City of Houston Project 25 TRS

[loumaag]

I am glad that you were able to at least get it woking somewhat. Are you using the RS 800 MHz (RS 20-283) antenna? They no longer advertise it, but they used to claim a 6 dB gain over standard scanner antennas. I have used it for years with excellent results for 700/800/900 MHz systems and it does a fair job on VHF/UHF.

...
My next step is to program the PSR-800 with just the phase 2 TDMA in a separate system
by itself and see what happens.

Just remember the little bit of information I put in the wiki article about preferences for sites. The HPD/HFD radios are programmed to prefer the use of one of the four simulcast sites around town and will only move to those single tower outlying sites (like Alvin) if the signal really gets trashy from the simulcast sites. Don't let your scanner lock up on a site that may not carry any traffic unless someone is "wandering" off the reservation.

 

[teknishun]

RE: Over my head

Thanks Lou for you response and the WiKi it helped me understand a lot of what I've missed.
At this time I only have the 800 for APCO 25 but I will get another radio to work on this with (looking for one now). Right now the 800 is doing a great job on HCSO which is a high priority for me.

And Kevin I did pay about $734 for the 800 and true it's only doing half the job for me right and I would have love found one on E-bay but it just wasn't in the cards at the time. So I'll make do and from there.

Thanks everybody...

John

John - You don't need to buy another radio!!! Save your money!
Make the PSR-800 work for you.
Use the Virtual Scanner feature of the PSR-800.
You can create and store multiple configurations into the PSR-800 and only use the one you
need/want at any particular time.

Since your PSR-800 is brand new make sure you have upgraded the firmware for the
CPU and the DSP software as well to the latest versions. This should happen the first
time you use the EZScan software and do an "Update". Of course, also update the
pc EZScan software too. There probably will not be any more updates forthcoming.

I kept my working configuration as it was. It is mostly TXWARN entities for police, fire ems,
railroads, aircraft, taxicabs, ham radio, etc. None of those are P25 sites.

Just create a brand new Virtual Scanner folder ( example: CDAT_VS.00x)
Create one trunked system with type= Project25 and Voice=digital.
You only need one tower site.
Use those 21 radio frequencies that are in the wiki Lou wrote.

Those are the simulcast channels and they will work all over Houston once you
get the site built.

You can create and load as many Virtual Scanners at one time as you like, but only ONE can be
the active one at any given time. You can quickly switch from one VS to the other using the
front panel keys and the menu on the scanner. Piece of cake!

A "Virtual Scanner" is just another name for the complete configuration of the PSR-800
including all the option settings as well as the radio channels, etc. It's everything.

Using virtual scanners you can have multiple scanners, all completely different from one
another, contained in the same little black box. Pretty neat.

Just like you, I too bit the bullet and shelled out big bucks to Scanner Master for my
second PSR-800 unit while they are still available. I got my first one dirt cheap last year at the
2012 Dayton Hamvention, so I guess it all evens itself out now. I still feel lucky that someday I will be glad I have a radio that can receive phase 2 TDMA.

 

[JLP1]

Over My Head

Thanks Tek,

I'm just starting to get into all of the features of the 800 so there will be a learning curve.
When I purchased the 800 from Scannermaster they were suppose to update the radio with the most current data and firmware updates if they did I'm not sure but I will figure that one out too.

I see where you went to the Dixie Farm road site and got good reception, I go by there every day going to and coming home from work. I purchased the RS antenna last night and programmed my PRO-97 with the freqs Lou listed in his Wiki. I went by there early this morning and got nothing but static. Could not even hear the control channel so there's something I'm not understanding yet or I'm doing something wrong. I've never had problems programming a trunk system before but I sure am now.

I feel you grief about reception in Alvin I live there for 25 years and for 21 of those years I was with the fire department and we always had problems with reception even more so when the county switched over to 800. There is a really bad spot for cell reception over by Hwy 6 and 35 that really garbles the cell phones at times. It can be a real headache at time.

Thanks for the info.....

John

 

[loumaag]

...
I see where you went to the Dixie Farm road site and got good reception, I go by there every day going to and coming home from work. I purchased the RS antenna last night and programmed my PRO-97 with the freqs Lou listed in his Wiki. I went by there early this morning and got nothing but static. Could not even hear the control channel so there's something I'm not understanding yet or I'm doing something wrong. I've never had problems programming a trunk system before but I sure am now.
...

John,
The Pro-97 is not a P25 digital scanner. It is an analog only scanner. Although any P25 digital trunking scanner will work, it does have to be a P25 scanner.

 

[JLP1]

Over My Head

Thanks Lou,

I guess I'm getting dumber as I get older, I was thinking those were analog freq on the simulcast so that the regular trunk trackers would work but now I understand it's all digital now.

I appreciate the help....

John

 

[Ensnared]

Premium Price?

Thanks Tek,

I'm just starting to get into all of the features of the 800 so there will be a learning curve.
When I purchased the 800 from Scannermaster they were suppose to update the radio with the most current data and firmware updates if they did I'm not sure but I will figure that one out too.

I see where you went to the Dixie Farm road site and got good reception, I go by there every day going to and coming home from work. I purchased the RS antenna last night and programmed my PRO-97 with the freqs Lou listed in his Wiki. I went by there early this morning and got nothing but static. Could not even hear the control channel so there's something I'm not understanding yet or I'm doing something wrong. I've never had problems programming a trunk system before but I sure am now.

I feel you grief about reception in Alvin I live there for 25 years and for 21 of those years I was with the fire department and we always had problems with reception even more so when the county switched over to 800. There is a really bad spot for cell reception over by Hwy 6 and 35 that really garbles the cell phones at times. It can be a real headache at time.

Thanks for the info.....

John

I'm curious. Did you buy your PSR 800 from Scanner Masters?

 

[JLP1]

Over My Head

Yes along with their updating package that was suppose to give me the most recent data and firmware updates and programmed for Houston.

 

[Ensnared]

Burned

Yes along with their updating package that was suppose to give me the most recent data and firmware updates and programmed for Houston.

If I paid that amount for a grossly-overpriced radio, I would need to be anesthetized to keep me calm. On top of a totally ridiculous price, they failed to provide a common courtesy to their customer as promised? What a load!

I hope you get it working well.

 

[JLP1]

Burned is right

I waited to long to respond to the changes that were happening to the radio world in Houston.
My daughter kept telling me (she works for HCSO) but I was busy doing other stuff and had just grown acustom to listening to the old system thinking with all the problems Houston has they would not go that far in upgrading but with all the Federal dollars avalable I guess they did. For a city that can't process rape kits or run a decent crime lab they are right out there. I guess the biggest supprise and it really baffles me is HFD encrypting everything, I can truly understand the PD but not the fire department they have so many mutal aid agreements with other departments and so much interaction but I guess it is what it is.

Back on track, I tried several auctions on e-bay trying to buy one of the 800's but always got out bid so I gave in to SM. It works great on HCSO, DPS, TXwarn and others, I have not found the pct 3 constables yet but I'm working on it and I hear my daughter all the time when she is on shift so that's good.

Was getting ready for work yesterday morning (4:30am) and listen to then catching a woman on top of the local elem school stealing copper from the A/C's like I said it's working great so far.

Thanks,

John

 

[bassman21]

I set up a group for HPD P25, put in the site and added the talk group info from that wiki page. It's working with no issues. I was originally using the NW HPD site on the P25 TXWARN page which of course got me nothing. I think a link to the wiki under the HPD and HFD would help a lot of people.

I personally see no reason to get a scanner that can decode TDMA 2 slot unless you want to hear city employees talking. Most of the talk groups that are worth hearing are encrypted.

I agree John, its stupid for them to encrypt so many of the fire talk groups. I know their theory with arson investigations and what not, but it's overkill. Overall though I'm happy which what I can pick up. The voice quality is also much better and we no longer have to hear those annoying data burst sounds. They were long overdo for an upgrade.

 

[JLP1]

Burned and Over My Head

Well after almost 3 weeks of excellent non-stop listening to HCSO, DPS, HCESD, Jersy Village and others on the PSR 800 came home today to nothing but scrambled and garbled traffic. I have not been able to understand any of the comms for the last several hours. Haven't touch the radio since it came out of the box except to put batteries in it, scan thru the menus, etc. For some reason it has stopped decoding the APCO25 signals. I did replace the antenna with the one from Radio Shack and it was working fine when I left for work this morning just goes to show you can't depend on anything anymore. Looks like I've got another expensive weather radio. Luck of the draw, I wasn't going to mess with programing on this one cause it was working so well but it looks like it's time to load the software and do some looking around....

Cheers everybody...
John

 

[bassman21]

Just in case you didn't check it on another radio its working fine for me on my 396XT. So its defiantly an issue with the PSR 800. I'm sure someone here can help you figure out the issue.

BTW is Jersey Village using TDMA? I have not heard anything from their talk group.

 

[JLP1]

Jersey Village

I was getting them on HC Txwarn, I'm on the East side of Houston and I was hearing them perfectly untill today.

JV Fire Dispatch
JV PD Dispatch
JV Fire Tac
JV EMS

Now I see their ID come up but all I hear is jiberish..

Got to learn more about this stuff....

John

 

[teknishun]

It Was Working Before, But Not Now!

I was getting them on HC Txwarn, I'm on the East side of Houston and I was hearing them perfectly untill today.

JV Fire Dispatch
JV PD Dispatch
JV Fire Tac
JV EMS

Now I see their ID come up but all I hear is jiberish..

Got to learn more about this stuff....

John

Gibberish is usually a good indication that you have a poor signal, for whatever reason, while
receiving a digital transmission. Digital voice is very unforgiving of a week RF signal and dropouts.

Depending on where you live, the rubber duck antenna MAY not be good enough.

Case in point: I took my PSR-800 programmed for Project 25 HPD and HFD exactly like the
Wiki that Lou posted. I parked in the parking lot of Frito-Lay at 900 Tristar. This is directly
underneath one of the simulcast towers (roughly Dixie Farm Road at IH-45).

The PSR-800 performed flawlessly loud and clear and I heard a transmission on all the
talk groups mentioned in the Wiki. Life is good!

I got back home and the same transmissions were still audible, but beginning to have the
R2D2 digital gibberish sound. Walking around the house made the reception both better
and worse, depending on where I was. Life is not so good.

If you want to listen to good, clear, audible digital voice transmissions you need to invest in
an outdoor antenna and get it as high up as you can.

The rubber duck may or may not work, and it is sporadic. After listening to "usable"
HPD and HFD for a whole day, I took a break for 2 weeks and them came back to it again.
Same PSR-800, same antenna, same location. This time it does not work so well at all.

There is probably not a thing wrong with your PSR-800 that a good RF signal won't cure.
Try taking it outside the house and see what happens to your reception then. Also, if you
happen to have a Radiant Barrier in your attic to keep the heat down up there, you are SOL.
Radiant Barriers block RF. Even my cell phone has zero bars inside the house where my scanner sits.

 

[teknishun]

The UniTrunker and the PSR-800

I have installed the UniTrunker on my pc. I want to use the raw IF-out data from the
PSR-800 as an input to the UniTrunker program. The problem is you have to use the
headphone jack to get this data from. The headphone jack is a stereo mini-plug.
The PC however uses a USB port. I have never seen a cable that converts
headphone jack output to USB. We are talking apples and oranges.

How does the PSR-800 connect to the PC to use the UniTrunker? This is different than
the PSR-500 and PSR-600 which both use the same cable setup to the pc that you program
the scanner with. Not so with the PSR-800.

The PSR-800 can also build a file of raw data on the built in SD card.
This is what I am attempting to do - make the scanner create and write its own file to SD.

Once I have an external data file, how do I load it into the UniTrunker program?

 

[teknishun]

Unknown NACs

Can somebody tell me what NAC 1A0 and NAC 1A3 are used for?

I was doing a limit search with the PSR-800 and it kept popping up these two
NACs from time to time.

Is there a database online someplace where these NACs can be looked up?

 

[loumaag]

I have installed the UniTrunker on my pc. I want to use the raw IF-out data from the
PSR-800 as an input to the UniTrunker program. The problem is you have to use the
headphone jack to get this data from. The headphone jack is a stereo mini-plug.
The PC however uses a USB port. I have never seen a cable that converts
headphone jack output to USB. We are talking apples and oranges.

How does the PSR-800 connect to the PC to use the UniTrunker? This is different than
the PSR-500 and PSR-600 which both use the same cable setup to the pc that you program
the scanner with. Not so with the PSR-800.

The PSR-800 can also build a file of raw data on the built in SD card.
This is what I am attempting to do - make the scanner create and write its own file to SD.

Once I have an external data file, how do I load it into the UniTrunker program?

No. If you are taking the raw audio then it goes into the audio input of the computer, not the USB. If you are taking the data dump from the 800 (just like the 500/600) then you use the USB port on the radio and the computer. The PSR800 can supply either.

 

[KevinC]

Can somebody tell me what NAC 1A0 and NAC 1A3 are used for?

I was doing a limit search with the PSR-800 and it kept popping up these two
NACs from time to time.

Is there a database online someplace where these NACs can be looked up?

What do you mean by what are they used for?

Were these frequencies part of a trunked system or P25 conventional?

A NAC on a conventional P25 frequency is used like a PL/DPL on analog.

A NAC on a trunked P25 frequency is used like a connect tone on analog trunking (to let the system know the signal it's receiving is legitimate).

 

[motorola_otaku]

For those noticing randomly distorted signal decode, I recommend reading this: Simulcast digital distortion - The RadioReference Wiki
This will affect site 52 on TxWARN RFSS 2 (the County simulcast) and all of the major City system layers/zones.

 

[mfn002]

396XT Problems on 1-52

Since I've been monitoring site 1-52 on my trips to the area, my 396XT is having a hard time picking up the data channel for the system. Every time it returns to the system after scanning the other frequencies/systems I have activated, it skips it entirely as if there is no data channel, but the signal strength indicator will briefly blink on and off showing the scanner is picking up some sort of very strong signal. When it does (eventually) pick it up, it's 100% signal strength. Just FYI, I usually travel in the US290/I-610/Galleria area. In fact, I've never been able to really monitor the system for any extended length of time, it just goes in and out even when I'm stationary.