Roanoke Trunking?

[tehsuck]

Hi, I've got a Radio Shack Pro-528, and I use it to listen to Roanoke City's trunked system. Well, I used to.

I guess I had a bout of ADD and programmed over my first two frequencies in that bank to try to pick up state police, to no avail. Now, I'm trying to reprogram everything back, and I'm having trouble with 856.1625, one of the control frequencies. I'm getting digital noise, even with trunking on.

Anyone else having any problems or should I reset that entire bank and try again?

 

[John]

I am not familiar with that model scanner, but on many of the scanner when you program in the frequency you must be in a "trunking" mode so the scanner knows not to treat that frequency as a normal voice channel. It sounds like your scanner is scanning that channel and stopping there and hearing the control channel but since it doesn't know it is a trunking frequency it is sending the control channel audio to your speaker which is what you are hearing as digital noise.

It shouldn't picking up noise on that channel today since 856.1625 is not the the control channel right now.

Anyway, you not only have to turn trunking mode after you program (which it sounds like you are doing) but you also may have to program the channels in a special way to tell the scanner they are trunk frequencies. Check your manual again on how to program in trunked frequencies.

John

 

[fmon]

The frequencies and bank need to be set to trunking.

 

[tehsuck]

I guess I should clarify: everything worked just fine before I punched in two State Police frequencies as my first two channels in the bank. My frequencies, in order, are right off the Roanoke RR page:

856.16250c 856.43750 857.08750c 857.43750 857.73750 858.03750c 858.43750 859.21250 859.26250 859.46250c

My trunking mode is set for E800 or something (don't have it with me right now), which I believe is the Motorola 800MHz bands (all the same settings as before). I don't think my scanner has the option to directly dictate which frequencies are control and which are not.

Normally what happens is I'll scan Blacksburg, Virginia Tech and Montgomery County, and I'll turn on Roanoke when I'm bored at home (where I can pick them up loud and clear, it's tougher in town). With trunking mode on, it'll go through the analog frequencies normally, and then when it hits bank 9 (which I've programmed as a trunking channel for Roanoke City), it'll display 5 dashes (presumably a blank placeholder for a talkgroup number). When I get traffic, it'll display the talkgroup number (for example, 35888 for Roanoke Police dispatch is a very common one I see)

Mainly I'm just baffled as to why suddenly I can no longer pick up Roanoke City correctly, and why my scanner isn't locking on to that one particular control frequency. If I manually go to others, I can get more digital noise, and if I set one of the non-control frequencies, I can hear (albeit only one-way) radio traffic loud and clear.

I hope that clarifies my situation a little bit.

 

[John]

If I understand your situation, you had it working but overwrote 2 of your trunking channels with conventional (State PD) channels. Now when you put the 2 trunking channels back in the system is not working correctly on some of the control channels. Is this correct?

This sounds like the 2 channels you put back in were not entered as trunking channels but were instead entered as conventional channels. You say the trunking system is setup as E800 but you not only have to setup the BANK as a trunking bank but you also must enter the CHANNELS as trunking channels. This is covered in pages 54-56 of your manual. From the way the manual reads you should be able to manually step through your channels and all your trunking channels should show the channel number, bank number and the letter M. If the 2 you reentered are not showing M then they are not programmed as Motorola trunking channels.

It doesn't matter if they are control channels or not. The scanner still needs to know they are trunked channels so it doesn't scan them like conventional channels.

John

 

[tehsuck]

Ah, that was a detail I had missed. I seem to remember re-inputting the channels in as trunking channels, but perhaps something else went wrong as well. I'll definitely double-check when I get home today as to whether or not all of the Roanoke channels for that bank have the "M" in it.

Thanks a bunch. I'll let you know how things go later.

Also, not to derail my own thread here, but I'm taking an internship at the Petersburg Progress-Index as a photographer this summer (I'm a student at Virginia Tech right now, and I live at home in Blacksburg). I'll be living in Richmond though, and making the commute. Do you have any suggestions for "budget" digital scanners? I think Petersburg runs analog, but Richmond is a digital system, and it'd be nice to be able to scan there. Unfortunately, everything seems to start at around $350.

 

[John]

My recommendation would be a Radio Shack PRO-197 (Mobile) or PRO-106 (Handheld). These are the same as the GRE PSR-600 and -500 respectively. Yes they run around $300-400 but that is about as cheap as you can get. You may find something used on eBay but Radio Shack sells reconditioned 197s for $299. They will do everything you will need and are pretty fair scanners. The Uniden BC996XLT and BC396XLT are also good but they will cost you more unless you can find a good deal on eBay.

If you wanted the cheapest thing that will work, then look into a used PRO-96 or PRO-2096. They should still work in Richmond area though I haven't tried one there in a while. They just are quite as good as the newer ones and have some limitations on rebanded systems.

John