A Few Questions...

[snikliw87]

I am wondering if digital signals travel less distance than the analog because I remember being able to pick up St. Paul PD just fine, and now I am not recieveing any.

Also, I have no idea how the police are dispatched in Hennepin County. For example, if there is a robbery or something like that in my city of Plymouth, where TG is that dispatched on?

HCSO: Who decides what calls are dispatched to them, and what type of calls do they only do? Do they backup city police officers or state patrol?

Thanks for your help, for as you can see I am bit confused.

 

[wogggieee]

Digital signals don't necessarily travel a shorter distance. The difference is that a weak digital signal doesn't get properly decoded because the radio isn't receiving all of the digital info and it becomes unintelligible. Where as an analog signal just gets staticy and may or may not still be able to be made out.

 

[snikliw87]

Oh ok, that explains that. how about the rest of my questions?

 

[Raven95150]

As far as Hennepin Co. goes, they have 3 main dispatch cnannels..north, south, and east. Plymouth is on the south channel along with Wayzata and the rest of the cities around Lake Minnetonka and west of there. Brooklyn Park, Brooklyn Center, New Hope, Crystal and Robbinsdale are on the east channel. Maple Grove, Champlin, Dayton, Rogers and HCSO are on the north channel. All of the TGs should be in the RR database as well as a list of unit numbers and which cities use which numbers.

For fire, all of the above cities are dispatched on the Hennepin Co. fire main. I think the only exception is Champlin, which shares their FD with Anoka and is dispatched by Anoka Co.

Golden Valley, St. Louis Park, Minnetonka, Eden Prairie, Bloomngton, and Richfield all have their own 911/dispatch centers and their own talkgroups.

HCSO serves as the police dept. for much of northwest Hennepin Co since several of these cities don't have their own police. They also provide assistance to other agencies as needed and special operations like SWAT, crime lab, and water patrol.

 

[Raven95150]

Another reason signals don't seem to travel as far with ARMER is because they don't. It has nothing to do with being digital though, they simply don't transmit as much power.

With the old VHF/UHF radio systems, they used a single high power repeater and high power mobile radios. With this system, they could reach out long distances.

With ARMER, each system has several towers so they don't need to transmit nearly as much power. If a unit travels outside the coverage of its home system, they can "roam" on to other systems.

 

[snikliw87]

My South Main Disp. is sometimes choppy. This shouldnt be- I am close enough! What can I do? I am trying the P25 level thing but can't find the right number to put it at. Anyone else have this problem?

 

[wogggieee]

What is the signal percentage that you are getting on the control channel? Even if you're close there are a lot of things that can effect that like buildings and trees and other stuff.