BCD325P2 scanning speed

[K7XRL]

So I live in a very small rural town, in a small rural county. There isn't much traffic on any one system or site, but there are multiple systems with multiple sites I can receive from my location.

The trouble is, if I enable all the systems and sites I'd like to monitor, it takes several seconds to cycle through them all, and I wind up with missed or incomplete calls.

Also I am noticing that on my county NXDN system, I am only getting dispatch and some users. Other users I am only hearing the dispatch side of the conversation. Is it possible that dispatch goes out over all of the sites and the user replies only go out over the site footprints they are located in? If this is the case, I have so many sites within the county system that it will really suffer from the slow scanning.

Are there any settings that would make the scanner cycle through individual systems faster?

I'd like to monitor 3 sites for the statewide HWY patrol, plus the county NXDN, plus some non-trunked FM stuff.

 

[Whiskey3JMC]

The trouble is, if I enable all the systems and sites I'd like to monitor, it takes several seconds to cycle through them all, and I wind up with missed or incomplete calls.

Par for the course if you monitor more than 1 system/site simultaneously like you say you do. if you want to speed up your scanning operation you need to scan less at a time

Also I am noticing that on my county NXDN system, I am only getting dispatch and some users. Other users I am only hearing the dispatch side of the conversation. Is it possible that dispatch goes out over all of the sites and the user replies only go out over the site footprints they are located in? If this is the case, I have so many sites within the county system that it will really suffer from the slow scanning.

Yes this could be possible but partial encryption could also be a possibility (this would be denoted in the RRDB as a mode "De" talkgroup) where dispatch to units is heard but not vice versa. Can't say for sure without agency specifics.

Do a system / site hold so you're only scanning one at a time. Do you still experience the same issues?

 

[doctordialtone]

Are there any settings

There are no settings for scan speed.

You'll need to optimize your programming

 

[wtp]

just get more radios !
i have been seen outside my house, in public, with three scanners !
when asked why so many, i answer that more than one thing can happen at once.

 

[K9ZV]

There are no settings for scan speed.

You'll need to optimize your programming

That is a good reason to own multiple scanners.

 

[RandyKuff]

That is a good reason to own multiple scanners.

Thats why I have four scanners running...

 

[Whiskey3JMC]

just get more radios !

That is a good reason to own multiple scanners.

Thats why I have four scanners running...

Or an SDR (or more) paired with SDRTrunk for a mere fraction of the price of more scanners
Scratch that, SDRTrunk doesn't handle NXDN (yet) which the OP requires. Hopefully that'll change some day. DSD+ does but it takes more tinkering to get to work properly than does SDRTrunk, but that's a discussion for another forum...

 

[K7XRL]

Or an SDR (or more) paired with SDRTrunk for a mere fraction of the price of more scanners
Scratch that, SDRTrunk doesn't handle NXDN (yet) which the OP requires. Hopefully that'll change some day. DSD+ does but it takes more tinkering to get to work properly than does SDRTrunk, but that's a discussion for another forum...

I actually have a couple of the NESDR RTL-SDR dongles, but I had been using those primarily as panadapters for my HF transceiver. I never looked into scanning software for them. I bought this scanner primarily for the portability. Using SDRs would work okay for scanning at home, but they are cumbersome, requiring a computer and separate antenna.

 

[StoliRaz]

There are no settings for scan speed.

You'll need to optimize your programming

It's a shame the 325P2 doesn't have priority DND like the 436. If you don't have 2 scanners it's the next best option.

I usually put it on if there's a channel or agency I want to monitor but also want to scan and see what else is going on. I can't tolerate the annoying traditional priority monitoring where the audio keeps cutting out for it to monitor the priority channel(s). Too damned annoying.

 

[dave3825]

on my county NXDN system, I am only getting dispatch and some users. Other users I am only hearing the dispatch side of the conversation. Is it possible that dispatch goes out over all of the sites and the user replies only go out over the site footprints they are located in? If this is the case, I have so many sites within the county system that it will really suffer from the slow scanning.

To answer that a little better, post a link to the system, name the site you monitor, and list the talk group in question.

 

[lu81fitter]

So I live in a very small rural town, in a small rural county. There isn't much traffic on any one system or site, but there are multiple systems with multiple sites I can receive from my location.

The trouble is, if I enable all the systems and sites I'd like to monitor, it takes several seconds to cycle through them all, and I wind up with missed or incomplete calls.

Also I am noticing that on my county NXDN system, I am only getting dispatch and some users. Other users I am only hearing the dispatch side of the conversation. Is it possible that dispatch goes out over all of the sites and the user replies only go out over the site footprints they are located in? If this is the case, I have so many sites within the county system that it will really suffer from the slow scanning.

Are there any settings that would make the scanner cycle through individual systems faster?

I'd like to monitor 3 sites for the statewide HWY patrol, plus the county NXDN, plus some non-trunked FM stuff.

I have a 325 and 3 996P2's with the DMR upgrade and I also live in a very rural area with low radio traffic volume most times. I have 2 DMR systems I monitor that use conventional channels. I program the UHF DMR freqs into a "bank" / system with the other analog channels that I monitor. About 20 channels total. It works pretty well. I miss some things, but it's not IDLH for me. Maybe that is an option for you, as you may be able to eliminate a system if the NXDN uses conventional channels.

 

[K7XRL]

Par for the course if you monitor more than 1 system/site simultaneously like you say you do. if you want to speed up your scanning operation you need to scan less at a time

Yes this could be possible but partial encryption could also be a possibility (this would be denoted in the RRDB as a mode "De" talkgroup) where dispatch to units is heard but not vice versa. Can't say for sure without agency specifics.

Do a system / site hold so you're only scanning one at a time. Do you still experience the same issues?

I doubt it's an encryption thing, as many of these county systems are rebroadcast on analog FM (for the time being at least). So some of the stuff I'm missing on the NXDN system, I am hearing on FM. One might say the simple solution is just to monitor the FM and not worry about the trunking systems. But I could have just used a phone app for that. I got the scanner to hopefully "future proof" my listening in the event the FM ceases one day.

 

[10-43]

Your situation actually screams multiple scanners if you want to catch everything. It doesn't happen every day, but sometimes I have to use 3 scanners to get all the traffic. Example; A chase covering 2 counties and 4 agencies on 3 systems. Happens more often than you may think. Just using one scanner for all that, regardless of scan speed I would miss much of the traffic. These days it seems everyone thinks they dont have to stop when lit up by the police. I hear maybe 10 times the number of chases I did just a few years ago. I only monitor law enforcement unless fire and EMS are involved in a law incident.

 

[K7XRL]

Your situation actually screams multiple scanners if you want to catch everything. It doesn't happen every day, but sometimes I have to use 3 scanners to get all the traffic. Example; A chase covering 2 counties and 4 agencies on 3 systems. Happens more often than you may think. Just using one scanner for all that, regardless of scan speed I would miss much of the traffic. These days it seems everyone thinks they dont have to stop when lit up by the police. I hear maybe 10 times the number of chases I did just a few years ago. I only monitor law enforcement unless fire and EMS are involved in a law incident.

Yeah I have several of the cheap baofengs and a couple of nicer HTs I could use for scanning analog FM, but for the trunked digital stuff, I've just got the one scanner for now. I might have to start hitting the flea markets and pawn shops and see what I can find used. New scanners are $$$.

I also discovered the county NXDN system is showing some more frequencies than the RR database is for this system. I learned today that frequencies have to be verified by actual listening before they are added to the database so that might be why they don't appear. But I also have occasionally heard some one-sided conversations where you hear dispatch but not the mobile unit. I am going to try to get the additional frequencies entered in to my scanner and see if that makes the difference.

 

[JoeBearcat]

There are no settings for scan speed.

That's not entirely accurate. If you set the HOLD TIME on a system to two seconds (for example), it will scan that system for two seconds before moving on. If you want the fastest scanning speed set the HOLD TIME to 0 seconds. Then the scanner will use only the time it needs to scan that system once and it will move on. That is sort of a scan speed setting.