I'm using a BC396XT and have for years. I'm usually monitoring the Cobb Co and Marietta Police frequencies and up until a few weeks ago everything worked great. Now for some reason, I'm not picking up any traffic except for the Fire Department and Cobb PD Zone 3. All other frequencies and talk groups have gone silent. Thinking something may have changed, I downloaded new frequencies / talk groups but it hasn't helped any. Does anyone have any ideas? TIA
Cobb County help.
- Thread starter letz_go_ride
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Your 396XT will ONLY do Phase I Trunking, it WILL NOT do Phase II. You will need to purchase something newer. BCD436HP (older) or the SDS100 (fairly newer) both being handhelds. If you are going to spend the $$, and ONLY monitor 800 systems, I would urge you to spend a little more money and get the Unication G5.
Thanks a bunch for the info. Which one of the scanners listed above would be better for someone "scanner challenged". While I've been using them for years, I'm not much on the programming and features. Hopefully these new ones will use the freescan software to download from RR?
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As for as your county, either the talkgroups you can no longer hear have switched to P25 Phase II, which your 396XT cannot handle, or they have switched to encrypted. I suspect that they may have flipped to Phase II, and, so far, no one has submitted that to update the RR Database.
Neither the 436HP nor the SDS100 can be programmed via FreeSCAN. You can use the Sentinel software, provided by Uniden to program either. There is no charge for Sentinel. If you want to use the web import, from the RadioReference database, then you would need to purchase either ProScan, or ARC536. I prefer ProScan. But you can do all your programming with Sentinel by appending systems from the HP database, which is part of Sentinel.
As for as your county, either the talkgroups you can no longer hear have switched to P25 Phase II, which your 396XT cannot handle, or they have switched to encrypted. I suspect that they may have flipped to Phase II, and, so far, no one has submitted that to update the RR Database.
MTS2000des
5B2_BEE00 Czar
Most TGs on the Cobb Regional system are DDM, dual dynamic mode, and as legacy radios have been replaced with TDMA capable subscribers, talk groups are usually TDMA but can downgrade to FDMA if a legacy subscriber affiliates with a talk group. So, it is a safe bet if you want to monitor unencrypted TGs on this system, a TDMA capable scanner/receiver WILL be required now and into the future. FWIW the SDS series work like a champ and are out of the box ready to go. Just enter your zip code.
Pro-tip, the Cobb/Marietta/Smyrna/Acworth/PS/Kennesaw stuff homes on the Cobb simulcast. Strongly recommend using SITE HOLD and homing on the Cobb site if you primarily want to listen to these talkgroups and not miss calls.
Pro-tip, the Cobb/Marietta/Smyrna/Acworth/PS/Kennesaw stuff homes on the Cobb simulcast. Strongly recommend using SITE HOLD and homing on the Cobb site if you primarily want to listen to these talkgroups and not miss calls.
rdlafore
Member
Most traffic on the Cobb system is not encrypted. But you will need a P25 Phase II capable scanner. I would advise looking at the SDS100, or 200 due to the simulcast in the area. I used a BCD996P2 for a few years, but due to the simulcast, i missed a bunch of traffic, so I do not recommend that scanner as a great scanner for Cobb's system.. A good alternative to the relatively "pricey" SDS units, is the BlueTail P25RX, currently in continued development. I have been using the P25RX for a few weeks now, and am very impressed with its operation.
awesome. Thanks so much.
Bailey1213
Member
I second the Bluetail P25RX I belive MTS2000des uses one too.
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