BCD436HP/BCD536HP: Need some help please

I finally have a 436 on order and am trying to do some programming before it arrives. I thought about starting with just one Favorites List which would contain multiple systems. Three of these are using a large P25 trunked network with multiple sites. Several other are conventional systems. I have excellent location near one of the P25 sites and get excellent reception using my 996P2 scanner. With the 436 I planned to have one system dedicated to city police (about 10 different cities) and a second system to fire services (about 5 FDs). Since they are separate systems I assume I will need to have the site frequency data in each system - is that correct?

Would I be better off making it just one system with multiple departments (about 10 police and 5 fire depts)?

Should I consider using separate Favorite Lists with one for PD and the Other for Fire? Plus my conventional systems of course.

Hoping for experienced 436 users for starting help. I am VERY familiar with my trusty old 996P2 which I have used for years now.

Neil Bell, KJ6FBA

Odds are you don't need to program anything; the systems you want to monitor are already in the database. All you should have to do is copy the system from the main database to a favorite list, and then only if you want to customize delay settings and suchlike.

With the x36 scanners, DO NOT split up a single trunked system into multiple separately programmed systems. They can handle any existing system just fine. When you split a trunked system, you are scanning inefficiently because you first scan a site looking only for police talkgroups, then you rescan the same site in the duplicate system looking only for fire talkgroups. You are guaranteed to miss more traffic than if you program a single system as a single sytem and scan the site once looking for all traffic of interest.

You shouldn't split a system with a P2 series either, unless it exceeds the memory limits of the scanner, for the same reasons. If you must split, don't duplicate sites between the programmed iterations of the system, so you aren't scanning the same site multiple times.

With Service Type tagging, you don't even need to move police and fire talkgroups into separate Departments. You can toggle them on and off separately by enabling or disabling the appropriate Service Types in the scanner menu or Sentinel.

I'd definitely recommend installing the x36hp sentinel software if you haven't already. That'll give you the chance to see how to build your favorites lists. In my case, I have my entire statewide trunked system in one of my "local" favorites lists along with the conventional frequencies of several surrounding counties. I'm using location control and some pre-programmed gps coordinates so I'm not scanning every site in the state, though.

Jeff.

neilbell said:

.......... I thought about starting with just one Favorites List which would contain multiple systems. Three of these are using a large P25 trunked network with multiple sites....................................................... Neil Bell, KJ6FBA

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I have a "large P25 trunked network" that covers Fire and PD for a large area and several municipalities. I have it divided into 3 FLs each (6 total FLs). They are FD East, Home, and West, PD East Home and West. There is some overlap as to cities and TGs. When out and about, many times I have wished I had made more FLs out of this system.

If you can "master" the "complete" Quick Key System (including Departments and Channels) a single FL for a large System should work.

rwier said:

I have a "large P25 trunked network" that covers Fire and PD for a large area and several municipalities. I have it divided into 3 FLs each (6 total FLs). They are FD East, Home, and West, PD East Home and West. There is some overlap as to cities and TGs. When out and about, many times I have wished I had made more FLs out of this system.

Click to expand...

Why? It's an inefficient way to scan, and guarantees you will miss traffic. Programming the same system multiple times is a kludge necessary to work around the memory limits of older memory designs, and is completely pointless and unnecessary with an x36 scanner.

If you can "master" the "complete" Quick Key System (including Departments and Channels) a single FL for a large System should work.

Click to expand...

Make that "will work." You can also use Location Control and GPS, which completely eliminates the the need to fool around with manually toggling stuff on and off in the scanner while driving. You can also toggle Service Types (which older scanners don't support) to choose whether to monitor PD, FD, EMS, and other stuff.

I live in an area where I can pick up traffic from Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, and Virginia. I have a Favorite List named for each state, and an additional list called "Multi-State" for large trunked systems that span multiple states. Each Favorite List has Location Control enabled, and the only Quick Keys I have assigned are for the entire Favorite List (1 for PA, 2 for MD, 3 for WV, etc) so I can enable states I'm in or about to enter, and disable states I won't be entering when traveling. The Favorite List name display also tells me which State Police or Game Commission I'm listening to when I have multiple states turned on.

Location Control (my 436 has a GPS installed in it) and Service Types do the rest. I don't have any Quick Keys assigned to any departments or individual channels.

jonwienke said:

I live in an area where I can pick up traffic from Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, and Virginia.

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You probably don't live far from me. I was surprised at the number of high speed chases on the PA turnpike until I started skipping the PEMA channels.

PEMA rebroadcats a variety of stuff, including several talkgroups from WV-SIRN.