St. Cloud to the Twin Cities.
- Thread starter bitzan20
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I’m going to guess no. You’d have to have an antenna way up high in the air and I don’t think there is enough wattage behind those 800 towers to reach that far. Logically speaking, if they could, they wouldn’t need near as many towers. Around where I live where the terrain is as flat as flat can be the towers are still no more than 20 miles apart.
I can pick up the west side of the cities with my discone 30 feet in the air. Looking at my log from past weekend, picked up hennepin county pagers. I live just north of clearwater.
stmills
Member
Picking up the Twin Cities towers is unlikely, however some Twin Cities traffic will be found on some closer towers. The Wright/Sherburne towers will have some Hennepin and Anoka Mains due to the common border. The basic concept is mains can usually heard on towers from bordering systems.
I think it’s possible. I have this antenna I put on my roof and it’s not working to well but it’s making a difference. When I go on the Minneapolis City Center simulcast I have a full 5 bars of signal, but the DATA thing only comes on every 2 mins or so.
The way systems like ARMER work is this:
Instead of the big "blow torch" transmitters with high power and tall transmitter towers of years ago, ARMER sub-systems are designed with numerous towers/transmitters covering a smaller area. This could be a county or city like Minneapolis. The transmitters all operate with much lower power and on the same frequencies. This is called simulcasting. Because of the condensed number of transmitters, better building penetration is accomplished, which is good for cities with large buildings.
For the rural areas, one tower/transmitter site may provide sufficient coverage/building penetration.
If a "foreign" user roams into another area, owing to how the system is programmed and radio affiliation permissions, the user's radio may be allowed to affiliate with the tower/transmitter for the area he is in. Then, there is a link back to the user's home tower/transmitters. That allows the unit to remain in contact with "home base". When that happens the radio traffic/talkgroups are heard on both tower/transmitters (also called sites). When the unit leaves that area, the link is broken and that foreign unit is not heard any longer.
This method allows the radio frequencies to be re-used for other sites a little closer than with the old more powerful transmitters. This is great for the users of the system because their radio range is much greater. Its lousy for scanner listeners because they can't regularly hear units farther away than they used to back in VHF/UHF days.
In the RR database, there is an approximate transmission distance for each site. However whether that holds up depends on antennas, weather, topography, time of year,
etc.
Instead of the big "blow torch" transmitters with high power and tall transmitter towers of years ago, ARMER sub-systems are designed with numerous towers/transmitters covering a smaller area. This could be a county or city like Minneapolis. The transmitters all operate with much lower power and on the same frequencies. This is called simulcasting. Because of the condensed number of transmitters, better building penetration is accomplished, which is good for cities with large buildings.
For the rural areas, one tower/transmitter site may provide sufficient coverage/building penetration.
If a "foreign" user roams into another area, owing to how the system is programmed and radio affiliation permissions, the user's radio may be allowed to affiliate with the tower/transmitter for the area he is in. Then, there is a link back to the user's home tower/transmitters. That allows the unit to remain in contact with "home base". When that happens the radio traffic/talkgroups are heard on both tower/transmitters (also called sites). When the unit leaves that area, the link is broken and that foreign unit is not heard any longer.
This method allows the radio frequencies to be re-used for other sites a little closer than with the old more powerful transmitters. This is great for the users of the system because their radio range is much greater. Its lousy for scanner listeners because they can't regularly hear units farther away than they used to back in VHF/UHF days.
In the RR database, there is an approximate transmission distance for each site. However whether that holds up depends on antennas, weather, topography, time of year,
etc.
Makes me wonder if all towers are linked in a state. Reason why I state this is last year I was in duluth. Had my R30 with me. Fired it up to listen to local P25. I have many P25 sites programmed and can link many together for a longer scan. I forgot to uncheck st cloud area and actually listened P25 PD from st cloud while in duluth. Happened a couple of times.
stmills
Member
Some Frequencies used in St. Cloud are the same as in Duluth but the traffic on those frequencies is local- specific to the site. Even if a Statewide talkgroup was coming across on both sites it would most likely be on different frequency at each site.
Was thinking that but I recognized waite park PD on a home visit plus some other traffic related calls I know was st cloud. After I unchecked them, just heard local calls in duluth.
stmills
Member
A general Law Main or Car 2 Car talkgroup would not Roam from St.Cloud to Duluth, A Roaming talkgroup for Stearns County units out of normal coverage area to talk back to dispatch, or an incident on a Statewide Tactical Talkgroup that was also being monitored in Duluth would be possible, but again a normal St. Cloud Talkgroup would not just pop up in Duluth
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