BC245XLT: BC245XLT not trunking Bell Fleetnet Zone 2, doesn't seem to be acquiring data frequency.

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zmac123

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Hello all,

I am having trouble programming my BC245XLT with my local Bell Fleetnet system (Zone 2.) I have been trying all day once again to program Site 006 Ottawa (CARLSL) into the scanner but to no avail. (The talk group I am trying to get it to recognize is the MOH Ottawa CACC talk group. More specifically the top 5 talk groups in the category since that's all that seems to really get used)

The problem I am experiencing is that the scanner doesn't seem to be trunking correctly or it isn't trunking at all. I have programmed all the frequencies into a bank which is configured with E2-Hi, with a base frequency of 141.015, and have tried offsets of 15, 25 and 50. I have the red control channel in the first slot (priority slot) and the alternate control frequency following it, then I have all the frequencies in order inputted after those two controls. When I finish entering the frequencies and click SRCH, it enables trunking and scanning mode. It doesn't seem to search for the Data channel. I have tried different sequences of the buttons and none have yielded any useful results. When I click SRCH after clicking MAN to hold the scanner on a channel, it starts searching for active frequencies at the range I had previously set when I was searching for different frequencies. I'm not sure if I have to remove the search range for it to search for the data channel so I haven't tried that yet (not sure if I can just remove a search range.)

When in trunking mode, it seems to just be doing conventional scanning through the bank instead of trunking. There are no Talkgroup IDs that show during trunking mode, and I am unable to manually program a scan list of Talkgroup IDs into said bank (because it hasn't acquired the data channel?)
It does seem to pickup activity on the frequencies I programmed in but it doesn't trunk track them. What solidified this thought is that there doesn't seem to be any behaviour differences when I'm doing conventional scanning on the bank vs when I enable trunk mode and start scanning said bank.

Here are the steps and materials I have gone through and tried out before making a post here.
I have attempted this guide here but to no success. I've meticulously looked over the BC245 Trunking FAQ as well but I haven't found a solution. I have consulted a couple different forums on here, some resources online and I've read over the owners manual and made sure I wasn't missing something but I still can't figure it out.

Does anyone have any suggestions? Any help would be greatly appreciated :)
 

zmac123

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Jan 27, 2022
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From our wiki- that scanner is as old as the hills...


Mike
Thanks Mike. I did come across that in my research but thank you for linking it here.
And yes that scanner is quite old. It has now been given to me to play around with and thankfully Ottawa still has some Type 2 Analog Systems hanging around for me to listen to.

Although, I did figure out the solution to my problems.

I noticed that on one or two of my frequencies there was a little M on the left side of the display (to indicate trunking modes.) After reading the manual again I figured out that I need to have the little M on all the frequencies in the bank I want to trunk track.

To achieve this, I erased all the frequencies in the bank, set my trunking system to E2-Hi, and then (This was the important part that solved my problem) I set the base frequency and the offset first, before entering any frequencies. After setting the base and offset, all frequencies added had the little M showing at the left of the display.

This has solved my problem and the scanner can now acquire the data channel, and trunks the system correctly, showing talkgroup IDs as well.

Knowing the answer to my problem now has made me realize that the small guide linked above did say to enter the frequencies last, but unfortunately, I was dealing with conflicting information from the scanner page on here and the manual so it went over my head.
 

tvengr

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Feb 10, 2019
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Location
Baltimore County, MD
Do you have this Motorola Type II custom VHF band plan programmed?

Custom Frequency Tables


BaseSpacingOffset
141.0150015.0380
151.7300015.0579
154.3200015.0632
 
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