Site information

[c1o2p3]

Hi folks,
I just joined but have been following for some time so I'm not a complete newb but close. So excuse the stupidity of my question if it's already been answered but I couldn't find it any of the former posts. Anyways, my goals is to track the public safety channels of Weber, Davis, and Salt Lake. I've got them all loaded (I use a Rebanded Uniden BCT8) and they work for the most part. Weber County works without any problem at all. The part that I don't get is why Davis county uses frequencies on the Weber County simulcast while ignoring the majority of the ones found on the davis simulcast. I know they're all on the UCAN system and share but isn't there a limit to distance? Since I don't have room to put every UCAN frequency in, it seems only logical that there is a distance limit that agencies will use. For example, although they're both on the UCAN system, I can't imagine Weber would use St. Georges frequencies vice versa. I hope you're not all lost now by my question. I guess another way to put it would be how many sites does each county use since it's apparent that they share some with others and is there a way to find out with sites they each use exactly?...

Thanks in advance for the help and feel free to put me in line if I'm breaking some rule. Thanks!
MARC

[gldavis]

UCAN Site 2 (Davis Co Simo) uses different Freqs than UCAN Site 1 (Weber Co Simo), so I'm not understanding your question. To start out, are you talking frequencies or Talkgroups(TG)? The freqs are different and arrainged by area/Site. The Talkgroups(TG) are assigned to "individual" users and can be found on any of the sites/freqs as they affiliate with the system. There is no real distance limit. The main controller/computer will send the TG to anywhere in the system that a radio is. Example, if a Bountiful Officer has his radio with him while on vacation at St George, and turns it on, the main controller will track all Bountiful PD comms down there.
Does this help with your questions?

Check the database for the list of all the UCAN site locations and their freqs.

[c1o2p3]

sorry I don't think I posed my question very clearly. I understood that aspect of it. For example, I have noticed while scanning Davis County Sheriff's Dispatch (9440) that some of the frequencies that they use, are not on the Davis County simulcast, but instead on the Weber County simulcast. So I was wondering if some of these sites overlap or something? For example, two of the frequencies that Davis Law Dispatch (9440) was broadcasting on today were 852.9250 and 852.6125 but I notice that those are only on the Weber County Simulcast and not the davis county simulcast....so how does that work?

[N7YUO]

Compare if you will, the Davis radios (or any others) to a cell phone.
As I travel down the road, my phone seeks out a cell site with a strong data channel.
If the signal level drops because of distance, terrain, or structures, the phone will seek
another site.

UCAN radios work with a similar principle. They seek a strong site. If the strength of the data signal drops, they seek another strong site. That site could be in the next county.

Some Talk Groups (TGRPs) are authorized to use all sites. (Life Flight, AirMed).
Some TGRPs may be restricted to using only their local sites (Street Department)
When the cop from Sunset drives his patrol car to Wendover where he moonlights as a security guard at a casino, the Wendover site may transmit Davis calls if he left his radio on.

Some undercover teams get creative to avoid their comms being intercepted.
I once heard surveillance in Layton (Gentile Street), they were on (SL Simul) using the
Tooele event TGRP.

[N7YUO]

Welcome c1o2p3 Marc. If you read many of the posts here, you will notice that most everyone lists their location. This is a courtesy to the rest of us, and if you request information, we need to know where you are located in order to tailor the information to your specific needs.

If you will, please open your profile and put in your location. Thanks in advance

How well are you receiving the Weber, Davis, & Salt Lake?

[kd7rto]

What is your location? There are very few places where I would expect to be able to hear cells 1, 2, and 3. At my location in Bountiful I can do it, but it takes a 13 dB gain yagi to hear cell 1. When I try it with an omnidirectional 800 MHz antenna on the roof, the signal is just too weak. With a discone or 2/70 ringo, I can't hear it at all.

It sounds like you are scanning these channels in conventional mode. While that certainly will enable you to listen, it's a rather ineffective way. The easiest way for me to tell is to ask if you are only seeing the frequency displayed, or if you are seeing a readout of the talkgroup?

With a trunked bank properly set up, and set for control channel only mode, the only frequency you absolutely need to program is the control channel. The scanner will detect the rest. No need to worry about running out of memory locations, or having to spend hours entering frequencies.

[qlajlu]

Welcome to the Utah Forum of RR.com

c1o2p3!!

Like those who have posted ahead of me, I'm confused by your question(s). Have you looked at UCAN's trunked sites in the Utah Database? You will notice that site 1 (Weber Simo), site 2 (Davis Simo), and site 3 (Salt Lake Simo) all have completely different frequencies, but as alluded to by my distinguished friends, it is possible to hear a SL TG on Weber's site, and vice versa. You need to read Trunking Basics. It is a long read, but understandable. Pay particular attention to the section labeled, "Affiliation."

From my home in Kearns, I can listen to sites 1, 2, and 3 all day and I am running on an OEM, approx. three foot telescoping antenna, whereas kd7rto, who lives in Bountiful, needs specialized antennas to hear them. Location is everything sometimes.

I also urge you to return to your User CP (the left side of the second blue bar from the top of any page if you are logged in) and edit your profile to include your location (city and state) as you were requested to do in the material e-mailed to you when you registered. Once you fill in your location it will automatically show in each of your posts. Many of the questions you will have, and their answers, are going to be location specific and without having your location showing you will be asked over and over again what it is. So fill it in now and be done with it. You've already been asked for it three times in this thread alone, and it is also a showing of courtesy to the rest of us.

Again, welcome, and keep asking your questions until you can gain the understanding you are looking for. Oh, and there are no stupid questions.

[c1o2p3]

Thanks for the info. In response to kd7rto. I do scan in trunking mode and not conventional mode so I see the TG's displayed on the screen instead of just the frequency. But what is this you say about only needing to program the control channels? If that's the case that would save me lots of valuable space.

I guess my other option would be just to get a scanner that has enough memory to hold all the frequencies of the UCAN network in one bank (since the BCT8 only has a remarkable capacity of 50 frequencies per bank....impressive I know..). I guess just didn't realize until you all explained to me how they overlap sometimes with the whole affiliation thing.

Sorry it takes so long for me to respond. Being new, it appears I have to get my posts approved first.

[qlajlu]

Originally Posted by c1o2p3

Thanks for the info. In response to kd7rto. I do scan in trunking mode and not conventional mode so I see the TG's displayed on the screen instead of just the frequency. But what is this you say about only needing to program the control channels? If that's the case that would save me lots of valuable space.

I guess my other option would be just to get a scanner that has enough memory to hold all the frequencies of the UCAN network in one bank (since the BCT8 only has a remarkable capacity of 50 frequencies per bank....impressive I know..). I guess just didn't realize until you all explained to me how they overlap sometimes with the whole affiliation thing.

Sorry it takes so long for me to respond. Being new, it appears I have to get my posts approved first.

Yeah, it's kind of a pain when you first start for both you and us because of the approval of posts you need to go through. I think you have passed that limit now and shouldn't have to worry about approval any longer.

kd7rto was referring to what is generally called Control Channel Only mode on Motorola 800 MHz systems. The scanner does not need ALL of the frequencies in a site to monitor it. Look in your manual to see if that is explained. Remember, however, that you may be limited to one trunking site per bank in your scanner. You DON'T want to put in ALL of UCAN's sites because there are over 40 of them and they cover the entire state. I have Site 01 (Weber County Simo), Site 02 (Davis County Simo), Site 03 (Salt Lake County Simo), Site 07 (Mt. Ogden), and Site 011 (Nelson Peak) and that covers the entire north part of the state with the exception of the Cache Valley area and the Uintah Basin as far as UCAN is concerned.

Now, as far as "affiliation" is concerned, it is a concept that some folks have a hard time wrapping their brains around. One of our members, bneilson, made a presentation to a conference in Las Vegas several years back and recorded it. You can see the video here. It is lengthy, but the first half of it is Brett explaining several things having to do with trunking, including affiliation. If you view this video up to the time they change speakers I think you will have a better understanding of things.

[c1o2p3]

Thanks for all that good info and the presentation was pretty good too. I've got another couple questions for you...

I searched around to see if the control channel only option is available for this model....and IT IS!! I entered just the control frequency for Weber simulcast and it seems to track everything just as well as the other mode. This seems too good to be true. Are there any downsides to scanning in this method? From everyone else's experience, does this method scan just as well as the other or do you seem to miss out on certain traffic? I've been using this scanner for about four years and never even realized this option was available. Is this how everyone else has been scanning this whole time?

Second question. Just to make sure I understand your explanations so far, if someone could just confirm what I think is the case...As I mentionned earlier, I was listening to davis law (TG 9440). I noticed one of the frequencies it was using was 852.9250 which is one of the frequencies on the Weber Simulcast and not the Davis Simulcast. Since I live in the Ogden area, I'm assuming it is because of my location. So let's take for example the same trafffic that was broadcasted......I received it as 852.9250 because I'm here in Weber County. Would someone in Farmington, listening to the same traffic at the same time, hear it on another frequency (let's use 852.4750 just as an example since it's on the Davis Simulcast) since they're in Davis county close to another site?

[bchris]

Originally Posted by c1o2p3

I searched around to see if the control channel only option is available for this model....and IT IS!! I entered just the control frequency for Weber simulcast and it seems to track everything just as well as the other mode. This seems too good to be true. Are there any downsides to scanning in this method? From everyone else's experience, does this method scan just as well as the other or do you seem to miss out on certain traffic? I've been using this scanner for about four years and never even realized this option was available. Is this how everyone else has been scanning this whole time?

I have 4 trunking scanners and I have set up several more for other people. I have ALWAYS used CCO mode exclusively since I learned about it on my BC780XLT. I am not aware of any downside, as long as your scanner supports it. Just make sure your BCT8 has been updated for rebanding and that your trunking tables are entered properly, and you should be able to get everything.

Originally Posted by c1o2p3

Second question. Just to make sure I understand your explanations so far, if someone could just confirm what I think is the case...As I mentionned earlier, I was listening to davis law (TG 9440). I noticed one of the frequencies it was using was 852.9250 which is one of the frequencies on the Weber Simulcast and not the Davis Simulcast. Since I live in the Ogden area, I'm assuming it is because of my location. So let's take for example the same trafffic that was broadcasted......I received it as 852.9250 because I'm here in Weber County. Would someone in Farmington, listening to the same traffic at the same time, hear it on another frequency (let's use 852.4750 just as an example since it's on the Davis Simulcast) since they're in Davis county close to another site?

YES! - It sounds like you are really coming up to speed on trunking.

As stated before, if someone is affiliated with the Weber site and their radio is set to the Davis Law channel (TG 9440), then a COPY of all traffic for that TG will be broadcast CONCURRENTLY on both sites. Weber will use one of the frequencies from it's list, and Davis will use a frequency from it's list. If you are scanning both Weber and Davis your scanner will stop on whichever transmission it found first. If you hit the scan button right then and no other TG's were active, your scanner would stop on the same conversation, from the other site, on a different frequency.

In fact, if someone is affiliated with ANY site (that their TG has permissions for), a copy of all traffic for their TG will be broadcast concurrently on ANY site, using a separate frequency for each site. That's why we Wasatch Front folks can sometimes hear traffic from Cache Valley, Wendover, or even St. George. Pretty Cool, huh?

-bc

[ke7ovx]

c1o2p3, welcome to the group

ALSO, a big thanks for asking your question. Your question and all the responses helped me understand what I didn't know and would not have even thought to ask. WTG

hope you enjoy our stay here.

Dan