gre pse 600 partial conversations

[rk919]

Hi
I have the above scanner and am having trouble receiving all the radio traffic. For example I might hear the unit call in, but not the rest of traffic, or sometimes, the tail end of the conversation. It's not such a thing were other traffic is conflicting with each other and missing out in that regards. For the most part, what traffic I do receive is clear and only garbled occasionally. I am in the country about 17 miles from the tower

I have updated the software and tried several settings suggested in the easy to read scanner manual. My signal strength is between 3 and 5 and it shows the T blinking regularly. I am scanning approximately 15 or so p 25 stations and 5 conventional stations with 1 priority on each band. The conventional band does not have that much traffic on it and when this happens there isn't much traffic on the p25 to cause the problem either.

As elimination I went to manual channel select and listened to only to the priority P25 channel with no change. I have tried the indoor antenna in different angles and lengths. It appears to me the scanner either isn't decoding the signal fast enough or staying locked on to in successfully.

I have two control channels entered, 1 main and 1 alternate, and have tried changing the cc setting to off, stationary and roam with no change. All delays are 2000 with the p25 priority set for 5000. The attenuator is turned off. I also did a partial factory reset, keeping my frequencies but reverting everything else to factory settings

With my signal strength I don't believe the indoor antenna is the problem, but am open to suggestion for recommendations on a better indoor antenna then the stock one that came with it, if you believe that might be a problem

Any suggestions greatly appreciated
Thanks in advance
Rick

 

[ScannerSK]

Are the 15 or so P25 stations you mentioned part of the same system that the two control channels are part of? On P25 systems typically only the control channels are entered and not the voice frequencies.

What system are you monitoring?

Shawn

 

[rk919]

Hi Shawn

Thanks for responding

Yes that is correct. It is for Fulton County in Ohio. It is a subset of the Lucus County regional system.

Forgive me as I am a newbie on this, how does one pick what channels to moniter if you dont put in the voice frequencies.

One thing to note I may have stumbled onto a solution. While I had previously updated the firmware to the lastest version, I installed the two updates again and "it appears" to be working a lot better. I will advise in a couple of days on how it's doing

 

[Spitfire8520]

Forgive me as I am a newbie on this, how does one pick what channels to moniter if you dont put in the voice frequencies.

The control channel for a P25 system contains the data needed to tell the scanner what voice frequency it needs to monitor so that your scanner can follow conversations. This means that you do not need to put in any of the black colored voice frequencies to properly track a system and it may improve your scanning by a little bit since it doesn't need to check those frequencies for a control channel. Just to confirm, you are speaking of Northwest Ohio Regional Public Safety System Trunking System?

 

[rk919]

That is the correct system. I understand on what your saying, however I dont want to listen to everything on that cc, only the ones I have programmed in there now. If I took out those select channels and went with the cc channels only, wouldn't that make me monitor all channels on the cc? If so how would I delete the unwanted ones?

 

[Halfpint]

That is the correct system. I understand on what your saying, however I dont want to listen to everything on that cc, only the ones I have programmed in there now. If I took out those select channels and went with the cc channels only, wouldn't that make me monitor all channels on the cc? If so how would I delete the unwanted ones?

Those `voice channels' that the `control freq' references are *not* `channels' like you are used to with an Analog scanner. The `Talk Groups' are the digital version instead. You program the all `Talk Groups' and either `lock out' the ones you don't want to hear or just don't program in the unwanted ones and program in the ones you are interested in. Either way won't drastically cause any noticable lack of response time for receiving the `TGs' you are interested in.

Maybe someone in your state forum can get you an example or two of a `program' for what you are interested in hearing if you ask there?

 

[Mike_G_D]

That is the correct system. I understand on what your saying, however I dont want to listen to everything on that cc, only the ones I have programmed in there now. If I took out those select channels and went with the cc channels only, wouldn't that make me monitor all channels on the cc? If so how would I delete the unwanted ones?

It doesn't work like that. Trunking systems use the voice channels as a "trunked" group of "pathways" for voice traffic. They are not dedicated to specific uses like conventional systems - that's why it's called a "trunked" system. All of the talk groups on a trunked system share the set of voice channels and the central computer simply finds an open "pathway" (voice frequency) each time a conversation is initiated and/or the mic is keyed (depending on the exact type of system,format, and programming - essentially transparent to you and the actual system users).

The control channel data tells the user radios (and your scanner) which voice channels to use per talk group when needed (again - it could be any voice frequency in the assigned set, whichever one(s) the central trunking computer finds that are clear at the time). It is the talk groups that you want to program for what you want to hear in a trunking system. If you're not clear on what that is you might try reading the RR wiki here: Trunking Basics - The RadioReference Wiki.

-Mike

 

[rk919]

Hi I do better understand the concept of this system. Perhaps I am not stating correctly how I have it set up

For example under trunking tsys editor is were my cc freqs are at.(2 fo them) Closing that the trunknig objects show as follows

id 0001 / tg/rid 29c1 / type group / the alpha tag and so on across Each new line add new group and so on down the line matching that type of format

My main concern is I want to listen to a select few channels on that tsys, not all of them

I am sure I am doing something wrong. As I said before I am new at this type of scanning. Perhaaps I better subscribe and d/l the cvs file from here . Would that help in setting this up correctly

Again Thanks for all your patience and help

 

[Mike_G_D]

If you understand talk groups I'm not sure where you are having difficulty. On GRE scanners, you hear "everything" (all talk groups on a system) only when you use the Group Wildcard (Type = "Goup" and ID = "Wildcard"). Otherwise, if you have whatever talk group number(s) you are interested in hearing programmed, as long as the wildcard group is not programmed in (or is locked out) then that (or those) is/are what you will hear.

Are you programming manually by hand or using software like WIN500 or PSREDIT? If you are using software maybe you could attach a copy of the file you are using and let us look at it to see if we can come up with a reason you are having problems.

In looking over your original post, I am now a little unclear on what your problem is; your original post states you are hearing partial transmissions and want to know why (could be many things including various types of interference) but subsequent posts and replies to them by others sound more like you want to narrow down what you are hearing (hearing "too much"). So I'm not exactly sure what you're asking about.

-Mike

 

[Spitfire8520]

I think where a lot of us are getting confused is when you said you are attempting to monitor "15 or so p 25 stations." We are confused to whether or not you mean that you have programmed the black colored voice frequencies in. From what you have said, I believe it would be more accurate to say that you have programmed in 15 talkgroups (these are sometimes called "channels") into your scanner. Your scanner will only listen to what you have explicitly told it to monitor, so you should have no concerns about hearing what you don't want to hear.

As for your reception, 17 miles may be significant depending on the terrain between you and the tower. It might be possible that you are just in an area with bad reception, but that is hard to be certain unless you attempt to relocate the scanner to a higher location or try an antenna specifically built for 700/800 MHz. What you may consider doing is programming the primary control channel for only the Wauseon site and removing the Lucas County Simulcast site if you have it programmed to see if you pick up more activity. The PSR-600 and all it's relatives don't necessarily have the best support for following multiple towers of a trunking systems and will sometimes lock onto a poor choice and attempt to see if there is traffic there. It sounds like you're using software, it may be beneficial to note which software you are using to program your scanner.

 

[rk919]

Hi I am using the psr edit in attempts to program. I will try to attach my bin file.

My main concern is I am missing parts of the conversation, normaly the first part like it's not kicking in fast enough.

Where the listening to to many channels came in was were I was trying to understand the other poster was advising to just the cc freqs, I was getting confused as to how to listen to select channels. The article is referred me to did help.

For the most part I am showing 3-5 bar signal strength and the T flashes regulary.

This is the one with all the cc channels added. I hope I attached it correctly

 

[rk919]

I didnt see were the bin file attached so here is a screen shot

 

[Spitfire8520]

I would suggest disabling the Multi Site Mode as well as deleting LCN 05 - 773.45625 and 06 - 774.20625 as the settings and those frequencies have no benefit if your plans are to only monitor a single site may introduce delay to your scanning. If you're still experiencing delays, you might want to consider either increasing your CC HD2 Timeout setting under P25 Settings in the Advanced Configuration or deleting everything but the primary control channel (red frequency) from the TSYS.

Given that you said that the bar regularly changes between 3-5 bars, there is still the chance that you only have moderate reception of the system. If the problem persists, then you may want to consider the repositioning the scanner to the side of the room/building closest to the tower, to the nearest window, higher up, or getting an antenna upgrade for the scanner. I personally do not have much experience with antennas, but a lot of the users on these forums have talked about the GRE/RadioShack 800MHz Scanner Antenna making a clear difference in reception of the 700/800 MHz band. From the looks of it, you may need a 90 degree BNC adapter for the antenna. You may want to note that this would mean reduced ability to hear some of the VHF frequencies you have programmed.

Other than that, I don't have much more to suggest in regards to solving why you are missing the beginning of transmissions for a P25 system.

 

[rk919]

Thanks for the suggestions. I increased the hd2 timeout by 10 and removed the 2 cc channels . I am not clear on were you suggest the multi site settings to be. Should it be placed on stat or completly off? ALso were should the check cc channels every scan setting be? checked or unchecked?

I orginaly had only the first control channel entered and had the same problems. I thought maybe the others might help.

I will look into the atenna you suggested. I will let you know how it goes

 

[rcool101]

My 2 cents....Turn off Priority for that Weather channel.....In fact turn off all the priorities

 

[rcool101]

Priorities look good on paper but do nothing but cause interruptions. So does Weather Alert. Prolly why some have multiple scanners.

 

[Spitfire8520]

Should it be placed on stat or completly off? ALso were should the check cc channels every scan setting be? checked or unchecked?

I orginaly had only the first control channel entered and had the same problems. I thought maybe the others might help.

Completely off and I think you might want to uncheck scan all CC. The STAT mode and checking every CC will make it so that your scanner cycles through all the control channels you have programmed into your scanner and takes up some time in order to check silent frequencies. Most systems are setup to only have a single control channel per site, so attempting to check for another control channel would be redundant when you only program in a single site. The STAT mode and checking every CC is more for users who have several different sites that they can receive in order to hear the most amount of traffic, and this is related to a completely different topic of the behaviors of a trunked radio system when you have multiple sites spanning large geographic areas.

Having the alternate control channels (blue frequencies) will help if the system is known to change frequencies often. Otherwise, just the red frequency will suffice for scanning a system.

Something you can do to also verify if you are receiving the control channel well is pressing MAN, going to a talkgroup and pressing TSYS followed by Analyze (or programming the frequency using TUNE). A rather annoying "grinding" sound should come up and your scanner should be able to provide you with some of the data that is being provided by the control channel. The most useful in your situation would probably be on the bottom left with percentage. From personal experience, if I have anything less than 5 bars of reception the decode will show less than 90%. 99% is the most optimal for a scanner since it needs to decode the data in order to switch to the voice frequency to monitor the conversation. You can also use this setting to help you adjust the current antenna on the scanner or even placement of the scanner in order to get 5 bars/99% decode, but also keep in mind that this setting has a few seconds of delay as it processes the data.

 

[rk919]

Hi

I recieved and installed the Radio Shack antena and it did help alot. With y'alls suggestions plus the antenna, I beleive it is as good as will get.

The decode reading was originally in the 90's+ range but not steady. When adding the new antenna that reading stays pretty consistant at 97-99.% The strength bar didnt change much.

The traffic I am recieving now is mostly clear and completeness has increase to were maybe 2 or 3 outta 10 conversations will be missing the beginning, much better than before.

Appreciate and Thanks for all your help

 

[RKG]

One other observation: if you mix talkgroups on a trunked system and conventional channels in the same scan list, you will get audio holes exactly as you have described. This is true whether you are using a consumer-grade receiver (such as the PSR600) or a top-of-the-line Motorola subscriber (like an APX). Here's why:

Your radio can only listen to one frequency at a time.

Scanning conventional channels means jumping from one channel to the next, looking for valid freq and, if found, valid tone. If both are true, the radio pauses and opens audio on that frequency for the length of the conversation plus the hang timer.

Scanning trunked talkgroups is entirely different: the radio parks on the active control channel and looks for voice channel grants (a/k/a OSWs) for any talkgroup in your scan list. Even while the radio is silent (i.e., no voice traffic active on your scanned talkgroups), the radio is still parked on and listening to the data broadcast on the control channel.

Now, if you mix TGs and conventionals in the same same list, the radio will listen to the trunked control channel for a time (activity on tagged TGs plus a timer), then it will start jumping down the conventionals, then back to the trunked control channel. Activity on an active conventional will be missed while the radio is parked on the trunked control channel, and activity on the trunked system will be missed while the radio is jumping down the conventionals.

Hence the "rule" followed by most savvy trunked system operators: no mixed trunked/conventional scan lists.

Fire departments that use trunked systems for dispatch and administrative stuff usually use conventional channels for fireground operations, since the applicable standard (NFPA 1221) says trunked channels should never be used on the fireground. (Reason: a trapped firefighter cannot access "direct" if in-building conditions preclude him from hitting a system receiver.) In order for responding companies to be able to hear fireground traffic, a well-designed system will repeat the conventional channel traffic on a trunked talkgroup. Once the responder gets to the scene, he changes channels on his radio from the trunked system to the fireground conventional channel.

So my suggestion to the OP is to delete the conventional channels from your scan list and see if this cures the audio holes on the trunked system talkgroups.