DMR in Ottawa - Quiet?

[eastofottawa]

Hi everyone,

I'm new to this hobby and just bought a Uniden BCD996P2 scanner. I've purchased and installed the Provoice and DMR unlocks. I'm having great success listening to the EMS, Fire and Police at the moment. I'm aware that they will soon be moving over to a system that I won't be able to access.

With this in mind, I've been trying scan the DMR sites that are supposed to be available in Ottawa. I used Freescan to upload the database entries for DMR in Ottawa into the scanner. I let it scan for a good 30 minutes this afternoon without so much as a peep. Is this expected at this time seeings as DMR is fairly new? Do I need to perform more setup than just uploading the database values?

Thanks all!

 

[IdleMonitor]

Put it into search mode. If you're in scan only mode then you might be missing some talkgroups and the ones in the database may not necessarily be busy all the time.

I'd imagine Ottawa would be fairly busy in the DMR comm's.

What systems did you program in? The database lists 6 different systems under DMR types for the City of Ottawa.

What system are referring to for EMS, Fire, Police that you won't be able to access when they move over to a new system?

 

[eastofottawa]

Thanks for your response.

What systems did you program in? The database lists 6 different systems under DMR types for the City of Ottawa.

I entered all the DMR systems listed here: https://www.radioreference.com/apps/db/?ctid=4311
I imported the DMR entries into Freescan and uploaded to my scanner w/o making any modifications.

I might be doing something wrong as this radio is rather complex to program and I've trying to cheat by using software.

What system are referring to for EMS, Fire, Police that you won't be able to access when they move over to a new system?

The current system is on EDACS using Provoice and analog. They are supposed to be moving soon (rumored to be by the end of the 3rd quarter 2017) to a P25 Phase II encrypted system soon. I may be wrong on the radio standard type but it's 100% likely to be encrypted...

 

[slicerwizard]

I let it scan for a good 30 minutes this afternoon without so much as a peep.

Commercial systems get pretty quiet on the weekend.

 

[eastofottawa]

Commercial systems get pretty quiet on the weekend.

Thanks. That makes a lot of sense! I'll give it a try during the week.

 

[mmisk]

Here is a busy DMR site you can try:

Here is a busy DMR site you can try:

201-3 Chateau Royale

461.58750 CC
460.78750
451.68750
461.52500

 

[eastofottawa]

Just a quick update. As others stated, there's lots of DMR traffic in Ottawa. My issue was that I used Freescan to upload the channels to my scanner. As I found out, Freescan doesn't support DMR. Both ARC-XT and ProScan correctly uploaded the info pulled from RR into the scanner.

Thanks all!