(SNACC-Project 25) System

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Zoltan1a

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I have a BC346XTC scanner and it says project 25 not supported by this scanner. Does that mean my whole city cannot be detected by this particular scanner???
 

br0adband

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You CAN monitor S.N.A.C.C. since it's a nearly complete analog system, the only user right now for P25 traffic is the College of Southern Nevada with just a single talkgroup.

The BC-346XT is an analog capable receiver meaning it will only be able to handle analog aka "old school radio comms." The good thing is that since I'm in Las Vegas myself, there's a ton of info about the S.N.A.C.C. system here in the RR database with all the current frequencies needed (including the control channels duly noted) as well as pretty much every talkgroup in use as well. The S.N.A.C.C. system is relatively huge and it's pretty much all (as of right now) still analog in nature. There is a Project 25 aka P25 subsystem (old school Phase I, the most common mode) being tested currently as they begin to shift towards implementing a P25 Phase II system potentially coming online sometime later this year as development continues.

When that happens, to be able to monitor S.N.A.C.C. - if the entire system changes over to P25 Phase I/Phase II - will require a digital capable scanner (or an RTL/SDR setup using DSD or DSD+ if and when those decoders support P25 Phase II - currently they just handle Phase I and X2-TDMA which is an offshoot towards Phase II).

Anyway, if you have questions just ask in the Nevada specific subforum here at RR and I or someone else can help provide more info.

tl;dr No, you can't monitor P25 traffic of any kind with the BC-346XT, sorry. But you could potentially use the BC-346XT with a discriminator tap and Unitrunker + DSD/DSD+ to monitor P25 traffic in a pinch. Right now as of today there's only one P25 use on the S.N.A.C.C. system anyway which is the College of Southern Nevada system, at the bottom of the list at the link provided above by kma371. They are the only user of P25 comms so far but - basically 99% of S.N.A.C.C right now is still monitorable with your BC-346XT, in time things will change.
 
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ka3jjz

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Just a note here - while you could run DSD or DSD+, if you wait a week or two, the 2 new Unidens will be coming out that can do Phase II....Mike
 

br0adband

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Just a note here - while you could run DSD or DSD+, if you wait a week or two, the 2 new Unidens will be coming out that can do Phase II....Mike

That's true, but so far there hasn't been any Phase II traffic on S.N.A.C.C that I'm aware of - I monitor it quite a bit but I suppose as a disclaimer I should add that I'm going on the data I have at hand (garnered from several sources including RR data) and that even I can't monitor it 24/7. :)

Anyway, as noted above at this time the only P25 use on S.N.A.C.C. is the College of Southern Nevada (the community colleges here in the area) and it's P25 Phase I. I haven't detected any X2-TDMA traffic yet either even though the current comm system is capable of it; the "big change" to Phase II and a potential move to the 700 MHz band is something that's in the works for S.N.A.C.C. and it'll be a huge project when it gets underway.
 

Zoltan1a

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I am trying to use proscan and radio reference to program the scanner and I keep getting error message that state my scanner does not support either las vegas metro or Southern Nevada Area Communications Council (SNACC-Project 25) System. Do I have to enter info in another manner or scanner program?
 

br0adband

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Ok, let's clarify the 3 things that are most relevant here:

1) Your BC-346XT is an analog only scanner, it will not decode digital communications of any kind, so that means you cannot monitor any APCO P25 transmissions of any kind (well, you can monitor them but all you'll hear is the digital data stream which can sound like static for many people with untrained ears). The S.N.A.C.C. system here in Clark County is not a P25 system - that P25 aspect is currently in limited testing so it's not what you should be focusing on. You should be focusing on what kma371 posted above, that link will get you the info for the actual S.N.A.C.C. system itself - the P25 aspect in testing is only one particular talkgroup with a very minor amount of traffic. According to my most current Unitrunker S.N.A.C.C. data, there are 217 talkgroups on the S.N.A.C.C. system (that I've detected myself) and only one of them is using P25, again the College of Southern Nevada - that's it. There's only 1 talkgroup using P25 comms out of 217 which means 216 of them you can listen in on easily.

There is a S.N.A.C.C. P25 system, yes, but it's a subset of S.N.A.C.C. itself, and no you can't monitor it even though it's just that one talkgroup currently.

2) The P25 system in testing is a small part of S.N.A.C.C. itself, so again you want to focus on getting the actual S.N.A.C.C. system info, control channel frequencies, and talkgroups into the scanner so you can monitor what's available aka the 216 talkgroups you can listen to.

3) The Las Vegas Metro Police Department uses a different radio system known as OpenSky and it cannot be monitored by any scanner or receiver on the market today, period - it doesn't matter if it's analog or digital, you simply can't listen in.

The only police traffic in our area we can monitor is North Las Vegas Police, Boulder City Police, and Henderson Police and they are all part of the S.N.A.C.C. system and yes you can listen in to those. It's just LVMPD that nobody can monitor anymore.

But this is getting off being BC-346XT related and more into our current local systems so, this should be enough info for now, ask in the Nevada subforum if you need more help.
 
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Zoltan1a

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I can understand that however how can I program my radio if proscan and others just won't allow me to select the info. How do you go about uploading the data? I appreciate the info you have provided me with
 

kma371

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i am trying to use proscan and radio reference to program the scanner and i keep getting error message that state my scanner does not support either las vegas metro or southern nevada area communications council (snacc-project 25) system. Do i have to enter info in another manner or scanner program?

don't select the snacc project 25 system, use the other snacc system
 

br0adband

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The link that kma371 provided you with above is the actual primary S.N.A.C.C. system:

Clark County - Southern Nevada Area Communications Council (SNACC) Trunking System, Clark County, Nevada - Scanner Frequencies

The P25 subsystem is located at:

Southern Nevada Area Communications Council (SNACC-Project 25) System Trunking System, Las Vegas, Multi-State - Scanner Frequencies

Again, they are two different trunked systems. Ignore the P25 one completely since your scanner cannot receive/decode P25; there's no reason to even consider that system at all for the BC-346XT.
 

Zoltan1a

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I am not trying to consider it I am trying to use one of the programs recommended by RadioReference. Maybe ProScan is not a good choice, ill try another program. I have not tried entering anything manually.
 

ka3jjz

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ProScan is an excellent program, and it's well supported (there's even a dedicated sticky thread on which the author can be found in the scanner software programming forum). However no matter what program you use, you have to understand the ins and outs of these DMA scanners, and be comfortable with some concepts such as trunking to be able to effectively use it.

To that end, this wiki article has links (always blue) to everything you need. Included at the bottom are the links to the Easier to Read manuals...

Program your DMA Scanner - The RadioReference Wiki

HTH...Mike
 
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