PICWIN

[dodgerboi84]

Is there a map or something that can help with where the best signal is for the PCWIN system!? My scanner seems to just get horrible reception through out the city of Tucson on all sites.


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[DanRollman]

Is there a map or something that can help with where the best signal is for the PCWIN system!? My scanner seems to just get horrible reception through out the city of Tucson on all sites.

I don't know of a single map that would make that really easy. Plus, not all agencies/talkgroups are heard on all Sites at the same time (the text at the top of each agency's entry in the database give some specific guidance on what Sites you may hear an agency of interest on).

What model scanner are you using, what do you most want to listen to, and from what location(s)? I and others could give you some tips if we know that.

Although as you may have seen on other threads in this forum, some of us say PCWIN doesn't sound very good on scanners other than the new SDS100 while others swear it sounds just fine even on older scanners.

The SDS100 is basically a 436 except with totally different internal hardware that allows it to perform better on P25 simulcast systems like PCWIN and cure the oft-reported poor performance of other scanners on these systems (along with some other whiz-bang features like a color screen). OTOH, some say their 436 or other older scanners perform just fine on PCWIN and they have no idea what the fuss is about or why Uniden bothered to completely re-engineer the hardware, I guess.

 

[JohnSpartan]

Most, if not all, trunk systems have a map showing the transmitter locations as listed on their respective FCC licenses. Here is the one for PCWIN:

https://www.radioreference.com/apps/db/?action=siteMap&sid=7735&type=rr

Forgot to mention:

If you click on the linked title of each listing of frequency groupings (sites), that will pull up a specific page for that, and give a map, with detailed transmitter information. For example, here is Simulcast A:

https://www.radioreference.com/apps/db/?siteId=22273

 

[DanRollman]

Most, if not all, trunk systems have a map showing the transmitter locations as listed on their respective FCC licenses. Here is the one for PCWIN:

https://www.radioreference.com/apps/db/?action=siteMap&sid=7735&type=rr

Forgot to mention:

If you click on the linked title of each listing of frequency groupings (sites), that will pull up a specific page for that, and give a map, with detailed transmitter information. For example, here is Simulcast A:

https://www.radioreference.com/apps/db/?siteId=22273

Yeah I thought about mentioning that, but PCWIN is a bit of a jumbled mess in terms of which sites are on which licenses. And the map that shows up from the site link itself is really generic. I clicked around on those links and the maps tied to each site and the maps tied to each callsign (several sites have multiple callsigns, and several callsigns share frequencies actually used at different sites) and decided it's more confusing than helpful, at least for PCWIN.

Now for other systems where every site has just one callsign and each callsign has just one site, I bet the linked maps are pretty useful.

 

[JohnSpartan]

Everything Pima County is that way, but it's better than nothing. A generalized idea as to where the sites are could help in determining what works best for the OP