BCD436HP Programming

Good evening,

I have multiple tower sites and their frequencies (P25) programmed into my scanner. Would i be better off and a better scan rate if i only program the Control Channels for those sites and just scan TG ID's without programming all of the other frequencies for those sites? I'm just looking at what would give me a better and more efficient scan rate.

The previous system here i would always program in the Control Channels and all of the frequencies and would have no issues with scan rate. However now that we have multiple tower sites with the P25 i'm unsure as to what would be best.

Thank you.

You'll get opinions both ways and both would be correct.


Since you have ample storage space, I suggest programming all frequencies associated with a site. One never knows if a different control channel, one not listed as such, becomes a control channel.


It will NOT increase the time needed to scan, or at least where you will notice.

Well that's where i wondered as i have 12 sites in total Some sites only have 4 frequencies and 2 would be the control channel and alternate control channel, and other sites would have 7 or 8 frequencies listed with 2 being the control channel and alternate.

Storage space i'm definitely not concerned about. It's just the scan rate.

ve9jmc said:

Well that's where i wondered as i have 12 sites in total Some sites only have 4 frequencies and 2 would be the control channel and alternate control channel, and other sites would have 7 or 8 frequencies listed with 2 being the control channel and alternate.

Storage space i'm definitely not concerned about. It's just the scan rate.

Click to expand...

Make sure that you don't have a 'Hold time' set on the system. That will slow down your scanning, though in a few cases in other threads, certain specific users have seen a decrease in missed traffic by using a small hold time. (Generally, they were missing the reply to a given transmission. The scanner resumed before the response was received.)


As ofd8001 noted, having all the frequencies entered is not going to produce a noticeable difference between 'control channels only' and 'all frequencies for a given site'.

NBTMR

You guys have any ID#s, yet?
I can pick up SJ Fire on search, but it would be nice to be able to filter out the others.
Or wait for the update.....

The scanner only scans the frequencies, not the talk groups.

jon wienke would tell you to program all sites and use location and range settings to only scan your closest sites since the scanner only checks site activity not voice channels

ve9jmc said:

Well that's where i wondered as i have 12 sites in total Some sites only have 4 frequencies and 2 would be the control channel and alternate control channel, and other sites would have 7 or 8 frequencies listed with 2 being the control channel and alternate.

Storage space i'm definitely not concerned about. It's just the scan rate.

Click to expand...

Ths scan rate is affected by the 12 sites, not by the amount of frqs. you have for the 12 sites.


At 2 sec (or so) per site that is a 20+ sec time to cycle.
Do you really need 12 sites all the time? Would it be preferable to assign QK to the sites so you can toggle off or on as needed?

One important thing to think about (IMO) is who built the P25 system.

Motorola P25 systems can only use 4 control channels per site (as far as I recall) but the Harris system in my province can use any freq in the site for a control channel - meaning all 16 freqs could be CCs.

I don't recall who's built the Maritime system. If it's not Motorola, I would put all CCs in just to be safe.

The optimal programming IMO is to program all frequencies for all sites, set realistic location data for every site (so that the ones out of range of your current location will be turned off automatically), and set your radio's location by lat/long as opposed to postal code, again, so that the radio will take advantage of the most correct location info available. That, coupled with setting the system/site hold time to 0, will ensure that the scanner is working as efficiently as possible for that system.

Truly optimal would be to - if possible - find and limit to the site (or if necessary - sites) that is (are) in reception range to your location which carry the voice traffic that you are interested in. Then, limit the talkgroups to those of interest to you to avoid stopping on things you don't care about and/or are so chatty that you miss what is of interest.

Location control puts the machine in charge and can still cause both under-performance (still trying to scan to many or more sites than are really necessary) and missed traffic (location control also controls what talkgroups you'll hear in some cases).

Of course, this requires a bit more knowledge of how to program and use your scanner as well as the systems you are trying to monitor. But it will lead to better results.

I will note that in some cases, you have no choice but to scan multiple sites. There are some systems that have more than one site that cover the same exact area and carry different traffic. There are other systems where a (best or closest?) site may carry little to no traffic (or even no voice traffic at all).

There is no "one size fits all" (not that anyone here has suggested that there is!).

W8RMH said:

The scanner only scans the frequencies, not the talk groups.

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It only scans the control frequencies

Mark
SDS100/536/436/ws1095/996p2/996xt/325p2/396xt/psr800/396t/HP-1/HP-2 & others

Even better - it only scans the for a control channel frequency and then stops and just keep checking that frequency (unless that frequency changes and/or is lost).

Jay911 said:

One important thing to think about (IMO) is who built the P25 system.

Motorola P25 systems can only use 4 control channels per site (as far as I recall) but the Harris system in my province can use any freq in the site for a control channel - meaning all 16 freqs could be CCs.

I don't recall who's built the Maritime system. If it's not Motorola, I would put all CCs in just to be safe.

The optimal programming IMO is to program all frequencies for all sites, set realistic location data for every site (so that the ones out of range of your current location will be turned off automatically), and set your radio's location by lat/long as opposed to postal code, again, so that the radio will take advantage of the most correct location info available. That, coupled with setting the system/site hold time to 0, will ensure that the scanner is working as efficiently as possible for that system.

Click to expand...

Motorola P25(Bell) NB/NS/PEI