Greene County Ohio, MARCS

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dwayne0564

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Xenia, Ohio
Hello,

Greene Country recently moved over to the Ohio MARCS-IP , I can get my GRE 500, and Home Patrol 1, to work, but cannot get my 396T to program, or Pro 96. Am I right thinking I would need a 396xt and my
Pro 96 won't work.

Thanks
 

Colin9690

Delaware County, OH
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Not sure about the Uniden, but I know for a fact the PRO-96/PRO-2096 are incapable of monitoring MARCS-IP. The scanner's firmware can't monitor 700 MHz frequencies for the purpose of P25 trunking.
 

TedRHayes

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Beavercreek, Ohio
Not positive about the BCD396T, but the BCD996T can monitor the Ohio MARCS-IP system in both the 700 and 800 MHz bands.

Also, the Greene County Simulcast system only uses the 800 MHz band. While it is linked to the wider Ohio MARCS-IP system, you might be able to monitor it as a stand alone Standard P25 system.
 

n8dhw

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He can monitor the Greene Co simulcast site with the Pro 96 just not the 700 sites. Also the 396T should work as long as it has the latest firmware installed.

Dave
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KB8KOJ

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Centerville, Ohio
So the Wilberforce site is not being used yet? I am assuming this site will be part of MARCS IP since it's 700mhz. Will the Greene county users become a part of this? I am missing a lot of traffic and all I have is the 800mhz simulcast site in the GRE 500 & 600 and HP-1 scanners. Havent' tried the 996XT yet.

It may very well be a signal issue here. The EDACS system was pretty solid with a rubber ducky here though.

Any tweaks, AGC or other worth trying with these radios?
 
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n8dhw

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The Wilberforce site was up and running before the Greene County simulcast was. Not sure how the radio's handle it now that Greene's site is up and running now. Your best bet is to program in the Wilberforce and Dayton IP sites into your scanner and see what you hear. I was hearing Xenia FD, Beavercreek PD and FD and Fairborn FD off the Dayton site yesterday.

Dave
N8DHW

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KB8KOJ

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OK thanks Dave... I just heard Greene county SO on the Wilberforce site after typing that. Just found out about the switch this week. Trying to play catch up myself. Need to visit the website more. Signals from Greene county being subpar now are not making it any easier to figure this out. Thanks for info. Looks like at least 3 sites are used to cover Greene. Will take some more investigation to see if other sites are commonly utilized as well.

73
Dave

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TedRHayes

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OK thanks Dave... I just heard Greene county SO on the Wilberforce site after typing that. Just found out about the switch this week. Trying to play catch up myself. Need to visit the website more. Signals from Greene county being subpar now are not making it any easier to figure this out. Thanks for info. Looks like at least 3 sites are used to cover Greene. Will take some more investigation to see if other sites are commonly utilized as well.

73
Dave

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You can see the location of all the Ohio MARCS-IP sites and the Greene County Simulcast tower locations on the following map:

https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msid=217515704511829483700.0004d5b37c24550b93602&msa=0

You should be able to hear traffic from one of the towers in the Simulcast system. If you can, you should get all the Greene County traffic.
 
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KB8KOJ

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OK thank you. I had been concentrating on the main simulcast site to begin with. Just want to verify settings on GRE scanners should be p25 auto. Imported directly from RR's database without changing system settings. I get a decent signal strength but poor decoding percentage. Probably a multi-path issue. Time for a 800mhz Yagi I guess. Amazing how well the site could be trunked scanned from my home when analog compared to what I see now.

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dwayne0564

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Xenia, Ohio
Working so far...

I got my HP-1 , my 396T and my gre 500 and even my pro 197 to receive the new programming, finally got the 396T firmware upgrade to work, but as someone had mention before, my pro 96 will receive, but
I think it has a firmware issue, mostly garbled, 4 out of 5 radio's working aren't bad., just liked the 96 a lot,
 

radioscan

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With Greene County being a simulcast system if you are between tower sites you can expect to experience the Digital Simulcast Distortion. The only workarounds are: 1. Try using the attenuate feature to see if that will just allow the closest site to come in. 2. A Yagi antenna pointed at the nearest tower site. 3. If using an indoor antenna move around the house to find the 'sweet' spot. Otherwise it is what it is.
 

wa8pyr

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The Wilberforce site was up and running before the Greene County simulcast was. Not sure how the radio's handle it now that Greene's site is up and running now. Your best bet is to program in the Wilberforce and Dayton IP sites into your scanner and see what you hear. I was hearing Xenia FD, Beavercreek PD and FD and Fairborn FD off the Dayton site yesterday.

I just worked a submission which indicates the following neighbor ("peer") sites for Greene County:

002 - Washington Court House
005 - Dayton
006 - London
007 - Springfield
015 - Troy

It appears that, as I suspected, Wilberforce won't be a neighbor for Greene County users. I'm guessing that MARCS probably wants to keep the Wilberforce site clear for non-Greene County users to roam to; most neighboring MARCS users probably don't have the Greene County site programmed and may not be set up for CC band scan, which limits them to the sites programmed in their radios.

This could change in the future, or not. Depending on how they set things up, either the Wilberforce site could be integrated into the Greene simulcast cell and all frequencies combined into one big simulcast cell, or it could stay the same.

Warren County could go either way (although I suspect they'll integrate those sites into the Warren County simulcast); Franklin County will be staying mostly separate from MARCS due to the heavy subscriber loading in the Columbus area, but you may see a few critical talkgroups roaming back and forth.
 
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mtindor

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I just worked a submission which indicates the following neighbor ("peer") sites for Greene County:

002 - Washington Court House
005 - Dayton
006 - London
007 - Springfield
015 - Troy

Is there any chance that it isn't listed as a neighbor because it already got swallowed into the simulcast? Just wondering if anybody [recently] has reported an active control on one of the original Wilberforce freqs. Maybe it's not even active as a standalone site anymore?

Just a thought.

Mike
 

radioscan

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I don't believe so. Wilberforce is still an original MARCS site, it was never a site for the Greene County EDACS system. Wilberforce is strictly MARCS/MARCS-IP.


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radioscan

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Case in point. I was just in Centerville where I can hear both sites. The only Greene County traffic coming off the Wilberforce site was the sheriff. Other county traffic was on the Simulcast system. Looks like Tom is spot on with his observation.


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reo236

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Does any one have a file they can email that has green co system set up for a bcd996xt either free scan or arc996xt pro or walk me thru setting up a template
 

KB8KOJ

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With Greene County being a simulcast system if you are between tower sites you can expect to experience the Digital Simulcast Distortion.


Mark, when they say "simulcast system" I am assuming other sites are transmitting on the same frequencies at the same time for users. Is that constantly or does that only happen when a user is voted or connected to that secondary site?

I've compared the area frequencies on each site and they don't seem to overlap. Just confused to where these simultaneous signals are coming from.
 
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