Scanning Macon-Bibb

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MaxxJay

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I'm having difficulties receiving traffic from Macon-Bibb P25 and CGIRRS. I'm not sure if it is a distance thing or a radio programming thing. I'm using the RR database for those systems. I know I receive Houston County on my car antenna in Montezuma and that is a greater distance than I am from Bibb County. I even drove up to Hartley Bridge Road yesterday evening and didn't hear anything.

On a positive note thanks to N4CYA to suggesting NXDN upgrade for Dooly. Drove through on the way to Turner and caught traffic loud and clear about incident at Exit 117. Hope all involved are safe. Was interesting listening to the Mutual Aid with Crisp. Catch some unencrypted out of Peach as well. Not much though.
 

N1XDS

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I'm having difficulties receiving traffic from Macon-Bibb P25 and CGIRRS. I'm not sure if it is a distance thing or a radio programming thing. I'm using the RR database for those systems. I know I receive Houston County on my car antenna in Montezuma and that is a greater distance than I am from Bibb County. I even drove up to Hartley Bridge Road yesterday evening and didn't hear anything.

On a positive note thanks to N4CYA to suggesting NXDN upgrade for Dooly. Drove through on the way to Turner and caught traffic loud and clear about incident at Exit 117. Hope all involved are safe. Was interesting listening to the Mutual Aid with Crisp. Catch some unencrypted out of Peach as well. Not much though.

Your welcome about the information about Dooly County. :D
 

relicwr

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Simulcast is difficult to receive unless you have hardware that can handle it perfectly. Not to mention there is also TDMA on there which is Phase 2. I've been using SDR and DSD+ but it can't do TDMA/P25 Phase 2 so I get one-sided a lot (meaning dispatchers are using Phase 2 but mobiles are using Phase 1 still).
 

MaxxJay

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Understood

Simulcast is difficult to receive unless you have hardware that can handle it perfectly. Not to mention there is also TDMA on there which is Phase 2. I've been using SDR and DSD+ but it can't do TDMA/P25 Phase 2 so I get one-sided a lot (meaning dispatchers are using Phase 2 but mobiles are using Phase 1 still).

I'm using a Uniden BCD536HP. It is "supposed" to receive simulcast (not really sure exactly what that is). I understand that the SDS100 is much better at this. I forgot to mention I am using an old Radio Shack discone antenna mounted in the attic at home, and a Little Will on the car. Works great for Houston and Peach. Should work for Macon-Bibb as I'm not too far over the border. I'm not even receiving 1 side of a conversation. I did pick up the recycle team TGID during Discovery on the Macon-Bibb P25 system clearly. I really think I have a setting off somewhere.
 

N1XDS

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I'm using a Uniden BCD536HP. It is "supposed" to receive simulcast (not really sure exactly what that is). I understand that the SDS100 is much better at this. I forgot to mention I am using an old Radio Shack discone antenna mounted in the attic at home, and a Little Will on the car. Works great for Houston and Peach. Should work for Macon-Bibb as I'm not too far over the border. I'm not even receiving 1 side of a conversation. I did pick up the recycle team TGID during Discovery on the Macon-Bibb P25 system clearly. I really think I have a setting off somewhere.

Here's a explanation of Simulcast.

https://wiki.radioreference.com/index.php/Simulcast
 

N8IAA

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I'm using a Uniden BCD536HP. It is "supposed" to receive simulcast (not really sure exactly what that is). I understand that the SDS100 is much better at this. I forgot to mention I am using an old Radio Shack discone antenna mounted in the attic at home, and a Little Will on the car. Works great for Houston and Peach. Should work for Macon-Bibb as I'm not too far over the border. I'm not even receiving 1 side of a conversation. I did pick up the recycle team TGID during Discovery on the Macon-Bibb P25 system clearly. I really think I have a setting off somewhere.

So, let me get my head around this, you're using a lil' Wil CB antenna to monitor 800 MHz systems in your vehicle?
And not receiving the Macon/Bibb system? Realize that most, if not all, Phase II systems are designed to operate in the immediate area. It's not like the old analog systems that could be heard everywhere.
You shouldn't mess with the settings. Get a proper antenna on the vehicle that reflects what you are monitoring. The Larsen tri-band antenna will make a huge difference on those systems.
Larry
 

MaxxJay

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So, let me get my head around this, you're using a lil' Wil CB antenna to monitor 800 MHz systems in your vehicle?
And not receiving the Macon/Bibb system? Realize that most, if not all, Phase II systems are designed to operate in the immediate area. It's not like the old analog systems that could be heard everywhere.
You shouldn't mess with the settings. Get a proper antenna on the vehicle that reflects what you are monitoring. The Larsen tri-band antenna will make a huge difference on those systems.
Larry

No doubt I could use a better antenna on the car (had it in the garage laying around), my home antenna is a discone antenna from Radio Shack as I stated previously. Little Will antenna does pretty well monitoring other systems like Peach, Houston, Crisp, Dooly and GSP. Many of them are in the 800Mhz band so... I receive Houston down almost to the Crisp County line on I75 with the CB antenna. The issue seems to be with Macon-Bibb for some reason. Neither the CB antenna nor the RS discone make a diiference with Macon-Bibb.

I appreciate your suggestion though. When funds allow I will look into an upgrade!
 

MaxxJay

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As relicwr pointed out Macon-Bibb is a simulcast system. Thanks to N4CYA for the link to the explanation. It doesn’t seem that any other counties I monitor are simulcast systems. So I’m thinking relicwr is correct and it is a simulcast reception issue.
 

MaxxJay

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Ok. So I played with the Digital Threshold for the site. Manual setting of 7 or 8 seems to work best. Audio I received but stutters with high error rate. N8IAA, you mentioned my car antenna was lacking. Is it possible that the discone in my attic isn’t cutting it? I just don’t understand why the other systems I monitor are so clear.
 

relicwr

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If I still had a sample, I could show you what SDR# shows the pattern that the broadcasts perform. Think of a barber shop pole outside going in a spiral. That's the signal going up and down simultaneously during transmission.

That's what makes it impossible with Uniden AND Whistler models to get anything from Macon-Bibb. SDR isn't all that either with simulcast, but it was good to receive before they started using slots.
 
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