EBRCS Question Thread

[amoking]

I'm feeling like a complete idiot but now I got it. Sorry for getting close to burning this bridge. Lesson learned. Thanks for your patience.

 

[kma371]

I'm feeling like a complete idiot but now I got it. Sorry for getting close to burning this bridge. Lesson learned. Thanks for your patience.

Try this one. It just has CCCO Central site programmed.

Where do you live?

 

[amoking]

94583

The CHPs are for when mobile up and down the state. I drive often.

 

[kma371]

94583

The CHPs are for when mobile up and down the state. I drive often.

I was just trying to determine what site you needed. I saw the San Ramon and Danville TGs so I assumed central. That file should work for you.

 

[ECPD279]

For some reason I am no longer receiving the Pleasanton and Livermore PD or ALCO fire talk groups on my GRE PSR-600. I do hear the Alameda County Sheriff however but for some reason nothing on any of the Pleasanton or Livermore talk groups. I have tried loading frequencies from ALCO East and Crane Ridge and I have reset the scanner to factory default and reloaded the RR database via Win500 software.

For example, the talk groups I am monitoring are 3305 for Pleasanton PD and 3505 for Livermore PD.

Has anyone else run into this issue?

Thanks,

Art

Where are you listening from? If you are not in the ALCO East cell you may not hear Livermore or Pleasanton if no radios are affiliated with the cell you're located in.

 

[amoking]

thanks again

Try this one. It just has CCCO Central site programmed.

Where do you live?

Darn perfect! Appreciated more than you know.

 

[N6PIV]

You shouldn't need the Crane ridge site. That one generally only broadcasts ALCO Fire/Sheriff. If you are NOT hearing Pleasanton & Livermore, you are probably listening to the Crane site.

Try just loading up the ALCO East site and see if that works.

Thanks Sid for the help. After much trial and error I finally found the problem. It turns out that you need to set the P25 Muti-site option to ROAM instead of the default which is OFF. There is a good description in the manual on page 67. Interestingly I found that the scanner works better with the factory collapsible antenna rather than the external discone I recently installed to try and solve this issue. My guess is that the multi-cast signals are overloading the front end with the external antenna. I hate to admit how much time I have spend on this but at least it is working now.

 

[W0CAK]

EBRCS and original HomePatrol?

I'm fairly new to scanning and live out in Danville in the East Bay. I'm interested in scanning the Contra Costa Sheriff and Fire Depts on EBRCS. I have an opportunity to buy a used HomePatrol and am wondering if I'll be able to scan what I want to? Is there a timeframe for those departments to move to Phase II?

Thanks for any guidance.

Curt

 

[Oakland_Tower]

I'm fairly new to scanning and live out in Danville in the East Bay. I'm interested in scanning the Contra Costa Sheriff and Fire Depts on EBRCS. I have an opportunity to buy a used HomePatrol and am wondering if I'll be able to scan what I want to? Is there a timeframe for those departments to move to Phase II?

Thanks for any guidance.

Curt

I don't know about any phase 2 plans, but I hear the Home Patrol is an excellent radio and you will hear all that you want on it. I'd go for it.

 

[W0CAK]

I don't know about any phase 2 plans, but I hear the Home Patrol is an excellent radio and you will hear all that you want on it. I'd go for it.

Thank you, I think I will...

Curt

 

[mkewman]

I'm fairly new to scanning and live out in Danville in the East Bay. I'm interested in scanning the Contra Costa Sheriff and Fire Depts on EBRCS. I have an opportunity to buy a used HomePatrol and am wondering if I'll be able to scan what I want to? Is there a timeframe for those departments to move to Phase II?

Thanks for any guidance.

Curt

I wouldn't worry about it much yet. The current requirement date is 2017, and that isn't really set in stone as I'm hearing that requirement is being revisited. That being said, according to the publicly accessible agendas and minutes currently on the EBRCSA site, EBRCS has no timeline other than the 2017 requirement, however it appears they are beginning to develop one.

EBRCSA staff will begin to identify the long term replacement costs for infrastructure and P25
Phase 2 System Enhancement and develop a replacement schedule.

for all the documents for EBRCS happenings:
Board of Directors
Finance Committee
Operations Committee
Technical Advisory Committee

 

[W0CAK]

Very helpful

Thanks, these sites and this information are very helpful. Really appreciate your taking time to post this here.

Curt

 

[mkewman]

no problem. I highly recommend attending the EBRCS meetings. Almost nobody from the public attends and they are quite informative. Just make sure they haven't been canceled first (they often are )

 

[mibzzer15]

I am having issue with receiving the EBRCS radio system during the daytime. Specifically Fremont PD and ALCO fire. What happens is that during the weekends, I get very little to no traffic at all during the daytime (somewhat between 9am- around 5/6pm). During the weekdays, there is a little bit more traffic but not much. During the nights, weekday or weekend, there is a good flow of traffic, almost never silent for more than a minute. Does it seem like this is a radio issue, antenna issue, or totally normal? When it would happed previously, I would move or change my antenna setup, it would be sort of "fixed' for a while, but then go back to being silent during the day.

Any ideas?

 

[kma371]

Are you sure you have the correct control channels programmed? Maybe its switched during the day and not having it programmed it appears there is no traffic,

 

[gmclam]

I am monitoring EBRCS from the eastern side of Sacramento county. I get a much higher signal level between sunset and about 10am than I do otherwise. That's normal.

With you being in Fremont it makes me think you are not monitoring to the best (strongest) site. The strongest site may not be the closest. Antenna, direction, terrain, etc are all part of the equation.

 

[N6PIV]

I am having issue with receiving the EBRCS radio system during the daytime. Specifically Fremont PD and ALCO fire. What happens is that during the weekends, I get very little to no traffic at all during the daytime (somewhat between 9am- around 5/6pm). During the weekdays, there is a little bit more traffic but not much. During the nights, weekday or weekend, there is a good flow of traffic, almost never silent for more than a minute. Does it seem like this is a radio issue, antenna issue, or totally normal? When it would happed previously, I would move or change my antenna setup, it would be sort of "fixed' for a while, but then go back to being silent during the day.

Any ideas?

I have experienced the same issue and I have found that if I move the scanner to a different location, even a few inches, that it makes a world of difference. Before I discovered this, I installed an external omni antenna thinking the signal level was low which actually made the problem worse! All of this makes me think that the problem is related to the simulcast broadcasts overloading the scanner front end and if anything you need to reduce the input to the scanner or find just the right location where one site is stronger than the second site. I found that collapsing the antenna works better than having it extended at least at my location in Pleasanton. Just for reference, the problem is the same for both my GRE PSR-600 and my Uniden BCD-536HP and It makes me wonder how well the Motorola radios work in the field. Do they experience the same issue of needing to move slightly to improve performance?

 

[mibzzer15]

Alright, so I will double check my control channels, and maybe try changing sites (though from where I am I live about 1.5 miles away from Fremont PD, so pretty close to the main ALCO SW site).

I will also move around the actual scanner and mess with the antenna to see if anything changes. Thanks for the help, I'll report back soon.

 

[mibzzer15]

Thank you guys! I moved around the scanner and the antenna a bit and its sounding a lot better now. I also found that I had the system programmed as a Motorola Type 2/P25 system and I changed that to a P25 Standard system. Working a lot better during the day now.

 

[kq6jz]

I've got a BCD996 programmed for EBRCS. It receives the talkgroups I'm trying to get, but it takes about 8 seconds of a transmission before I hear anything. That means that I miss all of the short messages. I'm using an omni scanner antenna on the roof of the building in Fremont, so reception should be good.

Help, please.