My kids bought me a BCD996P2 for fathers day and trying to get it to fly using Freescan. First question is about TG IDs. Should I be using Hex or decimal ? I built up a site using all the channels for my local trunked system and a group with most of the Talk Groups I'm interested in, assigned a quick key, But the radio continualy scans without ever stopping on an active talkgroup. I see a column labeled LCN in the frequencies tab, all are set to zero. Also the Apco Band Plan tab is all zeros. Is there something simple I'm overlooking?
Thanks
LCNs are not needed on the system type (Motorola Type II) that your county uses.
Anne Arundel County (P16) Trunking System Profile
www.radioreference.com
As all of the system frequencies have a
5 in the fourth decimal place, and none are below 854MHz, you do not need to enter a band plan.
Thinking I should be using Decimal rather than Hexidecimal for the talk group IDs
Decimal is the most common type listed in trunked systems. You can choose whether you want to use Decimal or Hex in your programming software and in the scanner. Use Decimal. It's the first column on trunked systems database details.
Sounds like a textbook example of
simulcast distortion to me. You'd be much better off tracking these types of systems with a Uniden SDS100 or 200
View attachment 123284
Looking at the site details, there definitely is a large number of transmit sites in this Simulcast system:
Map of Sites
Site details:
Anne Arundel County (P16) Site: Simulcast Details
www.radioreference.com
It gets very tedious and technical when you load systems by hand and don't have access to the direct download from the DB here.
I started with Freescan, but moved to ProScan. At the risk of sounding like a commercial, for the one time $50 you get software that is still being supported, updates are often and it's a breeze to operate. Combine that with a one year membership here on RR and you can download to your hearts content, edit, re-arrange, add, delete, etc.
i just added a couple of 996P2s to the shack here and like "em! and yes use DEC for the talkgroups! But watch out for the dreaded simulcast and any entry with E! might as well skip those as you aren't going to hear an encrypted transmission.
Certainly, becoming a Premium Subscriber lets you import from the database into your software. FreeSCAN works for basic programming, but
ProScan is a much better choice. It has features that FreeSCAN lacks.
Both FreeSCAN and ProScan have the ability to import system details that you copied from the database page onto the Windows Clipboard, then selectively paste those details into the fields you specify. In FreeSCAN, it's called EZ-Grab. You can read more about EZ-Grab in the FreeSCAN User Guide in the Wiki.
FreeScan User Guide - The RadioReference Wiki
Looking at your county's database
page, I see that the
CERT group in your county is using some DMR frequencies. If, at some point, you want to be able to monitor DMR transmissions, you would have to purchase the DMR upgrade. Also note that FreeSCAN does not correctly support DMR. ProScan, as well as Butel's ARC XT, can correctly program DMR systems.
