G5 Scanning VIPER

[CFP387]

As some of you guys may know, I live just outside Salisbury, NC and am within close proximity to the Salisbury (site 78) and Faith (site 37) and High Rock (site 45) towers. I have five G-Series pagers, consisting of two G4's and three G5's; they are on all the time, every day, and each is assigned to it's own system, site or county. I am aware that some counties do not have permission to be on neighboring county's towers so that's the reason for my having the pagers assigned the way that they are.

When I do a "wildcard" search for a certain county's talk groups that are programmed in the pager, the pager will not find the closest tower site like it usually would. I'm finding that the pager will stop on the site that the talk groups are on. For example: I live nearest to the Salisbury tower (78), BUT when I select the knob position that has all of the Davidson County talk groups in it, it will land on the High Rock (site 45) tower which is about twice the distance in air miles from the Salisbury site.

Question: Are these pagers "smart" enough to read the control channels of all the towers within range during my wildcard search and be able to determine that the talk groups that I'm trying to scan are on a certain tower (or am I just getting lucky seeing this happen each time)? Are any of you guys finding that the pager will default to the tower for which you are scanning talk groups on?

 

[Webodisk]

Good question I have wondered that too

 

[akalynchs]

I always “assumed” that the unit (In my case a G5) locked onto the closest tower with an active TG and stayed there whether not an active TG came up on an adjacent tower.

I live just outside Statesville and mostly monitor the Barium Springs tower but can hit Mooresville and a few others including C/M occasionally.

In my case, the Barium Springs tower brings in TG’s from Catawba, Lincoln, Davie, and Alexander Counties as well as the main Iredell TG’s. Once again I assume that they are the local, shared TG’s of the adjacent counties.

Good question, maybe someone can answer it.

 

[BigLebowski]

My experience is that they lock onto the first or best control channel they find and stay there.

 

[firemun]

Listening to the simulcasts of the UASI and playing around a bit, I agree the G5 at least grabs the first control channel that is strong enough. When/if it drops, it grabs the next best. I have had my G5 drop the Cabarrus site and start listening to Meck County when I have apparently hit an area of poor signal propagation Even though I am pretty solidly in Cabarrus.

 

[drayd48]

To fix these problems you must make a separate site for each county. When I am listening to the Mooresville site since I live in Iredell county, I made a system with only site 9 in there. When I switch to Mecklenburg it is a completely different system in my pager with only site 1 programmed and allowed to work only on site 1. Also, the pager is not smart enough because I live on the Iredell Rowan Davie line and my pager goes to the Mocksville site a lot when Iredell Fire Dispatch is not being carried all the time unless I affiliate with my radio.

 

[CFP387]

This isn't a "problem", per se, it is just an evaluation. I'm finding that if several towers are loaded into my G5, and I hold on to only one TG, the unit will roam to find the tower that the TG is associated with, not the nearest with the strongest signal. If I'm listening to one tower site per knob position, which I do, the TG's that are associated with other towers (that are within range) will not be heard. But if I let the unit roam by holding on to one TG, I'm finding that it will find the tower that the TG is affiliated to.

I haven't asked about this over on the Unication board, but I think I will. I just wanted to see if anyone around here was experiencing the same thing first.

 

[firemun]

That is interesting. Are you using the FreeScan beta to hold on your TG? I have signed up for the 2nd group to test but have not seen any info come out. I missed out on the first test.