Ramsey County Monitoring

[sjgostovich]

Hopefully someone can offer some input/advice. I often monitor from south Washington County and find that Ramsey Co (all of it) comes in very poorly. I have tried a few different antenna options with negative results. Unfortunetly a base antenna is not an option. Anyone else having problems with Ramsey Co?

 

[deskjockeyone]

It depends in South Washington County where you are located and terrain. The farthest south towers for Ramsey are in southern Maplewood and downtown St. Paul. I lose Ramsey County heading east about 5 miles outside of the county line.

 

[n9upc]

Remember scanning on ARMER is different than scanning on VHF. Remember the ARMER System (at least in the metro) is a Smartzone - Omnilink type system with a large # of sub-systems and talkgroups have permissions on some sub-systems and not others.

So it all comes down to what talkgroups you are using. Most mains for the counties can roam to the adj sub-systems only. Meaning the odds of Ramsey Co Sheriff Main working on a Goodhue Co. tower is slim to none (unless of course the talkgroup is Statewide access). In addition if your scanner is talkgroup only mode and no one is affliated on a tower close to you parked on the talkgroup you want to listen to (in order to pull that audio to the tower through a voice channel) you will not be able to hear it good or if at all.

Now lets throw some more fuel on to the fire. As it sits with Smartzone-Omnilink type towers your scanner can be on your kitchen table listening to whatever loud and clear as the day, then boom it becomes all digitalized sounding or unable to be heard at all but you didn't even move the scanner. This is because some unit in the field has affliated to a tower close by AND now the scanner CAN'T determine which tower to listen to due to the fact that the scanner does not sort by RSSI values which the radios in the field do.

Judging by your name and Avatar try this next time you are down at the FD with one of the portables and a regional type talkgroup.

Good luck and let us know how it goes!

 

[sjgostovich]

So basically there is no fix to this issue?!

 

[ThinBlueLine22]

Nope, your plain old outta range. I suppose you could put up some type of antenna.

 

[wogggieee]

Could you put an antenna in your attic, that is if you have one? Or you could try making a handheld yagi, but i dont know how much success you would have with that. Unfortunately outside of that there isnt much you can do to make their signal go further. Your're just kind of in a bad spot as far as distance and if i remember correctly that area is kind of in a valley which isnt going to help either.