DOD and DOA sites with 1600 mile radii

[Jay911]

Hi folks,

I was PM'ed recently by someone who asked me to help him figure out why he's getting certain Dept of Defense (14C) and Dept of Army (58A) sites and talkgroups no matter what range settings he uses on his "location based scanning"-equipped scanner.

Before anybody gets into the "we don't modify the database to cater to any scanner manufacturer", hear me out. You have certain "unknown location" sites with a 1600 mile radius, covering the entire continent from the top of Hudson Bay to the south end of Mexico. Does "unknown WA site 62" really cover everything in the Northern Hemisphere from Greenland to Baja California?

DoD:
WA-Site 54 Site Details (United States Department of Defense (BEE00-14C))
WA-Site 56 Site Details (United States Department of Defense (BEE00-14C))
WA-Site 62 Site Details (United States Department of Defense (BEE00-14C))
WA-Site 64 Site Details (United States Department of Defense (BEE00-14C))

DoA:
Site 4 Site Details (United States Department of the Army)
Site-203 Site Details (United States Department of the Army)
GA-Morgans Bridge Site Details (United States Department of the Army)

There are a number of talkgroup groups that cover the same exceedingly wide area. I suspect that if the sites with the insane ranges are shrunk down, the talkgroups won't cause a problem, because scanners won't load talkgroup groups without sites in range. But I could be wrong. I appreciate that a couple of the groups listed below are for system-wide use, and these are exceptionally large systems. Can something be done to help out location-based-scanner users?

DoD:
Navy Regional Operation Centers (ROC)
Radio Maintenance

DoA:
Directorate of Plans, Training, Mobilization and Security (DPTMS
Directorate of Public Works
Fort Gordon - Emergency
Fort Gordon - Fire Department
Fort Gordon - Medical Emergency
Fort Gordon - Provost Marshals Office
Fort Gordon - Public Works
Fort Gordon - REST
Fort Jackson
United States Military Academy

I think it would be doing everybody a favor if at least the sites were shrunk down to something more realistic. At the most, they should cover just the state that they are supposedly contained within. And the talkgroups - especially the ones tied to a specific geographic location - should be shrunk down as well.

For what it's worth, the person who PM'ed me did so after supposedly making submissions to the DB and being rebuffed by an admin. They contacted me because they figured I had a good grasp on the "range circles" and properties of location-based-scanning, and hoped I would get further than they had. This kind of exceptionally large location & radius configuration in the DB contributes to the confusion a lot of people experience when they turn on their brand new scanner, ask it to bring in signals for 20 miles around them, and suddenly see it trying to receive talkgroups from 29 Palms across to Norfolk.

 

[wise871]

Jay, the 14c can easily be fixed. Right now the WA sites are screwed up because the location is unknown. They can easily be fixed to at least contain the radius within the state of Washington. I can make some adjustments later for the 14C but I don't have access to the other.


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[Voyager]

If a person can hear it from a certain location, it should be added with that location and a 100 mile radius. As the location is narrowed down, the radius can shrink as the coordinates get more accurate.

Basically that's what you want, right? It has nothing to do with any manufacturer. It has to do with an exceedingly large, unrealistic, coverage radius.

 

[PJH]

IIRC, there was some discussion on these. The general system radius shouldn't have any effect (at least on the Uniden products I play with that are DB aware). The sites and the talkgroup catagories could.

I went in on one of the systems awhile back and added GPS locations to all the subcategories and that fixed all the problems I was aware of.

I don't get any of these systems selected on my products, and only the local USAF base near me actually pulls in.

I can take a look at them as well.

Do we know what product is being used?

There may also be some settings on his product that can be altered as well.

 

[PJH]

Ok I see what happened with a few of them. I'll see if I can go through and clean some of them up. I've changed a few of the 1600 WA ones back to 20mi of Seattle until we can figure out more.

I also may change site names to match the USAF system which reads a bit better as well, and I'll go thru and see if it can be cleaned up to match the others better.

Won't be an overnight thing

 

[PJH]

Looking further, it seems when the DB was upgraded years back, the sites that had no initial location information (which was normal) and they inherited the system range, which explains the 1600 site radius.

I'm going through and deleting sites that have no description/location information to figure out where they are and adding in installation location GPS information as best as I can that covers the base, unless there is a more specific site information available. I am also doing this for the base categories for talkgroups as well and consolidating and adding links as needed.

Watch for changes over the next several days.

 

[Jay911]

Thanks very much to all involved!