Programming the BCD996 for SmartZone

[W4KRR]

My county is in the process of combining five former Smart Net systems into a Smart Zone system. (Broward County, Florida). So I decided to reprogram both my BCD996T's to take advantage of the multiple site feature that this scanner has.

The way it's set up now, only a select few talkgroups can "roam" to other sites. The problem is this: If I want to hold on one particular talkgroup, you have to know which one of the five sites it's likely to come up on, because apparently the scanner does not check all of the sites on one system for activity on the talkgroup, it only checks the one site that you happen to be holding on. That is, unless I set up something wrong. This would seem to defeat the whole purpose of being able to program multiple sites under a single system.

Did I set up something wrong, or is this the way this scanner operates with multiple sites? I gave all sites under the system the same Quick Key.

[hankv]

Originally Posted by W4KRR

If I want to hold on one particular talkgroup, you have to know which one of the five sites it's likely to come up on, because apparently the scanner does not check all of the sites on one system for activity on the talkgroup, it only checks the one site that you happen to be holding on.

I gave all sites under the system the same Quick Key.

I don't have a 996 (yet) so I'll follow any answers you get with interest.

On my 396 I have 5 tower (site) Control Channels in one system. All TG's I follow are on all sites so as I lose one tower the 396 finds another one - I have not tried to hold on a TG as the radio switches from one tower to another - I only have one TGID Group.

I have recently found an unknown Control Channel that seems to be new, so I put that in a separate system until I can identify it (no activity on it yet).


Both of these systems are on the same Quick Key for my local area.

I also have separate systems and Quick Keys for each adjacent State.

[W4KRR]

I'll reply in order to bump this back up.

We now have a scanner that can be programmed with multiple sites for the same system, and it would seem to work well while scanning, but my whole point is that if you elect to hold on a single talkgroup, the scanner will only look for activity on the one site that the the radio is on while in the talkgroup hold mode, it will not check the other sites for activity on the held talkgroup. Unless it does, but just doesn't appear to. I am attempting to confirm if this is the case.

[UPMan]

That is the case. Since the scanner cannot actually affiliate with a particular tower (which would force the tower to include the traffic you are holding for), there really is no way to satisfy all conditions. If the scanner scanned each site for activity during hold, you would likely miss a lot of traffic on your local site because the scanner would spend a lot of time checking for traffic on the "wrong" sites (think about a statewide system with hundreds of sites...even though most sites would be out of range, it still takes time to check for a signal). If it doesn't check all the sites, then when the traffic moves to a different site and "defilliates" (???) from the site you are holding on, then you'll also miss the traffic (which is what happens now). The assumption is that you'll miss less traffic as it works now (because if the traffic starts out on a site, it is most likely going to remain active on that site).

Of course if you are changing location, then that complicates things further, as you could actually move out of range of the site you are holding on (but on a SmartZone system there is a chance that the traffic on the channel you are monitoring won't be carried on the site you are now at, so trying to follow the channel on the new site would be moot).

If there is a channel you regularly want to solo monitor, you could put it in its own channel group and disable all the other groups in that system (then it would do as you are describing since you wouldn't need to HOLD). But, it is more likely that you have occasionally interesting channels that could be fairly randomly distributed...in which case you are stuck with how it works.

[W4KRR]

Thanks for the reply. Fortunately, this is not usually a problem for me; in my area very few talkgroups actually roam from site to site. Those that do are usually simulcast on more than one site, and I know which site is the "primary" one that the talkgroup will most likely appear on. I just have to make sure I'm holding on the correct site before I hold on the talkgroup.