MOSWIN & SLATER Programing question on Pro668

[stlouisx50]

I recently moved to Warrenton, MO and so glad I did. We have mostly analog out here and the counties around (excluding St. Charles and Gasconade Counties)

I am able to pick up the MOSWIN system fine, however I can pick up many of the different sites around and would really like to be able to program each site separate on my Pro668. The Pro668 uses the roam type scanning so it will pickup (example Warrenton, Gasconade, New Haven) all together. From my understanding it will pick up the strongest signal which is of course the Warrenton site. I do pick up the other sites now and then, but notice I am missing transmissions when I hooked up an additional scanner.

My question is, is there a way to program each site by itself, so I don't have to use the roaming? My programming would be List 1 for Warren County which I'd include the Warrenton MOSWIN site, List 4 would be Gasconade County which I'd program the Gasconade MOSWIN site and so on.

Is this possible to do?

Interesting enough, I just built a J-Pole out of copper pipe mounted inside near a window and I still am not able to receive the SLATER system from Warrenton, which seems strange but it's not a big deal.

I am able to receive pretty far out on other frequencies though.

Any help would be appreciated.

Stlouisx50

 

[kb0rpj]

I normally loose SLATER just past Wentzville going west

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G890A using Tapatalk

 

[talkpair]

While it may seem that "more is better", I found out that opposite to be true when scanning multiple P25 sites or systems at home.

At one time, I had KC MARRS, and 4 Moswin sites programmed and was hearing next to nothing on P25 or analog. The few transmissions I did receive were so far in progress that I couldn't get a grasp for what was going on. My original idea was that by scanning 4 Moswin sites, I was ensuring that the talk groups of interest would always have a radio affiliated with at least one of those sites. (The Multi-Site: Stat option in the GRE/RS/Whistler radios allow the radio to watch every usable control channel frequency in the TSYS object's frequency list.)

After a few hours of staring at the LCD screen of this almost dead scanner, I noticed the tag for my Moswin TSYS object seemed to be readable for a long period of time. The MARRS tag was readable, but for a shorter period. The analog channels were scanned so fast, they weren't readable at all. It became obvious that the scanner was spending way too much time watching the 4 Moswin control channels. One by one, I eliminated 3 of the control channels and noticed improvements with each step.

I got curious and decided to see exactly how long my scanner watched a P25 control channel. With the Dwell option set at 0 (the default), the scanner sat on the control channel for 1.1 seconds. With my original setup, the scanner was spending 5.5 seconds per scan-cycle watching control channels alone. This meant my analog channels were only being scanned roughly 11 times per minute !

Further testing revealed that for MARRS and Moswin, the required data from the control channel was usually available in less that 5/10 of a second. (3/10 on average)
I then changed the dwell time on both the MARRS and Moswin TSYS objects from 0 to 3 and noticed even further improvement.
For having such huge implications on scanner performance, the dwell setting doesn't seem to get much discussion. It is the amount of time in tenths of a second that the scanner will watch a site.

Armed with the new dwell setting, I went back to my original 4-site Moswin setup.
Although improvements were noticed, performance still wasn't as good as the single-site setup.

With modern scanners having so much storage capacity, it's easy to load up everything we can think of and just let the scanner sort it out. This logic is flawed largely because of the amount of time required to perform a single scan-cycle.

My advice is to take baby steps and perfect each system along the way. Listen to each Moswin site individually and decide which one offers both signal strength and the talk groups you need.

Bigger isn't better.......Keep it Lean and Mean !

 

[stlouisx50]

Thanks for the reply on KC and MOSWIN systems. I believe I may have figured out how to do what I was trying to do. Program each site as a single site separately into different scan lists. I'll try extending the dwell as well. Sounds like a smart idea.


If you come across anymore tips with the system please let us know.

stlouisx50

 

[scanman1958]

You will most likely only pick up St Charles Co on SLATER from your home. If you have trouble you may want to use a yagi. Just a thought. Good luck.