California - BART Monitoring

[PCTEK]

My appologies if this is wrong thread to post this question. I have a 396XT & ARCXT-Pro 1.4 Build 4 and a RR subscription. When I download from RR the"Bay Area Rapid Transit" frequencys (San Mateo County, California, Trunked Systems) I dont hear any activity. But when I use the RR online monitoring for BART, I hear continous traffic. I am very close (1 city away) from a local BART station, so I should hear something. the RR shows this as a"Edacs" system. ARCXT shows the system type as "Edacs Narrow/Wide". Could the system type be wrong in the scanner and thats why I'm not hearing anything? There are 10 CC frequencies assigned to the 1 "Simulcast". Does the 396XT scan all 10 frequencies so it finds the one closest to me?

Thanks for your help.

 

[ka3jjz]

This is almost impossible to diagnose without seeing the programming; put it into a .zip file and attach it - that way other folks can look at it and see what's wrong. My first guess would be a quick key error - you didn't assign and enable a quick key for each site/group you defined. This is a pretty common error - been there, done that.

More information needed. 73 Mike

 

[PCTEK]

Zipped File

Thanks Mike. I have attached two files... 1 is the BART system and the other is my 396XT config file. I hope they shed some light on the problem.

Thanks

 

[rvictor]

I don't see any obvious problems in your datafiles.

You mention that you are 1 city away from a BART station. I don't know anything about the coverage pattern of this system, but some trunked systems are very limited in their coverage to just the area served. I would suggest that you take the scanner in the car the next time you head into the center of the BART area and see if you can hear the system. You may just be outside the coverage area. At least this would eliminate that possibility if you still aren't hearing it.

Dick

 

[dougr1252]

BART has regional sites, but they're not at each BART station. Of course their trunking system is designed to cover the transit system, so if you're near a station, you should hear something. BART has 10 channels which are transmitted from all the sites, but only one is used as a control channel. The scanner should scan all 10 channels until it finds the current control channel, theoretically from the closest site, and then it starts decoding calls. All the channels in this system are wideband, so try that and see if it helps. Also try entering 866.0750 as a monitor channel and see if you hear a buzzing noise. If not, then you may be in a weak spot.

My appologies if this is wrong thread to post this question. I have a 396XT & ARCXT-Pro 1.4 Build 4 and a RR subscription. When I download from RR the"Bay Area Rapid Transit" frequencys (San Mateo County, California, Trunked Systems) I dont hear any activity. But when I use the RR online monitoring for BART, I hear continous traffic. I am very close (1 city away) from a local BART station, so I should hear something. the RR shows this as a"Edacs" system. ARCXT shows the system type as "Edacs Narrow/Wide". Could the system type be wrong in the scanner and thats why I'm not hearing anything? There are 10 CC frequencies assigned to the 1 "Simulcast". Does the 396XT scan all 10 frequencies so it finds the one closest to me?

Thanks for your help.