Houston Fire Department

[CSL126]

Hey guys, I'm in Houston for a couple of days and trying to listen to Houston Fire/EMS. I have my PRO 668 with me and thought that I had it programmed correctly; however, I'm not hearing much. I have my conventional scanner set to the uhf station alerting frequency (460.575) and hear that fine, but my PRO 668 when set to the same channel on the TxWARN system only catches the transmission about 10% of the time. Any ideas on what I'm doing wrong? I'm listening from Northwest Houston.

 

[Syncopations]

Hey guys, I'm in Houston for a couple of days and trying to listen to Houston Fire/EMS. I have my PRO 668 with me and thought that I had it programmed correctly; however, I'm not hearing much. I have my conventional scanner set to the uhf station alerting frequency (460.575) and hear that fine, but my PRO 668 when set to the same channel on the TxWARN system only catches the transmission about 10% of the time. Any ideas on what I'm doing wrong? I'm listening from Northwest Houston.

I believe you'll need a TDMA-capable scanner. Also, most of the fire talk groups are encrypted.

 

[willdanl]

Check out this article if you haven't. It was very helpful to me. There is a way to hear phase I or II transmissions (and you should be able to hear both), depending on which site you are monitoring. If you have the Phase II talk groups programmed in but your radio is on site 3-05, I don't think you'll hear anything. But if you are hearing some, could be simulcast problems, unless the 668 is switching between sites occasionally.
Houston Police and Fire P25 - The RadioReference Wiki

 

[motorola_otaku]

... but my PRO 668 when set to the same channel on the TxWARN system only catches the transmission about 10% of the time. Any ideas on what I'm doing wrong?

You're not doing anything wrong. That is just the nature of how those scanners perform on simulcast P25 trunking systems.

Ideally you should program any Houston city sites (identified as RFSS 3) and talkgroups (any above 30000) as a seperate system from the rest of TxWARN. Since you're on the northwest side and have a TDMA-capable scanner you can load up the Northwest Simulcast (03-002) and 40050 for responses in your area. As previously stated the tacs are encrypted so you can't hear working incidents or fireground comms.