list EXCEPT the control channel lol. I can lock onto everything around it pretty strong, but not that frequency. It is quite frustrating lol.

However, according the charts I have looked at I shouldn't have to. Form the looks of it the State police have their own tower for each district and it has about a 70 mile range. And the state agencies cover the whole state, plus bordering states.

paulmohr said:

Nope, and believe me I have TRIED lol. I have a discone about 20 feet in the air, and I have tried using a home made yagi tuned to 850 mhz about 15 feet in the air on a pole I can turn and aim at various towers. Also with various amplifiers, pre amps with fm traps and uhf/vhf combiners built in. The only trunked site I can catch is the one in Adrian about 5 miles away. I can't get the one by Round lake, which is the closest. I can't get any of monroes, and there is one near Sylvania Ohio and I can't get Washtenaws. If I drive a few miles east I can pick up monroes with my stock antenna lol.

Whoever designs they 800 mhz systems knows what they are doing because the range is very accurate and drops off very fast when you leave it. I can grab analog signals from over 50 miles away in any direction, but not a trunking site. If I use the bandscope mode on my 325p2 I can see where I can pick up every frequency on the trunking list EXCEPT the control channel lol. I can lock onto everything around it pretty strong, but not that frequency. It is quite frustrating lol.

However, according the charts I have looked at I shouldn't have to. Form the looks of it the State police have their own tower for each district and it has about a 70 mile range. And the state agencies cover the whole state, plus bordering states.

Click to expand...

I have a feeling its more of a local topographic and/or antenna issue then anything else. I live in Ferndale and am able to pickup on the indoor 800mhz antenna the Wayne CO Sim, Macomb CO Sim, Southfield Tower, and Northville tower. Interestingly enough I can't get Detroit Sim unless I have one of the newest scanners, and I live a mile away from the city border. Not due to range, but due to the multipath issues with simulcast sites. You may just be in a dead zone or have some hills or something blocking your line of sight. You down in the Irish Hills? Im not to familiar with that area. If you have tried a discone and yagi outdoors and cant get anything but yet you can travel a few miles down the road and pickup something on stock, that tells me you have to be in a dead zone or have some kind of antenna/coax issues.

Nope not in the hills, I live right between Adrian and Techumseh on valley right off from 52. Lets be clear here, it is possible my antenna sucks lol. It is an old TV UHF antenna I cut apart and reconfigured to work at 850 mhz based on a program I got off the internet. I am NOT an antenna engineer by any means so it might not work right at all. And I have no test equipment or the knowledge to use it if I did. All I can do is point it in different directions and see what the signal meter on my scanner and in Freescan does.

My Discone with all new RG6Q cable and new compression fittings works fine though. It does exactly what is supposed to do, pick up a broad range of frequencies with no gain and be omni directional. Like I said, I can get analog signals from Detriot and Henry county Ohio. So that is about a 50 some mile radius.

If I KNEW an over the counter 800 mhz yagi would work I would buy one. However I don't want to spend that kind of money and find out I still can't get anything. I pointed my large TV antenna on a 30 foot mast with a rotor at it too with no luck. But again, it is a TV antenna and not designed for radio waves I am told. I have also been told in other threads in the antenna section it would probably be best to just give up on the idea. The chances of picking up a trunked site from 20 or more miles away are very slim. They are specifically designed not to broadcast that far.

I suppose I could try and order one from someone with a liberal return policy and if it doesn't work just return it. I don't even know if that is something you can do with an antenna, never tried.

paulmohr said:

Nope not in the hills, I live right between Adrian and Techumseh on valley right off from 52. Lets be clear here, it is possible my antenna sucks lol. It is an old TV UHF antenna I cut apart and reconfigured to work at 850 mhz based on a program I got off the internet. I am NOT an antenna engineer by any means so it might not work right at all. And I have no test equipment or the knowledge to use it if I did. All I can do is point it in different directions and see what the signal meter on my scanner and in Freescan does.

My Discone with all new RG6Q cable and new compression fittings works fine though. It does exactly what is supposed to do, pick up a broad range of frequencies with no gain and be omni directional. Like I said, I can get analog signals from Detriot and Henry county Ohio. So that is about a 50 some mile radius.

If I KNEW an over the counter 800 mhz yagi would work I would buy one. However I don't want to spend that kind of money and find out I still can't get anything. I pointed my large TV antenna on a 30 foot mast with a rotor at it too with no luck. But again, it is a TV antenna and not designed for radio waves I am told. I have also been told in other threads in the antenna section it would probably be best to just give up on the idea. The chances of picking up a trunked site from 20 or more miles away are very slim. They are specifically designed not to broadcast that far.

I suppose I could try and order one from someone with a liberal return policy and if it doesn't work just return it. I don't even know if that is something you can do with an antenna, never tried.

Click to expand...

Perhaps but you are well within 20miles of both Monroe county and Washtenaw. The fact you can drive a few miles down the road and get it on your stock antenna but cant get it back home on a mast tells me something is wrong.

What kind of scanner do you have? some of the past generation scanners don't handle simulcast multipath very well.

If you are interested in looking at a true 800mhz yagi you may try theantennafarm and comtelcoantennas. Both of those places sell 800mhz yagis. Just be sure you check the antenna connection and get any needed adapters to fit whatever coax you have.

Speaking of coax, have you tried using different coax? Maybe the line you are using has an issue somewhere.

FWIW the MPSCS system engineers claimed to have specifically designed the Detroit simulcast with RF confinement in mind. They basically surrounded the city with antennas pointed inward as to try and keep the signal from going to far in to Canada. I have stood outside and been able to pickup the Detroit Simulcast on a Motorola portable radio from Essex, ON. I have also been able to pick it up outside on the NW side of Pontiac as well. Don't underestimate the systems range.

paulmohr said:

Is what really gets me, is if you look at coverage area for the state police district 1 it shows it being like 70 miles. So the way I understand it I should getting all of that off my local Adrian tower, not just D1north and south, but I don't. Obviously I understand it wrong lol.

Click to expand...

Any two-way radio traffic on MPSCS is only carried on towers where an authorized user is affiliated, on that talkgroup. That said, it sounds like you are having a signal problem, as others have mentioned. I can pick up the Washtenaw towers on my G4 in Southfield, and in Roseville, inside my Jeep. (Granted, it is a bit spotty, but there.) The one time I have been toward the Adrian area, since getting the G4, I did not pay attention to the signal fade, but had some signal between Britton and Adrian.

Sent via Tapatalk

Ok, thanks for your input guys. I am going to start another thread in the Antenna section with some specific questions about my antennas and testing and what not.