Pro-668: 668 and multi site trunking

[Circa]

I monitor the Ohio MARCS and MARCS-IP trunked systems and I noticed that the in the software it has every site and every possible Control and Voice channel.
Both system are state wide and have a TON of frequencies, even just counting Control channels.

I'm trying to make scanning quicker and more efficient for my local area.

Is the 668 scanning every single one of those channels of the entire system (CC and/or VC) on every pass?

My 651 had a mobile and stationary mode, the mobile would only scan the strongest signal strength frequency, stationary would scan every frequency.

Can I make the 668 only scan the frequency of the strongest CC frequency instead of every control frequency?

 

[marksmith]

Go to the trunked systems page in iscan.
At the bottom click the sites tab after selecting your system at the top.
You can delete any sites that are clearly out of range or just reduce the sites to the three or so closest sites and your 668 will only scan those.

It is checking to see if these out of range sites are receivable, and it should be faster with just the ones you want.

Mark
WS1095/536/436/996P2/HP1e/HP2e/996XT/325P2/396XT/PRO668/PSR800/PRO652

 

[troymail]

You can limit what the radio checks/scans when looking for control channels by using the import only frequencies marked as control channels. This limits the number of frequencies to scan for each site.

The radio will find and lock/hold on that site until the quality of decode/reception drops and then it will start checking the other sites for one of sufficient quality to lock/hold on to. It won't scan each site one after the other if you have a good, strong control channel frequency on one of the sites - it will just stay on that site.

There are optimizations you can do manually as Mark has described above - eliminate some sites on import or after, duplicating the system such that each site is in a separate scanlist/playlist, etc.

 

[Swipesy]

Also be aware that if you load and entire Trunked System Control and Alternate channels such as MARCS-IP and you have the option turned on to show what tower the Hit is coming from you will often get the wrong tower. That is because the 800, 668 and 1080 will report the first control or alternate frequency it finds. MARCS IP uses the same frequencies over again across the system.

 

[fourwd1]

Go to the trunked systems page in iscan.
At the bottom click the sites tab after selecting your system at the top.
You can delete any sites that are clearly out of range or just reduce the sites to the three or so closest sites and your 668 will only scan those.

It is checking to see if these out of range sites are receivable, and it should be faster with just the ones you want.

Mark
WS1095/536/436/996P2/HP1e/HP2e/996XT/325P2/396XT/PRO668/PSR800/PRO652

Don't delete the sites, just lock them out.

 

[Circa]

Right now I've just duplicated my existing MARCS (176 sites) and MARCS-IP ( 195 sites) systems then locked out all other sites besides my local one.

Also, I noticed the "Multi-site Settings" with "Threshold Hi" and Threshold Low".
The easier to read manual says "Multi-Site Settings (Motorola, EDACS only)"

Is P25 a Motorola system?

I believe the P25 type it is a moto system and the easier to read manual says to set them like this:
"Threshold Hi to around 85 and Threshold Lo to about 55 "

That tweak might might actually be what I need to do.

 

[Ghstwolf62]

Even simpler is to just import the sites you want when you add the system. When you go to import system it will offer you sites and talk groups to select which you want to bring in.

Grab the ones you want and don't import any you don't want. Same for TGs.

Then you can use the threshold settings from there. Different people have different ideas on them but you can try different things and see what works.