Colorado forum Roll Call

[4436time]

Thanks Paul. I hooked up the old antenna I mentioned the other day and reception is closer now to what I was hearing on your feed. I created two HP-1 Faves, one each based on the left/right side and did a 1:1 comparison, and reception, especially south and east of here, is much better.

 

[coloradojazzfan]

Hello I'm C.J. I got into the hobby a few years ago. I had a old Bearcat scanner I got when I was a teenager. I used it a few years, I new nothing about scanning so it got left in my closet for years. Then I got back into scanning mostly because I love aviation and air shows. I found this site, got a new scanner and haven't looked back since.
I listen to the air band most of the time Boulder Airport, Vance Brand Airport, Eire Skypark, Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport, Denver International Airport, Denver Center, Colorado ANG, any Mil air I can find. Also Boulder County SO, Boulder PD, Longmont PD, CSP, CDOT, and others on DTRS in my range, Railroad frequencies, C.B. radio, fast food drive ups, Any frequency I can find when I have my scanner with me (which is always). I love scanning and RadioReference.com, great site lots of info, it helps a lot for newbies like me learn a lot.

Scanners
BCD396XT
BC246T
More to come

 

[n0zoa]

n0zoa

hi... i am in greeley and been a radio listener since i was a teen in the 70s then i advanced into eventualy getting my ham ticket . bought premium membership hoping to get a working pro96 northern colorado scanner freq download but no luck yet . dont mean to bash the website but its the truth so far anyway . i guess if moderators dont like it they can delet my roll call

 

[seberry]

Hi everyone, I'm Steve. I got into scanning a couple years ago and now have a pro-106 and pro-197. I live in Durango for school and I'm from Arapahoe County... It's awesome to see such a wealth of knowledge on this site! Really cool!

 

[BOODA3D]

Howdy, looking for suggestions for a new portable scanner

I am new to this forum and the whole RadioReference.com site. I have been using a RadioShack Pro-30 since the late 1970s. Mostly I use it when I am out train watching to listen for any action on whatever line I may be visiting. I also use it occasionally at home to monitor police and fire agencies; however, with most of those agencies now on digital format, do not hear much anymore.

I live in Thornton, and due to problems starting to surface with my Pro-30, am looking to replace it in the near future with something that will work for me using both analog for the railroads and digital for the law and fire agencies.

I am open to suggestions as to what brand and model of portable scanner I should buy to replace the old scanner. Priority to me is to be able to capture railroad frequencies which I believe are all analog still, secondary of course is being able to monitor northern metro area police and fire agencies and occasionally aircraft frequencies from DIA, etc.

 

[ecanderson]

I am open to suggestions as to what brand and model of portable scanner I should buy to replace the old scanner. Priority to me is to be able to capture railroad frequencies which I believe are all analog still, secondary of course is being able to monitor northern metro area police and fire agencies and occasionally aircraft frequencies from DIA, etc.

Much of the Denver Metro area has long since gone DTRS (digital trucking system), and much of that has gone to 700MHz frequencies which the older digital units did not support. Heck, we even have sites that have sites with 850MHz control channels that control both 850MHz and 772MHz data channels. It's a circus out here.

So given that, to have any chance of listening to much around your area, you'll need a digital trunking portable that can handle the new band plan. None of them are cheap. Have a look at the Radio Shack Pro-106 at a local store and see what you think. One thing you WILL appreciate is the new approach they have taken to programming, and you may well want to look at something like Win500 to make that easier.

 

[BOODA3D]

ECAnderson: Thanks for your input and suggestion. I have examined that Pro106 at a local Radio Shack store. It does seem very useful, but like you said "pricey". I am not pondering whether I care enough about the emergency services to spend the money or concentrate on a lower priced unit that will handle train frequencies since that is what I monitor the most. So far the railroads still seem to be using analog frequencies in the roughly 100-170 mhz range.

 

[ecanderson]

ECAnderson: Thanks for your input and suggestion. I have examined that Pro106 at a local Radio Shack store. It does seem very useful, but like you said "pricey". I am not pondering whether I care enough about the emergency services to spend the money or concentrate on a lower priced unit that will handle train frequencies since that is what I monitor the most. So far the railroads still seem to be using analog frequencies in the roughly 100-170 mhz range.

Understand the $ pain factor. And it's not just 'emergency' services that are moving to the Colorado DTRS system. Nearly every agency right down to the local parks departments are onboard.

If you're looking for a good handheld that will support your 100~170MHz range, there are a BUNCH of them coming available as people bail on those for replacement digital units as services move that direction. You should be able to get a heck of a good deal on a used analog unit right now.

 

[bojonhero]

Hi I'm Carl and i am new to the forums here but i have been listening to the feeds since the DTRS change killed my Radio Shack analog scanner. I am now learning the steps i need to take to set up my computer to provide Pueblo PD and Pueblo county SO as well as fire and rescue channels. I have been scanning since i was five years old (lol i used to sit and listen with my grandfather). I am no stranger to technology as I currently work for the Geek Squad while putting myself through nursing school. If anyone has any good recommendations for me going forward as far as what radio to try to afford im all ears! any tech questions related to computers or phones or internal circuitry im more than happy to help!

 

[prolawn_care]

Matt here in Loveland, i have been listening to the scanner since i was about 10 at my grandparents and loved it then and still do! I was just listening to the live feeds for a while, until the Larimer county police, Fire, and EMS was eliminated recently... So i went out and got a PRO-197 today, and cant figure out how to get channels to upload from RR... Anyone have any suggestions?

Anyways if i can get things programmed, i will make an attempt to bring live feeds of Larimer County police, fire, and EMS!

 

[ecanderson]

So i went out and got a PRO-197 today, and cant figure out how to get channels to upload from RR... Anyone have any suggestions?

Unless you want to poke them all in manually, you'll want some software to work with the PRO197. I've been experimenting with Win500 and it looks like I may stick with that one. It's available here: Win500: PSR-500, PSR-600, PRO-106, PRO-197, PSR-310, PSR-410 Scanner Software for Data Management, Monitoring, and Control (<- that's a link, just doesn't look like it )

That particular package also allows you to monitor and control your scanner from other locations providing you can leave your scanner's PC hooked up to a known address.

I've been accumulating quite a number of 'hits' from Bald North that seem to be covering the area thoroughly. If you get Win500 running, let me know and I'll send you the file that sees the sites I mentioned at the following link and a bunch more that you can use to get started:

http://forums.radioreference.com/co...-forum/203759-site-ft-collins-loveland-2.html (<- link to a thread on this site )

 

[wuzafuzz]

Matt here in Loveland, i have been listening to the scanner since i was about 10 at my grandparents and loved it then and still do! I was just listening to the live feeds for a while, until the Larimer county police, Fire, and EMS was eliminated recently... So i went out and got a PRO-197 today, and cant figure out how to get channels to upload from RR... Anyone have any suggestions?

Anyways if i can get things programmed, i will make an attempt to bring live feeds of Larimer County police, fire, and EMS!

I'll add another thumbs up for Win500 to program the radio. That's what I use for my PRO-106 and it is an incredible improvement over programming from the front panel. Good luck with your Larimer County feed. I thought of doing one from my house in Fort Collins, but antenna restrictions limit what I can do.

 

[ecanderson]

I'll add another thumbs up for Win500 to program the radio. That's what I use for my PRO-106 and it is an incredible improvement over programming from the front panel. Good luck with your Larimer County feed. I thought of doing one from my house in Fort Collins, but antenna restrictions limit what I can do.

If you're in a house with an attic, I think you'd be very pleased and surprised at what a simple discone style omni antenna can do for you unless you're so close in to the mountains that you're shadowed from everything up above.

 

[avery_k]

Hi everyone, Kelly here in Fort Collins. I've been a scanner enthusiast for better than 20 years, and recently started using a PSR500 (with Win500 to program it) to replace my well-used PRO-94, which wouldn't decode the DTRS systems here. I've been a lurker here on RR for a while, and appreciate the info it provides.

 

[k9mwd]

Hello everyone my name is Mark. I recently moved to the Colorado Springs area. I've been interested in PS comms for many years and have been a licensed ham radio operator for 11 years now (K9MWD).

While living in Montana I was a member of my county Search and rescue unit and had no need for a scanner to listen to local departments as we all had county issued portable and mobile radios with the State system programmed. However living in Colorado Springs has changed that.

I recently purchaced a Pro-106 and I'm looking for some advice into programming it. I will use it mobile around town and to and from Denver. Eventually I wlil use it on road trips, but after initial programming I should be able to figure out the rest.

What are the best settings? Should I use multisite roaming? Not sure if or how I should program in the entire state system so all I need to do is add talkgroups when needed. Scanners and radio systems have come a long way since the last time I programmed a scanner. Any help would be appreciated.

 

[ecanderson]

What are the best settings? Should I use multisite roaming? Not sure if or how I should program in the entire state system so all I need to do is add talkgroups when needed. Scanners and radio systems have come a long way since the last time I programmed a scanner. Any help would be appreciated.

I'd recommend using Win500 for the programming task itself ( Win500: PSR-500, PSR-600, PRO-106, PRO-197, PSR-310, PSR-410 Scanner Software for Data Management, Monitoring, and Control ). It will allow you to tweak just about every knob on the radio, and makes the site programming a lot easier.

You'll no doubt get lots of advice from the folks down in the Springs about what you'll need to program specific to the area, but thought I'd pass along some 'generic' thoughts on managing this incredible DTRS mess we have here in Colorado. Having started with one approach a few months back, I opted for a whole new approach a couple of weeks ago... all due to that 'multisite roaming' business you mentioned. I suspect there are other options that I haven't considered, but the following two seem to be the two major ways to slice and dice this project. (and FWIW, unless you resort to the "v-scanner" approach, "Colorado" is too much to hold all at once - you'd need to pare that down a bit). It's getting the DTRS down that's important. The conventional stuff is easy to add on top of that.

The question that may drive the approach -- a) how many DTRS sites am I going to have to deal with, and b) will I run out of scan list numbers as I assign one to each 'agency' of listening interest? (there are only 20) It's hard enough to flip through the scan lists while you're driving -- trying to keep track of and selection of new v-scanners while driving isn't so trivial.

The first approach is to program a TSYS for each major DTRS site that you'll need for coverage of the agencies you want to hear. The TSYS contains only the control channel information for that one site. Within that TSYS, you then add the talk groups of interest that affiliate with that site, and assign each talk group to a preferred scan list. You will, of course, be listening by scan list in any case. You'd create a scan list for each geographic area and perhaps break that down into one for FD/EMS and one for LEO. Each of those will have several talk groups of their own. For example, the local LEO may have a couple of dispatch talk groups and a couple of tactical talk groups. So scan lists might be 1 = townA LEO, 2 = townA FD/EMS, 3 = townB LEO, 4 = townB FD/EMS. One scan list per area per major 'agency' or activity or whatever you want to call it. Repeat with more TSYS because your agencies will be hitting more than one DTRS site. When you scan, the scan list controls which sites are being scanned since the scan list number(s) that you select will only appear within certain of your TSYS lists, and hence, only on certain sites.

Plan B: Set up TSYS by agency of interest. The TSYS contains information only for a specific scan list rather than information for all talk groups on the DTRS site as was done above. So in this case, townA's LEO talk groups all appear in their own TSYS. And this time, you program in not just one site's control channel frequency, but instead, all of the control channel frequencies for sites with which the agency in question might (within reason - these guys do wander around the state at times) affiliate. Could be as many as three or four of them for good coverage. THAT provides a convenient way of setting up the 'roaming' feature that you mentioned. Since all of an agency's talk group entries are within one TSYS, it's easy to set up roaming within a single TSYS by setting thresholds for that TSYS. As the scanner is being confined to that TSYS by the scan list selected, the scanner will cycle through the control channels (DTRS sites) assigned to that TSYS if necessary, looking for one that's good enough in a given moment per your threshold criteria. In essence, the radio attempts to keep 'listening' to your agency of interest by dumping one site in favor of another if the quality drops sufficiently on one DTRS site to force it to look for a better one.

The "roaming" feature seems to work OK, but I'm still struggling to decide what the appropriate decode thresholds are for a PRO106/PRO197 radio.

 

[Cryptolog]

Mark,
It's just not that confusing or complicated. When the moderators get you set up, Private Message me and I'll provide you with files for the Springs, El Paso County, I-25 to Denver, to get you started and you build your own. Hopefully you have a programming cable. Recommend you get Win500 from Starrsoft.com. You may be interested in joining the Yahoo group ScanElPasoCounty.
N0CTI

 

[jimmnn]

Wow it's much easier than that, let the scanner do the work this is a control channel trunking system after all!

DTRS is very simple and impressive statewide system actually and I would not consider it mess in the least.

Jim<

 

[ecanderson]

Wow it's much easier than that, let the scanner do the work this is a control channel trunking system after all!

DTRS is very simple and impressive statewide system actually and I would not consider it mess in the least.

Jim<

Easier in what sense, Jim? There are two (or perhaps more) very distinctly different approaches to setting up the newer breed of GRE/RadioShack scanners. Just dumping in a pile of Radio Reference site and talk group data doesn't organize it in any meaningful way. It's necessary to decide which approach to take to get the maximum benefit when you plan on using one of these rigs in mobile environment. It's not like having it sitting on a desk somewhere with known site availability all the time -- mobile is a much more difficult situation to manage to the best result on these rigs, believe me.

 

[ecanderson]

Further to the above - I'm sure many of you who use your units in mobile operations are familiar with the many black holes that occur if you monitor just a single site. Even Longmont requires a minimum of three DTRS sites to provide (mostly) complete coverage. The use of the "Roaming" feature on the later GRE and Radio Shack units can be used to help this situation, but requires that they be programmed to take best advantage of that feature without other penalties. I'd be curious to hear from others who find the "Roaming" feature helpful, what thresholds you've found best for the application within the Colorado DTRS system, and how many different Colorado DTRS site control channels you have been able to use per TSYS before the time it takes to establish a decode rate starts to defeat the purpose (missing as little audio as possible!)