PJH,
Just to give an example, I am in East Islip Ny. If I set a range of 16 miles,
this is my radius. It gives me the ability to listen to the county to the west of me, Nassau County as well as towns to the east of me. My radius does not stray to far off the north shore of Long Island, or even cross the NY / CT line. And I do understand that increasing my radius will overlap other states.
But with that said, and set for a 16 mile scan radius, here is some of what my scanner is actually loading and trying to scan based on the range settings on these systems, that are either just a default setting, or their range was entered in covering more of the area it was intended to cover.
Fairfirld County Its trying to scan every town in the county.Unfortunately, a range of about 26 miles is needed to cover the entire county, and that overlaps my 16 mile zone so nothing can be done with that unles its range is greater than 26 miles.
Stamford This one has a range set to 20 miles when from what I was able to determine, would be fine with a 9 or 10 mile range set.
Colleges/Universities The range is definitely set for more than what is needed for these schools.
Sikorsky Heliport (Owned By United Technologies) Scanner Frequencies and Radio Frequency Reference I am 28 miles away from this airport.
Judicial Branch It lists Norwich Superior Court in the scanner. Thats 78 niles away from my line of sight. The range set for that has to be at least 50 miles to overlap my 16 mile radius.
Then there's stuff from NJ but I wont get into that yet.
They are not intended to reflect propagation, but to reflect the intended coverage.
The verbiage may be different but not the intent.
ex A county system - a circle covering the county, a city covering the city . Not the fact that one can actually hear it 50 miles away.
From
Location Based Scanning - The RadioReference Wiki
RadioReference members can submit data for any of these fields where there is none or where there are errors. (Remember, if you are submitting data, that the coordinates and range should be entered for the intended useable area, not the coverage area. For example, if Agency XYZ has a 300 watt repeater that you can hear for miles away from the city, the intended usable area is more likely to be the agency boundary of the city or county. When submitting data to the database you would enter the radius necessary to cover the city or county, not a larger radius to cover the capable listening area of the transmitter.) Users who desire to add Location_Based_Info should become very familiar with RR_Database_Submission_Guidelines before submitting changes to the RadioReference database.
To add a bit, the circle should just cover the geographic area for the intended agency's geopolitical boundaries. For example, a town 3 miles across would have a circle centered on the town with a radius of about 1.5 miles, even though the actual signal might propagate for 10 miles or more.
Based on the above quotes, it seems that the solution is to fix the systems that extend much greater than there intended to. It also does not seem right that people doing location based scanning, and are very far from systems with improper or default range settings should have to lower there own search ranges. If someone wanted to listen to Colleges/Universities in Connecticut, then they should increase their range or have it in a favore list with location control off..
I also now realize that there might not be an easy fix for statewide systems with multiple transmitter locations. But just fixing county, town and other single area agencies would be a big help and would benefit the whole purpose of Location Based Scanning.. The way some things are now, and having to reduce ones range or avoid a ton of out of area systems is just absurd.
And to touch on what W2SJW said,
Not going to happen.
Unfortunately because of the oddball shapes of counties and states, and the fact that the database is limited to circles for coverage areas, there is always going to be some overlap into areas that the systems are not intended to cover.
There is no debate that circles are whats in use and there is no debate that overlapping will occur. The debate is about intended coverage areas that are set 10 times larger than they are intended to cover.
If the coverage area for the NJ systems was reduced, they would no longer completely encompass the intended coverage areas within NJ.
So your telling me that if the Fort Lee Borough System that has a range set to 20 miles was reduced to 4 miles, that people in fort lee would not hear the system? Your saying a reduced range of 4 miles does not completely encompass Fort Lee?
Here is 4 mile radius.
Explain why someone as far east in Nassau County Ny, as far north as New City, NY, or as far west in North Caldwell, NJ with a range of a half mile or even 1 mile should have their scanner even try to scan Fort Lee NJ. Those 3 locations are about 22 miles away from Fort lee that's less than 3 square miles...
Believe me, I know overlapping will occur, but there are plenty of systems in the db where the range for exceeds the actual area of operation.
I am willing to research boundaries and help determine if lower ranges would work on some of these systems. And it would be based on the agencies actual area, not how far they can be heard....
