Help with outside antenna

[scanguy0823]

Okay so I have the bcd996p2 monitoring obion county Tennessee and fulton county Kentucky. They are using nxdn,dmr,conventional.... I think plans to switch over to a state wide mode with possible encryption. I know once the encryption hits its game over. But for now game on!! Looking for opinions on the best option for outside antenna. I'm in the middle of the two counties and looking to monitor both. I've found that most recommend the discone.. a diamond d3000N and LMR 400 cable. Just looking for some thumbs up or down on this. Also the pole I'll have this mounted to is a telephone pole maybe 25ish feet from my house. Will this be to far or will it work? 250 feet above sea level. Thanks for all your input. Any advice greatly appreciated

 

[dave3825]

First question that comes to mind is, whose telephone pole is it? Yours or power/phone company?

 

[andy404ns]

The pole is 25 feet up. What will the total run of cable be to your scanner from the antenna? With LMR400 you should be fine unless the pole is across town. Based on those counties you noted it looks like your two primary target bands are 800 and vhf high so a discone is a good choice. In an ideal world you'd have two scanners - one to monitor the 800mhz trunked system and one to monitor the vhf high stuff. Each of those would be fed by a band specific antenna. But yeah in the absence of that a discone would be fine. There are numerous threads talking about the D3000N in particular:

Search results for query: D3000N

forums.radioreference.com

 

[Whiskey3JMC]

According to the DB Obion County runs an analog Type-II Smartnet system which is quite antiquated. If the day ever comes when your county decides to upgrade their radio system to a P25 Phase-II system utilizing simulcast sites you may be out of luck trying to monitor them with a 996p2 and may face simulcast distortion, that's a pretty nasty site map. Not saying it will happen but it's definitely possible, it happened with my county a few years ago. But as long as everything stays as-is you should be fine

 

[scanguy0823]

So it's my pole with a light. it's about 25ish feet from My house in the back yard. Not sure the total length. And I thought bcd996p2 supported phase-ll. Shows it on the box. I hear they are moving to TACN and possibly encrypted. As of right now it's been 3 days and I've heard nothing of the trunk system. It used to go crazy on this same model lots of car to car stuff. Seems now I'm only getting dispatch conventional. No car to car or anything like that for obion county tn . Hickman in fulton county ky also uses that same trunking connected with obion county and they also can't be heard on the obion county regional trunking which they share with obion county. Clearly hear both on conventional channels with my nxdn upgrade. I think they've stopped using the trunked and are testing on the TACN car to car. So long story short kentucky picking up everything.... Car to car and dispatch. But obion county I'm only hearing police talk to dispatch and fire/ems. If yall check my area make sure to check all the systems. I've got them all programed in and on there own quick key. They use conventional and trunking. Nxdn and dmr, conventional I believe. Also I realized with the priority on it makes transmissions go in and out but when on normal scan and they talk no issues. I thought that was strange. And for the pole... it's 25 ft from my house in a clear area of trees and my scanner is an additional 10-15 feet from where the line will meet the outside of my house. I was thinking of getting the ferret but I keep hearing it's a over priced piece of aluminum inside a stick lol. I wanna reach as far as I possibly can. I alsmot got the sds 200 i think instead of this bcd996p2. But 2 years ago I had this same scanner and it was non stop transmissions. I'm using the pro scan software on my pc and importing directly from here. They haven't changed anything publicly but I do hear rumors that they are testing on TACN but no tower has been built yet. They may be using a TACN tower in weakly county for car to car testing as I'm still able to hear everything else. Thanks again for all the responses. I love the community here. If you check all systems in obion county I think they are already simulcast there is two trunking systems showing and conventional or nxdn whatever I should call it. I hope after a while of hanging around on this site I can soon understand all of this.

 

[scanguy0823]

Look at wood communication and obion county regional and the tcan along with the conventional stuff just wanna make sure you'll see everything that's available

 

[scanguy0823]

all of these and the page before shows more. They all have police stuff on them so it's hard to tell what they are actually using

 

[scanguy0823]

Has these and I guess whats the conventional system. I'm not hearing a single thing on any of the trunked systems. Programed from here to Proscan to the 996

Which further makes me think they are testing on something new with the cop to cop car to car

 

[scanguy0823]

Dispatch ems fire all coming in strong today. But no tactical or car to car in obion county coming through at all like it used to. Site called union city west is transmitting nothing. 4th day now.

 

[scanguy0823]

I did hear dispatch say today that someone went digital and they couldn't hear what the officer was saying. Not sure if that's a different system or if that's just slang for choppy response. However I wasn't hearing anything until dispatch keyed up and said that.

 

[andy404ns]

Not sure I'm understanding exactly what is happening. You're not receiving anything from any trunked systems at all right now? You're only able to receive conventional channels?

 

[andy404ns]

Also there is an extensive thread on TACN in the TN forum. In particular I found this:

The state of Tennessee Advanced Communications Network (TACN)

Has Obion County already moved onto the TACN system or are they in the process on switching over? I saw this post today and discovered a new license: ULS License - Trunked Public Safety 700 MHz License - WRUH513 - OBION, COUNTY OF (EMA) .

forums.radioreference.com

 

[scanguy0823]

Yeah if you look they have the channels under just obion county they are working. Fire police and ems. But the trunked systems which is under woods and under the regional system which used to non stop talk now transmit nothing. Absolutely nothing. I used to pick up the channels from the obion conventional and on the Union city west regional system. But additionally on the trunked system I was able to hear car to car and tactical. Now the regional I hear nothing. Again downloaded from here directly to pro scan and to the scanner. Nothing coming from trunked everything coming from the fulton county cities in ky and the obion conventional in tn. Trunking Is silent. Which is what brought me here really. I've reprogrammed many times. Even turned off the quick keys to just listen for trunked and nothing. I'm complaining about not hearing the car to car and cop to cop stuff. I used to pick it up just fine. Everything else is there. I'm missing fulton county Kentucky sherrifs and most of all car to car in obion county tn

 

[scanguy0823]

Also there is an extensive thread on TACN in the TN forum. In particular I found this:

The state of Tennessee Advanced Communications Network (TACN)

Has Obion County already moved onto the TACN system or are they in the process on switching over? I saw this post today and discovered a new license: ULS License - Trunked Public Safety 700 MHz License - WRUH513 - OBION, COUNTY OF (EMA) .

forums.radioreference.com

Reading on this now. Might have something to do with what's happening. I think they've made the switch and the data just isn't here on RR yet

 

[andy404ns]

It seems unlikely that everyone you used to listen to (including KY) all migrated to some new system all at the same time. I went to broadcastify to see if you could test with some streams and interestingly a lot of the streams are offline. Is there any chance that stuff is just down for whatever reason? I know there was some crazy weather over the last week but I don't really recall where. Broadcastify for reference: Obion County Tennessee Live Audio Feeds

 

[scanguy0823]

Thats what I'm saying lol!! I didn't think that it would be this quiet. So, I hear KY clear and Obion County clear. Just on conventional... The trunking for both counties is silent. The additional channels I used to get with the trucking gave me all the extras... Its silent. Going to reprogram and just make sure everything is exactly like it shows. Going to play around with it and see if I can find anything new. About the scanner and antenna how far is too far to run the line from pole? Total probably max 40 feet from base of antenna to back of scanner by the time I tuck everything away. If this is okay, I am going to get diamond d3000N and LMR 400 cable. Sorry again for bouncing all over with this post guys. I'm new to this i love to learn and read. So that's what I'm going to do over the next few days. and hopefully I can get this all sorted out. I see some of you have thousands of posts and mgs.. I hope I can one day look back on this and laugh!!

 

[andy404ns]

You've probably already done this but did you try with a different antenna? Do you have a rubber duckie sitting around?

Outside of that, it's probably time to post in the TN forum to see if there is anyone in your county willing to try from their end.

With respect to the length of cable - 40 feet is basically nothing. Higher frequencies (like the trunked systems you're looking at), have more loss than lower frequencies (e.g. VHF) but at that length it's negligible. I would normally say that LMR400 is overkill for your application but that would ignore the fact that literally just today I bought a 25 foot run of LMR400 to monitor UHF lol

 

[buddrousa]

The Obion County Regional System is no longer used still operational but no longer used.
OCSO and UNION CITY POLICE moving to TACN each with talkgroups Dispatch should be open with CAR TO CAR 100% ENCRYPTED
OCSO is testing now The wait is for the Union City TACN SITE to be built.
I also have sent the OP this same information before he post here.

 

[andy404ns]

I also have sent the OP this same information before he post here.

To be fair to the OP, he didn't come here asking about those systems. His questions were purely antenna related. We just organically devolved into a different discussion.

 

[scanguy0823]

Yeah just kinda turned into this and i was getting a 2nd opinion. Thanks everyone for your feed back and time