Sentinel: ohio marcs programming

[glenn12416]

whenever i program my sds100 with an ohio marcs frequency it downloads the whole system is there a way other than avoiding all channels i dont want i am using sentinal and keeping freq

 

[phask]

No - just click and drag to mark, then avoid a whole "block" at once.

 

[glenn12416]

i will try that i have a homepatrol2 also and when i did it last time i got a sd card error and had to re do the whole clear user data to get it working again

 

[donc13]

whenever i program my sds100 with an ohio marcs frequency it downloads the whole system is there a way other than avoiding all channels i dont want i am using sentinal and keeping freq

Are you using location and range settings? If so, even though the whole state system and sites are in the list, they will be ignored unless they are within range of your location.

Same with service types, only enable those you are interested in, the rest will be ignored.

 

[glenn12416]

i live in cleveland it scans as far as cincinatti in the marcs sysyem in my favorites list without avoilding all channels whenever i program it with a marcs system in it.the only time it ignores them is when i use zip code. but it still goes way farther than the 5 miles i have range for it goes to medina county ,summit county which are10-15 miles away

 

[glenn12416]

parma and medina county are on the phase 2 system and summit is on marcs i can deal with them but when it scans the whole marcs data base it takes a while to scan through it there are 1400 freqs it scans through

 

[RandyKuff]

It doesn't scan TGID's... Just the "Control Channel" for the sites...
You can just remove or "Avoid" the "Sites" that are not of interest or to far away for you to monitor...

 

[glenn12416]

I figured it out thanks

 

[BN203]

I also have had issues with 536 programming and the Ohio MARCS system. I use my radio mobile with an appropriate 700/800 MHz antenna.
I have it programmed to listen to OSP district 5 and several local county SOs and FDs in the Clark, Champaign, Montgomery, Miami, Shelby county areas. My issue is that all works well except the Champaign County site. It does not seem to play well with other surrounding counties.
An example would be I can be in southern Montgomery County and hear the Champaign County Sheriff and Urbana Fire, but when I am in Champaign County I can only hear Champaign County SO, Urbana Fire, and OSP for the Springfield area only. Any other surrounding system such as Clark County are intermittent at best, if at all. I have about 10 county tower sites programmed with both the control channel and all alternate control channels programmed. Is there something I missed? I use ARC536PRO to program, seems easier than Sentinel. The radio has the latest firmware, use Sentinel for that.
I can travel through Champaign and Shelby Counties and hear nothing out of Clark County until I get into northern Shelby, then the Miami County site takes over and Clark County radios come in loud and clear. I had entertained deleting Shelby County's tower to see if that helps.
Any ideas?
I know that Clark County radios except the SO, were limited to county of origin plus 1 county last August by MARCS. Seems a little short sited by MARCS. The entire intent of this system was interoperability statewide. Seems like a statewide expansion of the system would have been a better approach.
I also have a Unication G4 pager programmed similarly and have the same issues with the Champaign County Site.

 

[JoeBearcat]

Birdie perhaps?

Or that site may be mistuned or putting out less than clean data.

Or maybe another site is using the same frequency as the control channel?

It would be interesting to know if the user radios also have similar issues.

 

[BN203]

Interesting you should ask. Yes FD radios at times have issues assosicauting with the Champaign County Tower. Never an issue with either of the Clark County towers. I have not compared control channels to see if any are duplicated in the area, but I will.

 

[BN203]

Reviewing my sites here is what I have programmed and no duplicates are present.

Ohio MARCS
Site#	County	Site name	Control Ch.	Alternate Chs.
1/8	Champaign	Urbana	774.80625	774.90625
4/7	Clark	Springfield	774.70625	774.38125
4/8	Clark	Northridge	773.73125	773.23125
2/28	Allen	Lima	774.78125	774.75625
1/22	Auglaize	Wapakoneta	774.30625	771.50625
1/19	Shelby	Sidney	774.53125	773.78125
4/5	Miami	Troy	858.73750	856.73750	857.73750	859.73750
4/4	Montgomery	County	853.60000	853.32500	859.46250	859.96250
1/12	Greene (Simul)	County	858.88750	855.83750	856.88750	857.88750

 

[JoeBearcat]

Interference can come from voice-only channels (assuming there are some in this case) or from users not part of that system.

But the fact that system users are having problems hints there is an outside influence of some type that is adversely affecting operation..

 

[phask]

Reviewing my sites here is what I have programmed and no duplicates are present.

Ohio MARCS
Site#	County	Site name	Control Ch.	Alternate Chs.
1/8	Champaign	Urbana	774.80625	774.90625
4/7	Clark	Springfield	774.70625	774.38125
4/8	Clark	Northridge	773.73125	773.23125
2/28	Allen	Lima	774.78125	774.75625
1/22	Auglaize	Wapakoneta	774.30625	771.50625
1/19	Shelby	Sidney	774.53125	773.78125
4/5	Miami	Troy	858.73750	856.73750	857.73750	859.73750
4/4	Montgomery	County	853.60000	853.32500	859.46250	859.96250
1/12	Greene (Simul)	County	858.88750	855.83750	856.88750	857.88750

Are you monitoring all those sites at the same time? 9 sites times 2 sec per site means it would take 18 seconds to scan them all (more or less).

For me, anything over 2 or 3 takes too long.

 

[bearcat]

whenever i program my sds100 with an ohio marcs frequency it downloads the whole system is there a way other than avoiding all channels i dont want i am using sentinal and keeping freq

If you turn on LOCATION Control you can limit the number of sites it will scan. You can either enter your zip code or actually create an entry in your profile under Location Settings with your exact LAT/LON position. At that point you can use RANGE (in miles) to regulate which sites are scanned. In my case I use a range of Zero miles (0). As you increase the value of RANGE then additional sites will be scanned, but possibly not heard. I find small values in RANGE work best. It works very well and if you travel to other parts of the State you can just enter a zip code to cover the area you are visiting. That is the beauty of these radios.

 

[phask]

If you turn on LOCATION Control you can limit the number of sites it will scan. You can either enter your zip code or actually create an entry in your profile under Location Settings with your exact LAT/LON position. At that point you can use RANGE (in miles) to regulate which sites are scanned. In my case I use a range of Zero miles (0). As you increase the value of RANGE then additional sites will be scanned, but possibly not heard. I find small values in RANGE work best. It works very well and if you travel to other parts of the State you can just enter a zip code to cover the area you are visiting. That is the beauty of these radios.

FWIW - that does not work very well in parts of Ohio. Fine for mobile, but fixed - nope.. In my area of Ohio, surrounded by hills if I use location it may load 10 or more sites. I can only reliably receive 4 or 5. Outside antenna, booster, and great coax. Fixed use - I'll stick to avoiding all that I do nor need (usually 1 site). Most sites in Ohio are 15 mile range, at times 15 is easy, other times or directions, not at all.

 

[JStemann]

FWIW - that does not work very well in parts of Ohio. Fine for mobile, but fixed - nope.. In my area of Ohio, surrounded by hills if I use location it may load 10 or more sites. I can only reliably receive 4 or 5. Outside antenna, booster, and great coax. Fixed use - I'll stick to avoiding all that I do nor need (usually 1 site). Most sites in Ohio are 15 mile range, at times 15 is easy, other times or directions, not at all.

I use this process on my 436 and HP1 scanners and it works pretty well. I have pre-programmed gps coordinates with about 5 locations I visit regularly and just set the location and adjust the range as needed. My range is normally set to 0.0 miles, occasionally I'll move it up to 5 or 10 miles, but that's only if I'm experimenting. These are both, primarily fixed radios. I use gps exclusively on my 536 that's mounted in my vehicle.

If you really want to customize things, all sites, counties, talkgroups have their own range associated with their coordinates. You can edit that range in the fav list editor in sentinel or you can bulk edit if you open the .hpd file with notepad. So, in my case, I had several Indiana SAFET sites with a 30 mile range. Even with my radio range set at 0.0, it was still trying to scan out of range sites. In notepad, select edit>replace... then I FIND 30.0 and replace with 15.0 (for example). Just keep in mind, it's easy to corrupt your fav list messing around in Notepad and you'll have to get creative with updating fav lists if you want to keep your modifications.

Butel's ARC software has some bulk edit features, but the last time I tried, it didn't accomplish what I was after. I don't know if proscan does any better or not.

 

[phask]

I use this process on my 436 and HP1 scanners and it works pretty well. I have pre-programmed gps coordinates with about 5 locations I visit regularly and just set the location and adjust the range as needed. My range is normally set to 0.0 miles, occasionally I'll move it up to 5 or 10 miles, but that's only if I'm experimenting. These are both, primarily fixed radios. I use gps exclusively on my 536 that's mounted in my vehicle.

If you really want to customize things, all sites, counties, talkgroups have their own range associated with their coordinates. You can edit that range in the fav list editor in sentinel or you can bulk edit if you open the .hpd file with notepad. So, in my case, I had several Indiana SAFET sites with a 30 mile range. Even with my radio range set at 0.0, it was still trying to scan out of range sites. In notepad, select edit>replace... then I FIND 30.0 and replace with 15.0 (for example). Just keep in mind, it's easy to corrupt your fav list messing around in Notepad and you'll have to get creative with updating fav lists if you want to keep your modifications.

Butel's ARC software has some bulk edit features, but the last time I tried, it didn't accomplish what I was after. I don't know if proscan does any better or not.

Guess what, nothing you said is news to me, nor do I live in flat Indiana.

As I said, it does not matter to me as I only use FL's when fixed, I also use FL for most of my localish travel. When "on the road" I just go with the full DB.

 

[bearcat]

FWIW - that does not work very well in parts of Ohio. Fine for mobile, but fixed - nope.. In my area of Ohio, surrounded by hills if I use location it may load 10 or more sites. I can only reliably receive 4 or 5. Outside antenna, booster, and great coax. Fixed use - I'll stick to avoiding all that I do nor need (usually 1 site). Most sites in Ohio are 15 mile range, at times 15 is easy, other times or directions, not at all.

You could always lower mileage Range of the sites you cannot hear. I just find that I forget that sites are AVOIDED when I change locations.

 

[hiegtx]

whenever i program my sds100 with an ohio marcs frequency it downloads the whole system is there a way other than avoiding all channels i dont want i am using sentinal and keeping freq

This can be a hassle with any statewide or large regional system.

However, you are a Premium Subscriber. If, instead of appending in Sentinel, you used software such as ProScan or ARC536, you could select and import only the sites & departments you wanted, without ending up with the whole state.