control channels for VA.State Police

[amick614]

Thanks for the help yesterday and being patient with a newbie to this......I have another question hopefully that can be clarified.In my uni den 996 when entering control channel freqs.for Va. State Police division 2 for examples,there are 2 control channels do I enter both freqs. under same site or do I create a new site for each freq.I assume if I enter both freqs. under same site it will pick up and display which ever control channel is being used would this be a correct assumption???The reason I ask this is when scanner is doing it id search only one freq. appears as it is scanning if I create another site once it scans the the first site second freq. appears as it scan the second site and so on.It does need seem logical to me to create a new site for each freq.but that is why I am asking...Thanks
Tony

 

[kd8x]

Thanks for the help yesterday and being patient with a newbie to this......I have another question hopefully that can be clarified.In my uni den 996 when entering control channel freqs.for Va. State Police division 2 for examples,there are 2 control channels do I enter both freqs. under same site or do I create a new site for each freq.I assume if I enter both freqs. under same site it will pick up and display which ever control channel is being used would this be a correct assumption???The reason I ask this is when scanner is doing it id search only one freq. appears as it is scanning if I create another site once it scans the the first site second freq. appears as it scan the second site and so on.It does need seem logical to me to create a new site for each freq.but that is why I am asking...Thanks
Tony

You have discovered a very cool thing about the uniden 996 scanners...Let me tell how I have programmed in the Highway Patrol in Virginia using STARS....If you were to load up every tower site from STARS into your 996 as a seperate site then your scanner scans every site...There must be 60 to 70 sites on STARS now so this does take some time to make one complete scan of the system. Meanwhile back on any other systems you may have programmed or possibly conventional frequencies you may missed a lot of comms while you were scanning all those tower sites on STARS....I run mobile all the time through Virginia and I am just concerned with the sites that are in my range and I want a quick scan of
STARS so that I don't miss out on the other systems that I monitor such as Roanoke 800 and Roanoke P25 County comms etc. So the way that I program STARS is I only program one site under my STARS system. I enter every Control Channel into the frequencies list and all of them are under one site....In other words one site with 60 to 70 frequencies and when it scans STARS it will start at the top of the list and scan down until it receives one of those frequencies that is usable and it sticks there until that becomes unusable then it continues on down the list.....It treats Stars as if it only has one site to scan so it is very fast and reliable and doesn't take all day to scan all of the sites as if you could not hear them anyway....Most of the sites in the Roanoke valley carry the same talkgroups anyway so I am not missing hardly any comms on STARS. The GRE line of scanners have a way to scan for the strongest or local site only or scan all the sites also using the ROAM control....I like there setup but the only drawback to their system is that you are limited to only 32 frequencies per system. With STARS and North Carolinas VIPER system this is a problem since these sites have way more than 32 different frequencies....That is why I switched from GRE to Uniden (just my opinion) ....Hope I have not made this confusing but to sum it up if you stick lets say more than 8 to 10 tower sites on one system it really starts to rack up extra time in your scan cycle causing you to loose to much comms from other systems....Have a great day....

 

[mike_s104]

Just get FreeSCAN...

 

[kd8x]

Just get FreeSCAN...

i use freescan but it wont download all control channels into one site. It is a little of a pain to punch in but it sure makes mobile ops much quicker....

 

[mike_s104]

i use freescan but it wont download all control channels into one site. It is a little of a pain to punch in but it sure makes mobile ops much quicker....

Just pick out the sites you don't need or break them into 2 "groups".

 

[brownlab]

A few weeks ago, a user was heading to VA Beach for a vacation and wanted to know how he could monitor VSP on his trip. He gave me his route and using Freescan, I told him the sites he would need to program to monitor VSP from Fairfax to VA beach. He later sent me a PM thanking me and told me it worked great, So listen to Mike and use Freescan. It works!

 

[amick614]

every body keeps giving me that answer as well as others but this is a reoccurring answer......what is it?how does it work? where to get?......I get it is programming software....I really used to be up on the older and not too long ago might I add...but in this digital age I am a complete rookie and learning as I go...thanks for your help though!!!! I see u are around Loudoun county.....this was actually the only reason I purchased my 996 scanner to monitor Loudoun sheriff and Leesburg town police. I work in Leesburg and travel from Winchester,one of my board members is on the public safety committee as well as a fire fighter in Loudoun ,he actually programmed all the talk groups and freqs. in it for me....it has been a learning experience for both...but moving on Loudoun has not went to full TDMA as RR would make out but they will go online full TDMA next month(beginning or end I do not know) and apparently my research tells me no current scanner company's are pursuing it at this point w/out doing some lengthy looking into just that you may like to know or you may already know just trying to share as many have been so gracious to me so far...thanks Tony

 

[mike_s104]

FreeSCAN - Sixspot Software

Then GRE PSR-800 will decode the Loudoun TDMA radios and is easy to program STARS with.

And yes, you will need to program a CC (freq) per site.

I live in Berkeley Co. and am in Winchester often, so if you need any more help, let me know.

 

[amick614]

Just curious how they say it will decode TDMA.....when it has not been completely initialized in Loudoun as of yet and if they have the technology why doesn't any body else....love to talk to u a little more on this subject hopefully I am not breaking etiquette but I will send u my personal email address and maybe we could go a little further into detail hopefully u will not mind always looking to expand my education on these such matters...Tony

 

[mike_s104]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.2.1; en-us; ADR6400L 4G Build/FRG83D) AppleWebKit/533.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/533.1)

Just curious how they say it will decode TDMA.....when it has not been completely initialized in Loudoun as of yet and if they have the technology why doesn't any body else....love to talk to u a little more on this subject hopefully I am not breaking etiquette but I will send u my personal email address and maybe we could go a little further into detail hopefully u will not mind always looking to expand my education on these such matters...Tony

No problem with the email address.

Brownlab can explain the Loudoun system as well. The system will do both FDMA and TDMA. if there are post FDMA radios on a TG, it will operate in a legacy mode and all digital scanners can decode the traffic. If all the radios ate TDMA, the system will operate that TG in TDMA and so far only the PSR-800 will decode it.

There are a few other counties in the area that can do TDMA and I feel the new FFX will be TDMA also.

 

[brownlab]

I know I am coming in to the conversation late and hopefully you have resolved programming STARS. Just wanted to make sure you have Mt. Weather on your STARS site list. I am approximately 20 miles east of that site let I get great reception for both Div 2 and 7 VSP along with some other state agencies. It should work well west of the mountain into the Valley.