Ontario County - Help with HomePatrol frequency DB?

[RTTY]

Hello, first, sorry if this is the wrong forum. This is my first post. Been reading here for years, and finally set up an account.

I have been using the HomePatrol for about a year, and currently have firmware v. 2.04, and database version 1/5/2014, i.e. I'm all up to date. I live in Farmington NY, and regularly listened to the VHF 154.815 frequency for the Sheriff's dispatch.

Not surprisingly, I lost that when they switched over to a trunked digital system. I know that now, the HomePatrol Sentinel software has a database update with the TGID values, and various allowed frequencies for the Ontario trunked system. However, when I update the server-side database to my HomePatrol, i'm not happening to get any of those signals. It might be something as simple as squelch, but I am guessing it isn't.

I've even gone so far as to use the extreme upgrade feature to program a mock system, but that's a little over my head still, and I don't believe that's necessary as folks have already done the hard work to update the database with the necessary information.

I have my location set as Farmington, NY in the HomePatrol.

I'd consider myself a less than an intermediate user of this thing (have the extreme upgrade as mentioned but I'm still playing around with it). Can anyone help me to understand what I might be doing incorrectly, or what tests I could perform to drill down to the cause? I've read and re-read a lot of the discussion here that took place during the analog to digital transition for Ontario Cty, but it's over my head still! Thanks....

 

[DaveNF2G]

Is the scanner actually showing you that it is scanning that system? If not, then it might not think the system's transmitter sites are within your monitoring radius.

Have you tried setting your location by zip code? Alternatively, try changing your location to Canandaigua and see if anything changes. If that helps, then you probably need to set a larger radius.

Also, be sure your scanner is accepting all of the correct service types (law enforcement, fire, etc.) during system loading.

 

[RTTY]

Thanks

Thank you for your feedback and ideas. I did change the location to Canandaigua, and increased the range up to the max 30 miles. Squelch is almost all the way down, also. Guess it wasn't really something I was doing wrong in terms of database stuff with the channels not being there, just some tweaking and tuning of settings was necessary.

Good news is I have received an occasional transmission now, on the trunked system. So really, the issue is solved more or less. I did notice there doesn’t seem to be nearly the same level of activity, nor is the signal strength as high (qualitatively speaking… I don’t have a meter connected).

As for level of activity, well, that’s just an observation independent of anything technical. For the signal strength, I will change out the OEM antenna to something with better gain and see how I fare.

Thanks again.

 

[Thunderknight]

You may need a directional antenna (yagi) Or other solutions. Lots of posts on RR about simulcast issues with scanners.
Simulcast digital distortion - The RadioReference Wiki