I'm involved in a thread in the Atlantic/Maritimes forum of the Canada section of the forums regarding helping a fellow scan the new P25 system in his province. Some/enough of the system is in the DB as "Newfoundland Provincial Radio" in the Newfoundland province in the Canada section of the DB.
The system in question seems to be running strangely. All sites have a control channel and at least one voice channel - that's not the odd part. What is, is, on at least one of the voice channels (the only one, in many cases), when there is no voice grant/subscriber audio in progress, the channel is constantly sending what I am calling "dead air" in P25 CAI mode. For all intents and purposes, the scanner (in conventional or frequency search mode) appears to "lock up" on the voice channel frequency, displaying the appropriate NAC for the site, with no audio issuing from the speaker.
I have programmed this system manually into my HP1, my 396XT, and my PSR500, and none of them are having any problems. The guy in the other thread, though, has a BC796D, and is having a hell of a time getting it to work. I do believe he's fairly new to trunking, and I've stepped him through the programming as best as I can by looking at the BC796D owners' manual PDF and not having an actual 796 with me. Reportedly he is still having the scanner 'hanging' on the voice channel when there is no voice traffic. I thought maybe a previous attempt where he programmed them as conventional frequencies had been left in the scanner, but I'm pretty sure he's doing a full reset before any attempt at programming (by hand).
Two questions:
(a) Anyone had a 796 successfully programmed on a modern P25 FDMA system? I can't imagine that it wouldn't work, even though it's a fairly old scanner.
(b) Anyone ever witnessed a system like this, where the VC broadcasts constantly? What is the reason for this? The system still rotates the CC on a regular basis too.. I just don't get the point of running the VC constantly - even if it was an attempt to foil scanners, it would fail because it's locking on the actual voice channel, and thus people can hear everything.
The system in question seems to be running strangely. All sites have a control channel and at least one voice channel - that's not the odd part. What is, is, on at least one of the voice channels (the only one, in many cases), when there is no voice grant/subscriber audio in progress, the channel is constantly sending what I am calling "dead air" in P25 CAI mode. For all intents and purposes, the scanner (in conventional or frequency search mode) appears to "lock up" on the voice channel frequency, displaying the appropriate NAC for the site, with no audio issuing from the speaker.
I have programmed this system manually into my HP1, my 396XT, and my PSR500, and none of them are having any problems. The guy in the other thread, though, has a BC796D, and is having a hell of a time getting it to work. I do believe he's fairly new to trunking, and I've stepped him through the programming as best as I can by looking at the BC796D owners' manual PDF and not having an actual 796 with me. Reportedly he is still having the scanner 'hanging' on the voice channel when there is no voice traffic. I thought maybe a previous attempt where he programmed them as conventional frequencies had been left in the scanner, but I'm pretty sure he's doing a full reset before any attempt at programming (by hand).
Two questions:
(a) Anyone had a 796 successfully programmed on a modern P25 FDMA system? I can't imagine that it wouldn't work, even though it's a fairly old scanner.
(b) Anyone ever witnessed a system like this, where the VC broadcasts constantly? What is the reason for this? The system still rotates the CC on a regular basis too.. I just don't get the point of running the VC constantly - even if it was an attempt to foil scanners, it would fail because it's locking on the actual voice channel, and thus people can hear everything.