Can Someone Who Understands NJICS offer a primer?

[edisonfire]

Hi, I'm not new to scanning although I feel radio's have bypassed me. I have NJICS programmed into my Grecom PSR800, downloaded off RR site. When I selected site locations for home as an example, I selected the Martinsville and Hunterdon County sites, and then downloaded the fire departments. Granted, I understand the chances of hearing Newark Fire are rare as a Newark radio would have to be associated in this area for my radio to pick up their system. (Hope I'm saying that right). What I also did as a test was use one bank on the scanner to download NJICS, Hunterdon, Union, West Orange and Martinsville sites, plus downloaded the police talk groups figuring they chat more often....Crickets. I think its programmed correctly cause while driving in Middlesex County the other day I picked up Martinsville and Union County towers. They are just dead to me at home. I have Diamond RH77CA antenna on the radio.

Questions...Should I download all NJ tower locations or does that simply confuse/slow the scanning down?

I can check it with attic antenna once I strip and resolver connections onto Belden 9913 cable.

I've also heard the scanner has hot front end so does it make sense to attenuate any settings? I was in Midtown a few days ago, west side of 23rd Street and radio wasn't picking up West Orange tower.

Has anyone here with better brains, experience etc tweaked their scanner so it's the best it can be? I pick up Somerset County (both systems plus Franklin fine). I haven't heard a chirp on Middlesex County's new system. I hear nothing out of Mercer County trunked at all.

 

[W2SJW]

You only need to program the sites closest to where you are/plan to be in your travels.

The average scanner user should not be programming the fill-in sites, only the main simulcast ones.

A lot of the traffic is site-specific. As an example, you really won't hear most of the Essex County traffic on anything other than West Orange unless the unit is affiliating to a neighboring site (as NFD often does when working on the south end & cross onto the Union County site, etc).

I'm assuming you're in Edison, so the only real heavy use sites close to you are Union & Hunterdon. There will be quite a few simulcast transmissions from the NJSP cross-overs & lots of NJDOT & MedCentral stuff. As the weather gets warmer the NJ Parks Police will generate a lot of traffic as well.

I've heard people mention numerous dead spots in Edison Twp, even with the Johnson Drive tower site in Watchung being part of the Union County Simulcast. I'm most concerned that you aren't receiving the Middlesex County system from there.

Someone else with more GRE/Whistler experience will have to help you out, as I know nothing about those units...