996T in Morris County

[evilgriff]

I had a bear of a time programming this scanner the last time. I cannot receive many local towns around me anymore as I believe they have changed programming. Is this scanner still useful here and is there anyone around here who helps reprogram for a small fee. I have been a member on here for a long time, been a couple years since I ordered the subscription as I have been busy. Funny how I can still remember the local frequencies, played with crystal radios, but never clearly understood the new scanners at all. If anyone is interested, please P.M. me, I will have to look for things since the last time I programmed this radio I needed some funky serial adapter for the cable, that is how long it's been.

 

[W2SJW]

I'm going to assume you have the cable to program the unit?

If so, get a copy of FreeScan & then download the memory file linked in my signature. Then, just upload only the Morris County system into your scanner. The 996T will receive it just fine.

 

[Fizz306]

I'm going to assume you have the cable to program the unit?

If so, get a copy of FreeScan & then download the memory file linked in my signature. Then, just upload only the Morris County system into your scanner. The 996T will receive it just fine.

i was going to say, the 996T does just fine on the county's LSM system...unlike the 996XT. the county is probably half the reason you can't hear any of the old towns you used to listen too...odds are they've migrated to the county system for dispatch.

 

[evilgriff]

Scott, thanks I will try to do it over the weekend. And rob, I think you are right. Little by little they seemed to disappear and now the only thing I seemed to get anymore was state police. I liked things better when you could just enter a frequency for a town you wanted to hear. You put a town in a bank, fire in a bank, etc. I guess for the more computer savvy the new way is easier. Give me 46.42, 154.785, 46.02, etc any day.

 

[Fizz306]

I hear ya. Not so simple anymore. Pertaining to the county system, once you learn what departments are in what talkgroups and each towns two digit codes, it's not that bad.

 

[rmosier]

I've been having a hard time receiving the system. I'm located in Mt. Olive and have tried everything to improve my reception, but I still miss a lot. I listen to another live feed at the same time I listen to mine, and I miss 90% of all traffic. I've tried filters, attenuation, squelch adjustments, etc. I use a discone lmr400 cable and a BCD396XT. Mode is 8 and threshold is 50. If anyone has an idea that I haven't tried yet, I'm all ears.

 

[SCPD]

Your signature line indicates you have a 396T and 396XT. Do you hear the same on those as you do on the 996T (or is it 996XT)?

 

[evilgriff]

Just ordered USB-1 Cable to try to program this thing. I had the serial port cable, but could not find my adapter anymore and if I remember it did not work anyway. Uniden had free shipping on the cable which only made it a couple of bucks more than a counterfeit one so I sprung for the genuine model. Will keep you posted with my success/failure and thanks again. Also, is freescan better than arc996? I bought that software when I bought it, just wonder if there is any advantage to using it anymore.

 

[rmosier]

Daedalus-nj - I have the 396T in my car, and the 396XT in the house, and set up as my RR feed. I've swapped them in the past with no change in reception. Still scratching my bald head. I am pretty close to the powerful transmitters on the tower at the route 46 and naughtright here in Mt. Olive. I wouldn't be surprised if that's the problem.

 

[WA3ATV]

Scott,

I'm relatively new to the 996XT. I've loaded your Morris County file in, but only rarely hear a message - a couple per hour. I have a good solid five bar signal strength on the control channel.

Have the parameters changed since that file was posted or is this the normal level of activity?

Thanks,
Dan

 

[W2SJW]

That file has the fairly latest info for the county. The system is very busy, and the fact that you are seeing full signal might be the tell-tale giveaway - the system uses CQPSK-LSM modulation. You might be overloading the receiver's front end, along with getting signal from numerous towers at once. I was able to receive it very well from here in Warren County because I can only receive a single tower (so no LSM multipath issues).

Pay attention to the screen - if it constantly stops on talkgroups, but passes no audio, that's the give-away...

Sent from my Galaxy S4 via Tapatalk 4

 

[Fizz306]

You might want to try attenuating the system if the signal is a full 5 bars all the time. Attenuating might lessen the simulcast issue of receiving multiple towers at once.

 

[WA3ATV]

I've turned on the -20 dB attenuator. I'm now down to 2 or 3 bars on the control channel. Still no joy.

I'm noticing entries in the "APCO Band Plan" tab of FreeSCAN. There's an 800 MHz entry in Position 0 and a 470 MHz entry in position 5. Again, I'm relatively new to this machine. Can you tell me what this does for the system?

Dan

 

[W2SJW]

The band plan tells the scanner what channel to go to - trunk systems don't tell the subscriber radios to go to a specific frequency, they tell them to go to a channel that usually is ID'd with a 3-digit number.

The band plan tables let the hard-coded channel ID numbers resolve themselves to a specific frequency. Somerset County looks like this (the first column entry is the channel ID):
"05-0481","i",476.01250,"05-0481",479.01250,0,0
"05-0485","ca",476.06250,"05-0485",479.06250,0,0
"06-0027","c",500.33750,"06-0027",503.33750,0,0
"06-0071","a",500.88750,"06-0071",503.88750,0,0
"07-0041","v",502.51250,"07-0041",505.51250,0,15
"07-0055","v",502.68750,"00-0000",851.00625,1,16

 

[WA3ATV]

Hmmm . . . That's not the type of entry I'm seeing here. What I'm looking at is in the Site portion of the file. It's the APCO Band Plan tab. I'll attach a screen grab.

Dan

 

[W2SJW]

My apologies for confusing you! You are correct with what you are seeing. When the new P25 system went online, the control channel was (and still is) putting out this table data:

05,470.01250,0.01250,3.00000,"Confirmed",0.01250,1

That lent itself to channel assignments at the very beginning that looked like this:

"05-0597","v",477.47500,"05-0597",480.47500,0,1
"05-0623","cavd",477.80000,"05-0623",480.80000,0,3
"05-0625","vd",477.82500,"05-0625",480.82500,0,14
"05-0639","c",478.00000,"05-0639",481.00000,0,0
"05-0645","vd",478.07500,"00-0000",0.00000,1,11
"05-0675","a",478.45000,"00-0000",0.00000,1,0
"05-0677","a",478.47500,"00-0000",0.00000,1,0

Your scanner is programmed correctly, especially since you are using my file!

 

[WA3ATV]

I'm not sure how to interpret the table. Is there a link where I can learn to decode the data?

Also, how does the "851.00625" enter into what appears to be a 470 MHz system?

 

[W2SJW]

You don't have to - that's a raw dump from the Pro96Com software. You can hook up to that software via the Uniden USB-1 cable (after turning on CC output in the settings). Then you can see just about everything that goes on (data-wise) on the system.

http://www.psredit.com/pro96com/

 

[WA3ATV]

Another possible clue: I just kicked on FreeSCAN's computer control for the 996 which has a "P25 Err Rate" indicator. It seems to be maxing out.

Dan

 

[W2SJW]

Yep, you're getting over-modulated.