Enjoying my new scanner and DMR upgrade

mrwilson706 · Nov 14, 2017

Hey! Relocated to Texas from Georgia two years ago and just now getting back into the hobby.

Recently upgraded to the BCD436HP from the 396XT, so far just getting use to the FL's but it's growing on me. I've always used Freescan+ my RR subscription to grab what I want, so it's been fun learning all the nuisances of Sentinel. Overall, it's definitely easier to use but I'm still getting used to the adhoc imports using excel. etc. Most of my FL's are appended from the full DB, but I've been changing the Service types to "Custom 1" so I can still scan them without enabling everything in scan selection.

I purchased the DMR upgrade and I've had a few hits here in North Texas using the digitalfrequencysearch.com export steps. I'm looking forward to these making their way into the weekly Sentinel update eventually (hopefully).

I'm in McKinney. Is there anyone local with a BCD436HP in my area? I think UPman may be in the DFW area, I might have to ping him. Anyways, just dropping in to say hey.
-Mike

Scottm467 · Nov 15, 2017

DMR

Have you tried CareFlite's DMR system? It's listed under Megahertz Technologies and good to listen to. Has Crew page outs ect.

Blaine · Nov 15, 2017

Howdy.

I'm south of you on the Plano/Richardson border. I monitor the PAWM system, as well as Richardson, NCTCOG, Dallas P25, TPI, Dallas 800 LG (Deployment, etc), and feds primarily, although my favorites list incorporates interop freqs and business, etc as well. I use a BC 780 as my aviation and mil air radio. I've had my 436 for about 3 or so months now. I love it. Still trying to figure out a lot of things, and get favorites lists customized etc. Honestly, I only use maybe 50% of the total capability of this radio. But with that being said, I would rather have MORE to expand my monitoring horizons than less. I have not done the DMR or EDACS ESK upgrades, as I am out of listening range for DFW Airport, and I have no interest in other DMR outside of maybe Careflite, and I just didn't think it was feasible to plop down the $$ just to listen to one agency, when the majority of air evac in Collin County is PHI Air Med and they are VHF. Only complaints on this scanner is constantly changing batteries, and the ridiculous 14 hr default charging time. I want to LISTEN to the scanner!, not have it dead in the water for 14 hours!. Give me a break! Other than that, it's the best scanner investment I've ever made. I love the zip code/radius feature.

15plus1 · Nov 15, 2017

Blaine said:
..... Only complaints on this scanner is constantly changing batteries, and the ridiculous 14 hr default charging time. I want to LISTEN to the scanner!, not have it dead in the water for 14 hours!. Give me a break! ...

Get yourself an external battery charger and spare batts if u can.

hiegtx · Nov 15, 2017

Blaine said:
Howdy.

I'm south of you on the Plano/Richardson border. I monitor the PAWM system, as well as Richardson, NCTCOG, Dallas P25, TPI, Dallas 800 LG (Deployment, etc), and feds primarily, although my favorites list incorporates interop freqs and business, etc as well. I use a BC 780 as my aviation and mil air radio. I've had my 436 for about 3 or so months now. I love it. Still trying to figure out a lot of things, and get favorites lists customized etc. Honestly, I only use maybe 50% of the total capability of this radio. But with that being said, I would rather have MORE to expand my monitoring horizons than less. I have not done the DMR or EDACS ESK upgrades, as I am out of listening range for DFW Airport, and I have no interest in other DMR outside of maybe Careflite, and I just didn't think it was feasible to plop down the $$ just to listen to one agency, when the majority of air evac in Collin County is PHI Air Med and they are VHF. Only complaints on this scanner is constantly changing batteries, and the ridiculous 14 hr default charging time. I want to LISTEN to the scanner!, not have it dead in the water for 14 hours!. Give me a break! Other than that, it's the best scanner investment I've ever made. I love the zip code/radius feature.

15plus1 said:
Get yourself an external battery charger and spare batts if u can.

External battery charging, and using the Eneloop 'Pro' series batteries works well for me.

If I need the scanner to run longer, away from ac power (or a dc adapter in my vehicle), one of the battery packs such as used to charge phones and tablets works very well. I have several, including a couple with a 26000mAh capacity.

mrwilson706 · Nov 16, 2017

Scottm467 said:
Have you tried CareFlite's DMR system? It's listed under Megahertz Technologies and good to listen to. Has Crew page outs ect.

Cool, thanks for the heads up on Careflite! In my location I 'm picking up the following DMR channels: Allen ISD/McKinney ISD, Raytheon and the occasional Cowboys in Frisco (NFL) in the clear.

mrwilson706 · Nov 16, 2017

hiegtx said:
External battery charging, and using the Eneloop 'Pro' series batteries works well for me.

If I need the scanner to run longer, away from ac power (or a dc adapter in my vehicle), one of the battery packs such as used to charge phones and tablets works very well. I have several, including a couple with a 26000mAh capacity.

+1 on the Eneloop 'Pro' and I use a Maha c9000 charger. Just ordered some Amazon rechargeables that I'm going to try out.

KR3LC · Nov 16, 2017

hiegtx said:
External battery charging, and using the Eneloop 'Pro' series batteries works well for me.

If I need the scanner to run longer, away from ac power (or a dc adapter in my vehicle), one of the battery packs such as used to charge phones and tablets works very well. I have several, including a couple with a 26000mAh capacity.

This is a great recommendation. It's what I do too.

mrwilson706 · Nov 16, 2017

Blaine said:
Howdy.

I'm south of you on the Plano/Richardson border. I monitor the PAWM system, as well as Richardson, NCTCOG, Dallas P25, TPI, Dallas 800 LG (Deployment, etc), and feds primarily, although my favorites list incorporates interop freqs and business, etc as well. I use a BC 780 as my aviation and mil air radio. I've had my 436 for about 3 or so months now. I love it. Still trying to figure out a lot of things, and get favorites lists customized etc. Honestly, I only use maybe 50% of the total capability of this radio. But with that being said, I would rather have MORE to expand my monitoring horizons than less. I have not done the DMR or EDACS ESK upgrades, as I am out of listening range for DFW Airport, and I have no interest in other DMR outside of maybe Careflite, and I just didn't think it was feasible to plop down the $$ just to listen to one agency, when the majority of air evac in Collin County is PHI Air Med and they are VHF. Only complaints on this scanner is constantly changing batteries, and the ridiculous 14 hr default charging time. I want to LISTEN to the scanner!, not have it dead in the water for 14 hours!. Give me a break! Other than that, it's the best scanner investment I've ever made. I love the zip code/radius feature.

Nice to meet you brother. Yeah I'm starting to see the power of the favorite's list! I think I'm too far north (with stock antenna) for the PAWM, NCTOG and Dallas but I might dedicate some monitoring time to those just to be sure. I haven't heard much aviation, which really surprises me with all of the traffic here. I'm going on a cruise out of Galveston this weekend, so I'm interested to see how the gps works with this guy as I travel south. I've already created a FL for the cruise. grabbing all conventional frq in the ports were going to! Just need to tackle entering systems manually for future travels. -That's my only rub with sentinel, I need an import function like Freescan!

hiegtx · Nov 16, 2017

mrwilson706 said:
Cool, thanks for the heads up on Careflite! In my location I 'm picking up the following DMR channels: Allen ISD/McKinney ISD, Raytheon and the occasional Cowboys in Frisco (NFL) in the clear.

There's quite a bit of DMR in this metro area. Many of the "trunked" systems for facilities like hotels & hospitals are listed as LTR or an older Motorola. But of the ones I've checked, for Children's Health, UTSW, and three of the largest downtown hotels (Fairmont, The Omni, and the Hyatt Regency) are actually now using DMR.

The CareFlite operations on the Megahertz system can get interesting when there is an accident or other event that requires more than one medical copter. When they dispatch one of the birds, they'll specify the talkgroup ID or conventional frequency to contact units on the ground at the LZ. While it's not as prevalent now as it used to be, occasionally you'll hear a new ID or frequency specified that is not currently in the database.

Blaine · Nov 17, 2017

mrwilson706 said:
I think I'm too far north (with stock antenna) for the PAWM, NCTOG and Dallas but I might dedicate some monitoring time to those just to be sure. I haven't heard much aviation, which really surprises me with all of the traffic here.

You "should" be able to pick up PAWM system on your 436 from Mckinney no problem, as I can pick up Mckinney, Frisco, and Collin Co sytems from my 10-20 on just the stock antenna. NCTCOG has a antenna on the County system tower on Wilmeth (look for Collin freqs), although NCTCOG radio traffic is dead as a doornail. Dallas P25 might be challenging, but they do have a tower on the Plano/Dallas border along Frankford. 6107 and 6116 TG's can get very interesting

As far as aviation, don't forget Mckinney twr on 118.825. Aero Country on 122.9. Addison 126.0, Helo a/a on 123.025.

As far as ZFW freqs, east outbounds contact 132.025>>126.575...NE arrivals into KDFW 124.875>>125.025 (these will be right over your head BTW)....NE side arrivals into KDAL 124.3, 123.9>>123.7.... North outbounds 124.75>>132.975>>135.45...Hi Altitude overflights over DFW 135.75, overflow aux 135.175, 379.25 UHF

That should give you a start. As you can tell, I'm sort of a civ air/mil air freak

hiegtx · Nov 18, 2017

Blaine said:
You "should" be able to pick up PAWM system on your 436 from Mckinney no problem, as I can pick up Mckinney, Frisco, and Collin Co sytems from my 10-20 on just the stock antenna. NCTCOG has a antenna on the County system tower on Wilmeth (look for Collin freqs), although NCTCOG radio traffic is dead as a doornail. Dallas P25 might be challenging, but they do have a tower on the Plano/Dallas border along Frankford. 6107 and 6116 TG's can get very interesting

Don't forget that the Collin County system is being upgraded to P25 and will be merging into PAWM.

mrwilson706 · Nov 27, 2017

hiegtx said:
There's quite a bit of DMR in this metro area. Many of the "trunked" systems for facilities like hotels & hospitals are listed as LTR or an older Motorola. But of the ones I've checked, for Children's Health, UTSW, and three of the largest downtown hotels (Fairmont, The Omni, and the Hyatt Regency) are actually now using DMR.

The CareFlite operations on the Megahertz system can get interesting when there is an accident or other event that requires more than one medical copter. When they dispatch one of the birds, they'll specify the talkgroup ID or conventional frequency to contact units on the ground at the LZ. While it's not as prevalent now as it used to be, occasionally you'll hear a new ID or frequency specified that is not currently in the database.

Great info Steve, thanks!

mrwilson706 · Nov 27, 2017

Thanks Blaine

Enjoying my new scanner and DMR upgrade

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