orange county viper

[hokiefotog]

help i am a new radio user and am having some difficulty listening to anyone in orange county. i have a radio shack pro96 with win 96 software.

i am able to listen to those in wake and durham county just fine, but i didn't know if orange is setup differently.

using win 96, i have my channels set up for motorola, enter the primary and secondary control channels, along with the text ids. still, nothing happens. when i manually listen to the control channels, i can hear them and have a very good reception %.

any help would be very appreciated.

 

[jeffmulter]

Very common mistake with new Pro 96 (and Pro 97) users ... trying to listen to a trunked system in "scan" (closed) mode, when there are no talkgroups programmed in.

Try listening to the system in "search" (open) mode.

Once you have some talkgroups programmed into the scan lists, you can then listen in either open or closed mode. In closed mode, you will only receive transmissions on the talkgroups you programmed in. In open mode, you will hear all transmissions, but the scanner will display the alpha tag you entered for any talkgroups you have in the scan list.

If you DO have talkgroups entered, tale a close look at the entries ... particularly if you cut and pasted from an HTML source. Sometimes, those entries can get corrupted by unseen HTML characters and spaces.

 

[redclay]

Viper in Orange Co.

Hokie, FWIW, you won't hear a lot of traffic from Orange Co. agencies on Viper because they aren't fully operational as yet. What you do hear on Viper frequencies from Orange will be the CHFD and Orange VFD, UNC PD and a few others using handhelds because the emergency communications center is looking for newer, larger accomodations before they install their new Viper consoles and start using the whole system and towers in Chapel Hill and Hillsborough.

I have found that i can hear Orange Viper test traffic by programming in the tower frequencies for the Randolph Co. site (go figure) as well as the local two Orange, Alamance and Chatham tower sites i have programmed in to my RS Pro-96. The Pro-96 is a great tool for doing detective work on finding out the as yet unpublished TGs that will be in Orange - so far i have a new Carrboro PD TG and the UNC Aircare folks were testing their radios in the helos last week in a new TG. It should make for interesting listening when they all come online. Rgds., Redclay 2/26