Help me understand Bell Fleetnet

[Inssomniak]

I just need some help in understanding this system.

I supply a feed to RR using my scanner (BCD396) and I only monitored one or 2 talk groups (Cayuga Tower)

My talk group 8288 (Haldimand 6C) went quiet and I couldn't figure it out. Hours were going by quiet on a normally very active TG.
Another post in another thread asked me to check the status bit., it was not turned on, its worked for weeks with it turned off.

So I turned it on, and let it search for TGIDs and low and behold there is the Haldimand 6C on 8211?

So if status bit is off, I can ID search and pick up the standard talk groups available on this tower (Brant), as listed on RR database but it does not pick up the TGID of 8211 nor is this listed on the database here at RR.

If I turn it on, I can ID search and the standard TGIDs stop coming in, but I get 8211. 8288 has not been seen lately.


What am I missing here? What did this system do to me?

 

[Forts]

8211 is Brant (8208) with a Status Bit of +3 meaning it's patched. So... There is one of the downfalls with the 396T, it doesn't properly follow patches. You parked your scanner on 8288 and at some point the Comm Centre patched that talkgroup to 8208. The problem is that when the patch was setup, 8208 was the 'supergroup' meaning your radio won't hear anything since it (a) doesn't understand the patch and (b) is still sitting on 8288. Real radios and newer scanners see the patched status and know to check the supergroup for activity.

Hopefully that made sense!

 

[Inssomniak]

Does the 396XT Do this OK?

It makes sense, but I can't figure out how to program for it? I don't care about also receiving brant, so if I program in 8208 and 8288, will I hear both when 8288 is patched?

I don't claim to know how all this works, but Im not always around to know it gets patched, or even know why it does? So my feed to RR went quiet and I didn't know for hours or maybe even a day or so.

How can I find out what talk groups a specific tower is transmitting? Like the TG 8208 is it always broadcasted from Cayuga tower?

If I think about this now, it seems that the 8208 and 8288 TGs have always been patched in some way or another, perhaps now the "supergroup" is now reversed, as I always have heard brant 8208 from 8288 as far back as I can remember, but I never noticed the status bits before because it was set to off.


Any suggestions?

 

[Forts]

Yes the XT should work ok... is that what you have?

 

[Inssomniak]

No I just have the 396T.

 

[exkalibur]

The best way is to set your scanner to ignore status bits. Then set it to scan both the Brant and the Haldimand talkgroup. Since they're usually patched, it would be best to look for both of them since you don't know which one the patch will be on.

Same idea as Toronto and Whitby.

 

[EJB]

I scan this tower all the time.

If you are providing a feed you should at least know about how patches work on fleetnet in my opinion.

Your 396T has to have all the talkgroups that are patched together, if not and it switches to one of the, in this case, two talkgroups patched together, your scanner will go blank like you said when in reality it is as busy as always.

So, if you plan to stream the OPP for all others off this tower you will have to enter in all the talkgroups in this patch, I.E. The Brant 6 Bravo talkgroup and the Haldimand 6 Charley talkgroup which also has 1st Nations units, they designate themselves as 6 Quebec.

On occasion the stand alone talkgrops for Norfolk and Oxford are there, along with occasional Tac talkgroups for events.

 

[CdnFBI]

Could be that TG 8288 is accidentally locked out (?)

 

[Inssomniak]

I scan this tower all the time.

If you are providing a feed you should at least know about how patches work on fleetnet in my opinion.

Your 396T has to have all the talkgroups that are patched together, if not and it switches to one of the, in this case, two talkgroups patched together, your scanner will go blank like you said when in reality it is as busy as always.

So, if you plan to stream the OPP for all others off this tower you will have to enter in all the talkgroups in this patch, I.E. The Brant 6 Bravo talkgroup and the Haldimand 6 Charley talkgroup which also has 1st Nations units, they designate themselves as 6 Quebec.

On occasion the stand alone talkgrops for Norfolk and Oxford are there, along with occasional Tac talkgroups for events.

How does one know in a particular location which groups are patched? Is that information here in the database on RR ?

I have programmed Norfolk (which I never hear), Brant and Haldimand all into the scanner now along with the Tac talk groups for london comm centre.

 

[exkalibur]

Without using some program such as Trunk88 or Unitrunker, not particularly easy.

One one day they could be patched with one group, another day it could be totally different.

 

[Inssomniak]

Thanks for the help.

I did just that, I will just assume that having these talk groups programmed in, that at nearly any given time I will be able to hear them. If, and I imagine it could be pretty rare, it gets patched with another non programmed talk group I could just search for the ID and program it in.

 

[EJB]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (BlackBerry; U; BlackBerry 9300; en) AppleWebKit/534.8+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/6.0.0.526 Mobile Safari/534.8+)

Just figure out which talkgroups are generally patched and you will be good to go.

As Excalibur said, a way for you to "see" which talkgroups are patched at any given time you would have to use the Trunk 88 program. Its IMO, an essential tool for anyone who scans.

Do a little searching on this site, Trunk 88 was made by a local person here, should he choose to jump in here he can explain how it works and what tools you need.

Just to keep your feed running you might want to add in the Tac talkgroups if its allowed. Also, the 5 area (GTA) burlington and niagara patches affiliate with Cayuga. Those are very busy.

 

[slicerwizard]

Do a little searching on this site, Trunk 88 was made by a local person here, should he choose to jump in here he can explain how it works

Looks to me like it uses black magic voodoo doodoo...

and what tools you need.

Buy an old conventional scanner for peanuts, park it on the control channel and feed the headphone jack audio to TRUNK88. Snarf a copy of someone's Zone 1 control file or use RR2T88 to fill in the talkgroup names. Done.

 

[EJB]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (BlackBerry; U; BlackBerry 9300; en) AppleWebKit/534.8+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/6.0.0.526 Mobile Safari/534.8+)

A gentleman like myself will be discrete Andy. I figured you'd see the post and make yourself known )