Wise County Scanning

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Rooster1

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Hello, I'm interested in buying a scanner and need some advice. I'm pretty sure my area is analog since the town is small. (5,000 people)

Should I get a Pro-97 or try to go digital? Of course I will primarily be in the Decatur area, but Denton, Ft. Worth, Dallas are all travel areas.

Next question: Do digital scanners pick up analog frequencies?
Thanks guys.
 

VintageJon

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Rooster1- you can get analog on a digital scanner, speaking from experience with my Pro 96 here. The Pro96 is optimized for 800MHz Apco 25 digital but I've had good luck with 2 Meter Ham Storm Chasers on it.

Eventually your area will HAVE to go digital so recommend a "digital scanner". ALSO, and most important in the short-run, get a scanner you can program from your computer. Having been through a Pro 91,pecking-in every freq and having no ID displayed, and a Pro96 with the ability to program from the computer via Win96 and have it display ID's, I'm a believer in computer-programability and the 96.

Also the 96 is GRE and the 91 is Uniden. GRE audio is so far superior to Uniden that it's a night and day thing. Before I got the GRE-96 I thought the Uniden-91 was pretty good- but side-by-side the Uniden audio is vastly inferior.

Suggest Pro96 or 2096 and Win 96. I got my programing cable from GRE directly.
(Sure I'm out $500 for scanner, wall-wart,Win96, cable- but I've never had a regret.)

Hope this helps,
Jon
 

hiegtx

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Rooster1 said:
Hello, I'm interested in buying a scanner and need some advice. I'm pretty sure my area is analog since the town is small. (5,000 people)

Should I get a Pro-97 or try to go digital? Of course I will primarily be in the Decatur area, but Denton, Ft. Worth, Dallas are all travel areas.

Next question: Do digital scanners pick up analog frequencies?
Thanks guys.
Rooster,
Your county is not digital at this time, but Tx DPS is converting to digital in this region. I believe the Decatur DPS repeater is already digital. The rest of the area should follow within a few months.

Parker County's current system is analog, but it's LTR. The Pro-96 will do digital, but not LTR. You'd have to go with one of the Uniden radios (BCD396T, handheld, or BCD996T, base/mobile) if you want to be able to monitor Parker County. However, Parker has announced plans to change their system from LTR to P25 Standard. That's a digital type the Pro-96/-2096 covers (as do the Unidens).

Note that Decatur uses an MPT-1327 trunk system. That is not digital, but is a trunk system that cannot be monitored in trunk tracking mode by any currently available scanner. There are some software packages available to monitor this type using a computer. Not sure, as I'm out of range, but you might be able to catch much of the traffic by programming all the frequencies & listening conventionally (you would lock out the active control channel). I do much the same thing on this system. It's an LTR-Passport system used by Careflite for dispatching their medevac copters.

As Jon mentioned, the digital scanners will pick up analog systems. The Ft. Worth/Tarrant County public safety, Denton County & Denton City, and most of the other systems in the DFW metro area are analog. The only digital (actually mixed digital and analog) systems in the area are Grand Prairie & Mansfiled. DFW Airport is Provoice w/ESK, a digital encrypted type that nothing can monitor.
 

SCPD

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hiegtx said:
Note that Decatur uses an MPT-1327 trunk system. That is not digital, but is a trunk system that cannot be monitored in trunk tracking mode by any currently available scanner.
I've monitored that system before. Not much happens in Decatur. You can scan the voice channels as if it were a conventional system. As hieg says, lock out the control channel. There is very little traffic so you won't miss much if anything.
 

SCPD

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Wise County has a LTR system, and has already purchased 200 iCOM IC-F70D Digital Portable radio's along with Hood & Somervell Counties. I am not sure if these are for the Firefighters, Sheriff Deputies or what, but the Case was sitting up at a Radio Dealer a few weeks ago being programmed then UPS'd to Wise Co.

Why bother buying a Analog Tripple Trunk Scanner now, when in six months to a Year from now, you'll be replacing it with a Digital anyways. Besides, Denton is Trunked, Grayson is 90% Digital. Tarrant is Moving to 700Mhz. eventually, Dallas, Well who knows what there gonna do. DPS is going digital. Get the Digital Trunk Tracker-4.

Decauter/Wise Co. don't even use the MPT-1327 anymore, it never worked to begin with. I believe the LTR they have is a Standard LTR with Mixed conventional Frequencies.
 
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nd5y

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MaxTracker said:
Wise County has a LTR system,

Decauter/Wise Co. don't even use the MPT-1327 anymore, it never worked to begin with. I believe the LTR they have is a Standard LTR with Mixed conventional Frequencies.


I am sitting here right now hearing the MPT-1327 control channel on 453.4875.
 

Rooster1

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THanks alot guys. I'll do some research on the digital scanners. I was under the impression that small towns might hang on with analog for a while.
 

mbstone99

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Decatur MPT1327

nd5y said:
I am sitting here right now hearing the MPT-1327 control channel on 453.4875.

I've been running TrunkView on this system since last night and only came up with 2 active voice channels 453.6875 & 453.8625 and only 1 active TG.. 6001 which is listed on the database as Police Dispatch.

Matt
 

jason51

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Wise county

i can assure you that Wise county is not going to switch to a trunked system or to digital anytime in the near future. Decatur went to the MPT system years ago. At the time, DFD and the county were going to switch to it, Decatur Fire does not use it anymore because apparantley it does not work very well, and Wise county said they wanted nothing to do with it when it was brought on line.
A low dollar scanner will do you well for many years to come in Wise County, unless you want to listen to DPS, you will need a digital scanner.
 
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