BCD436HP/BCD536HP: Camden County N.J.

[dwelluppon]

Running BCD536. There seems to be a new system for camden county n.j. Even tho I have id search on, doesn't pick up all the TGIDs, kind of. Ill just start with tgid 231. I have all my new discoveries to go in bank 5. There are 13 tgid 231 now in my bank 5 each given a discovery id number. Here is my first question, what is the difference between id searching and discovery? Shouldn't id searching be picking them up?
Here is my second question. Is there a way to scan thru all my discovey searches without manually switching thru the different searches? Work the discovery searches like the regular banks do or a way to put all my searches in one big search?

 

[Whiskey3JMC]

Running BCD536. There seems to be a new system for camden county n.j. Even tho I have id search on, doesn't pick up all the TGIDs

Camden County's trunked radio system (of which I am familiar & monitor whenever in the area) is far from new & has been online for well over a decade. You are aware that law enforcement countywide is fully encrypted (mode "TE" in the RRDB), correct? You're likely facing simulcast distortion (perhaps THE most documented issue here on the forums) depending on your location relative to two or more towers on the simulcast. Click wiki link below to familiarize yourself with this phenomenon and ways to mitigate it. Ultimately you'd be better off with an SDS100 or SDS200 to monitor this system. Simulcast systems are prevalent in South Jersey and most counties' LEOs are fully encrypted. Consult the RRDB for more info

Simulcast Distortion - The RadioReference Wiki

wiki.radioreference.com

Here is my first question, what is the difference between id searching and discovery?

• Scanning vs. Searching
  • Scanning trunked systems
  • Searching trunked systems

Trunking Discovery Mode allows you to monitor a trunked radio Site for channels not currently in the database.
It can automatically record audio and log newly discovered channels for later review and identification.

Here is my second question. Is there a way to scan thru all my discovey searches without manually switching thru the different searches?

No, you can run only one discovery session at a time. It'd be a waste to run discovery on Camden County's system which has been documented & hasn't changed in years but to each their own. Best to program who you want to listen to into a favorites list or more. Uniden Sentinel makes this easy

 

[dwelluppon]

Camden County's trunked radio system (or which I am familiar & monitor whenever in the area) is far from new & has been online for well over a decade.

I just now noticed it when I didn't hear the reply back and quickly set up discovery on it. Im near camden county so I usually concentrate on the county that Im in. So the only way to listen to camden county is to just use discovery. This is how I have been listening to it and have no problems cause it picks up everything. At least I have a way of listening to camden county when needed.

Simulcast Distortion- Your pretty much saying that the BCD536 is obsolete for my location. One last question, are you sure the SDS200 can solve this problem? For now ill work on some tweaks that are recomended.

 

[Whiskey3JMC]

Simulcast Distortion- Your pretty much saying that the BCD536 is obsolete for my location. One last question, are you sure the SDS200 can solve this problem? For now ill work on some tweaks that are recomended.

Not saying it is obsolete by any means. I'm saying it is prone to simulcast distortion (as are many other scanners). Search the forums and you'll unearth countless threads reporting the issue. Try the multipath mitigation methods in the wiki I linked. If you find one that works for you then great. If not then I'd consider upgrading to an SDS100 or SDS200.

 

[dwelluppon]

Try the multipath mitigation methods in the wiki I linked.

That is exactly what Im doing in sentinel right now. Just lowering the squelch to 1 helped. Going to increase time for all tgid in camden county. Thank you very much for all your help.

 

[nr2d]

The way I have Camden County programed in my BCD200 and had it my BCD536 is I programed in the control frequencies only. At first I had all of the frequencies for the Lindenwold site programed in but experienced problems. Somewhere on this forum I was told to program on the control frequencies only and I haven't had any problems since. I also did this with the NJ state police interoperability system.

 

[Ubbe]

what is the difference between id searching and discovery? Shouldn't id searching be picking them up?

When monitoring simulcast systems using a BCD536 it will eventually stop decoding the data stream due to distorsion, that usually comes and goes in waves, and you are doing the right thing to increase the TG delay time to 5 or 10 sec to have it wait on the TG until the distorsion wave are gone. Otherwise the scanner will go to next system when it looses the signal. Using discovery it is locked to one site and never leaves it even if it looses the signal, so that would automatically seem to work better.

Unfortunately Uniden have done a counter productive function when setting all non programmed TG's to a 2 sec delay during IDSearch. When hitting an unknown TG you normally would like to focus on that a bit extra, using a longer delay and also record it. Whistler have done this right by using a wildcard setting, that are the equal to Unidens IDSearch, that allows it to be configured with any length of delay and alert&light and also to record it without having to also record all known TG's.

Uniden could improve their firmware by allowing its IDSearch function to have programmable default parameters for TG and UID that are not programmed.

/Ubbe

 

[dwelluppon]

The way I have Camden County programed in my BCD200 and had it my BCD536 is I programed in the control frequencies only. At first I had all of the frequencies for the Lindenwold site programed in but experienced problems. Somewhere on this forum I was told to program on the control frequencies only and I haven't had any problems since. I also did this with the NJ state police interoperability system.

Im going to play with that, only the control frequencies. I may set up a separate bank for that.

 

[dwelluppon]

I have bank 2 camden county still set at 600ms for time. Bank 4 is the controlled freqs only and bank 5 is the multiple of tgids. I had only bank 2 and 4 going and made sure that they both received the same calls switching back and fourth quickly. They did but the control bank sounded way better. Im liking it already. I then put all three banks running for 15 mins. I wanted to see which bank caught calls better. Bank 2 only caught 5 calls even with more time. Control bank 4 caught 10 and bank 5 caught 8. Im calling this an upgrade even tho Im not sure how scientific my test are or sound cause 15 mins may not be enough time. I might apply this to other favorites. Thanks for the info.

 

[Ubbe]

When you have voice channels programmed, and also the backup control channels, it will monitor those channels when it looses the control channel signal due to simulcast issues, and Uniden scanners cannot use voice channels in the same as Whistler scanners do, so it will be a waste of valuable monitoring time to scan more than only the active control channel.

That 600ms you mention are probably the digital waiting time and are only a mute function for the audio and have no relation to the receive or decode process and can be set to 0 to let you hear how the decode process works when it receives a data signal in analog mode and then successfully decodes it and switch to digital mode.

Digital Threshold values will usually change over time what will be the optimal setting. One setting could be the best for a while but later on it will probably be another setting that works best.

/Ubbe