I found the digital trunking scanner difficult at first because I had to learn a bunch of new terms as well as understand the basic concept of trunked systems (control channel frequency, alternate control channel frequency, and talk group ID number).
Your local and county police, fire, EMS, etc. are, or soon will be, using the State's P25 Digital Trunking System.
Go to this page,
West Virginia Statewide Interoperability Radio Network (SIRN) Trunking System, Statewide, West Virginia - Scanner Frequencies, and scroll down to Harrison County. You will see the talk groups for your area listed. The talk groups include Bridgeport PD, Clarksburg PD, and numerous VFDs.
At the top of that page, you will find three radio towers listed in Harrison County for the State's P25 system. They are in Clarksburg, Salem, and McWhorter. Each one has one control channel frequency (shown in red numbers), and one alternate control frequency (shown in blue).
(Click the word "County" at the top of this table (called "System Frequencies"), and the column will be re-sorted so that the county names are in alphabetical order.)
If you had a digital trunking scanner, the first thing you would need to do is create a TSYS (trunking system) and put in the control channel frequency and the alternate control channel frequency for the tower nearest your location. You do not need to include the frequencies listed in black numbers.
After you create the TSYS in your scanner, you can start programming the talk groups. For that you need to put in the talk group ID number (TGID), and then associate it with (to put it another way, link it to) the TSYS you just entered.
You can also give the talk group a name (called an "alpha tag") which will be displayed on the scanner's screen when the talk group is active (transmitting), or when you are scrolling through your Scan Lists (formerly called "Banks") manually.
My PSR-500 will allow me to program up to 32 frequencies as a single P25 TSYS in the scanner's memory. That means I can put in the control channel frequencies and alternate control channel frequencies for up to 16 different towers.
I created a TSYS that includes the towers located along I-64, I-77, I-79, and called it "P25 Roadways."
Then I put in the TGIDs for the police in the Kanawha Valley area, the State Police, Huntington City Police, etc., and linked them all to my "P25 Roadways" TSYS. This allows me to listen to the police in the Kanawha Valley, and then drive to Huntington and listen to the city police there without reprogramming anything in my scanner.
To give you an idea of how necessary it will be for you to have a Digital Trunking Scanner that can pick up the State's P25 system: The Kanawha Metro 911 dispatchers still use their old analog frequency for dispatching most calls, but some communications between them and local police/fire/EMT (Dunbar, Nitro, St. Albans) take place over the P25 Talk Groups. The local police/fire/EMT units and departments frequently talk to each other using the P25 Talk Groups, not traditional analog frequencies.
I'm listening to two Dunbar police officers talking to each other using their P25 Talk Group right now.
The Charleston PD has one frequency which is a conventional frequency (not part of the trunked system), but it is a digital radio frequency. They are using P25 digital modulation on it instead of FM or NFM.
When I was using my old scanner (Radio Shack PRO-76), I missed all of this stuff.
Remember, not any old Digital Trunking Scanner will do. You must have one that is capable of picking up the APCO Project 25 (P25) Digital Trunking System, or you won't be able to pick up anyone who is using the State's new system, or who is using P25 modulation on a regular frequency (like the Charleston PD).
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