Homepatrol1 In Edmonton area
- Thread starter Bubbleboy
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Questions about Home Patrol 1
I am wondering where exactly you are in Beaver County. It might be a stretch to receive Edmonton EDACS (Police, Fire ect) from there. Are you using the stock antenna that came with it or another one? You should be hearing RCMP as that's in the database. You should also be hearing the AFRRCS P25 trunking Holden and Viking 2 towers but activity may be low.
I know here in Edmonton I can hear the main County of Beaver fire frequency in fact I can still here it west of Edmonton in Lac Ste Anne County.
I have a Home Patrol 1 and find it to be a great scanner. You may want to read up on it on the RR Uniden forums. I use a better antenna than the stock one that comes with it.
I am wondering where exactly you are in Beaver County. It might be a stretch to receive Edmonton EDACS (Police, Fire ect) from there. Are you using the stock antenna that came with it or another one? You should be hearing RCMP as that's in the database. You should also be hearing the AFRRCS P25 trunking Holden and Viking 2 towers but activity may be low.
I know here in Edmonton I can hear the main County of Beaver fire frequency in fact I can still here it west of Edmonton in Lac Ste Anne County.
I have a Home Patrol 1 and find it to be a great scanner. You may want to read up on it on the RR Uniden forums. I use a better antenna than the stock one that comes with it.
That's a real stretch to get Edmonton from Holden but looking at the database you should be getting RCMP repeaters near Tofield and Viking. Make sure you have Police, Fire and EMS selected to be scanned in the Home Patrol. Down the road you may want to put on a better antenna but the stock antenna should work just fine for your local services.
I do have the Extreme upgrade but not having it shouldn't cause you not to hear your local area.
I have Fire, Police, and EMS selected and moved the HP1 to different locations in the house. My old BC72XLT gets 155.550 and the HP1 doesn't don't know why. What kind of antenna did you purchase?
Unlock all services on the HP1
One thing to try is select all services to be scanned in case RCMP is classified as Federal. Select them all and eliminate the ones you don't want as you start picking stuff up.
I don't use the RR database so I'm not totally used to how it works. I program all my lists as favorite lists something you may not be able to do without the Extreme upgrade. I see the proper PL code ect is shown properly for RCMP in the database for your area. Can you just program 155.550 into the scanner and sit on it? Then listen on the BC72XLT until it's active.
At this point don't worry about a better antenna till we sort out you getting calls from your local area.
One thing to try is select all services to be scanned in case RCMP is classified as Federal. Select them all and eliminate the ones you don't want as you start picking stuff up.
I don't use the RR database so I'm not totally used to how it works. I program all my lists as favorite lists something you may not be able to do without the Extreme upgrade. I see the proper PL code ect is shown properly for RCMP in the database for your area. Can you just program 155.550 into the scanner and sit on it? Then listen on the BC72XLT until it's active.
At this point don't worry about a better antenna till we sort out you getting calls from your local area.
I selected Federal and pick up the weather channel ok, It will hit on some channels far away but just get static. As for programing 155.550 I type it in press accept don't know were it goes. Thanks for helping me try to get this thing going
Trying it in various locations in your house was a good idea. Are you using your postal code or your location to access the database? I'd try location for Sherwood Park to hear what you get. Make sure the receive radius is set to the maximum I think 50 miles rather than the lowest setting.
I'm currently using the HP 1 in the car using a Larsen tri band antenna. When it was in the house I used my rooftop discone.
Hopefully we will figure this out for you. We know it is receiving.
I've always had the Extreme update so really I'm not sure what extra features I got with it. Perhaps direct entry of a frequency was one of them.
I used my postal code and then did a auto locate, I have it set to max of 30 miles with the squelch on two bars. Also reprogrammed the firmware and database still at a loss. I will be going to Edmonton this week and will try it there.
Don't do auto-locate if you've used another type of location setting - it's not what you think it is. Auto locate uses the radio systems it can hear, compared to the DB in the scanner, to guess where you are. That's to be used when you have no other way of putting your location in. What it does is if it can hear a trunk system of a certain flavor on a certain frequency, and the full database shows that same type of system on that frequency, it makes a guess that you might be in the area where that system is. But that system might be in Edmonton, or it might be in Portland, Oregon, or it might be in Florida. There are lots of systems that share the same frequencies as the ones near where you are, and the scanner could make the wrong guess.
Using your postal code is probably good enough, though in some areas that covers a very wide region. For Holden specifically, I think you're too far away from Edmonton to hear anything from there. You should be able to pick up pretty much anything from this page in the RRDB if you turn on the appropriate service types seen at the end of each row.
For what it's worth, RCMP is not tagged as Federal; they're Law Dispatch, Law Tac, or Law-Talk, depending on the type of channel. I'd turn them all on for purposes of trying to receive a signal, if I were you.
You should also be able to pick up at least one AFRRCS site (Holden) if not more. The talkgroups might be encrypted (the busiest agency on the system so far, AHS, is) but you should at least see the scanner pause on AFRRCS with a signal strength indication.
Using your postal code is probably good enough, though in some areas that covers a very wide region. For Holden specifically, I think you're too far away from Edmonton to hear anything from there. You should be able to pick up pretty much anything from this page in the RRDB if you turn on the appropriate service types seen at the end of each row.
For what it's worth, RCMP is not tagged as Federal; they're Law Dispatch, Law Tac, or Law-Talk, depending on the type of channel. I'd turn them all on for purposes of trying to receive a signal, if I were you.
You should also be able to pick up at least one AFRRCS site (Holden) if not more. The talkgroups might be encrypted (the busiest agency on the system so far, AHS, is) but you should at least see the scanner pause on AFRRCS with a signal strength indication.
I have them all selected and still nothing just weather, When I look in the HP1 AFRRCS channel I don't see a Holden or Viking site listed as they are in the sentinel database. I am scanning all the sites in the AFRRCS just to see it it will lock on a channel.
If you do finally lock on to a AFRRCS site don't expect to hear much. Monitoring a site near you for a week using Unitrunker, there was 21 Transmission in the clear. The remaining thousand or so were AHS dispatch and transfer channel all encrypted
The stock antenna is not particularly good. I even had one of them break at one point.
You may not need to go as far as a fixed antenna like a discone. I replaced all my stock antennas with the Diamond SRH-789 antenna years ago, on all my radios, and it performs rather nicely. It is a metal telescoping antenna you can "tune" to your desired frequency range by extending or collapsing sections, and has a hinge so it will fit a radio like the HP1 and still be able to point straight up. The "S" in the model number means it has an SMA connector (for the HP1), but you can also get it in BNC if you order it as an RH-789 instead.
I don't know about local - to you or anyone else in Canada - but there are a number of online retailers such as Universal Radio and Scanner Master that stock it. While looking it up for this post I also see that Amazon (USA) has a page on it; maybe the Canada site does too, but unfortunately my browser is failing right now for some reason so I can't do any more lookups, sorry...
You may not need to go as far as a fixed antenna like a discone. I replaced all my stock antennas with the Diamond SRH-789 antenna years ago, on all my radios, and it performs rather nicely. It is a metal telescoping antenna you can "tune" to your desired frequency range by extending or collapsing sections, and has a hinge so it will fit a radio like the HP1 and still be able to point straight up. The "S" in the model number means it has an SMA connector (for the HP1), but you can also get it in BNC if you order it as an RH-789 instead.
I don't know about local - to you or anyone else in Canada - but there are a number of online retailers such as Universal Radio and Scanner Master that stock it. While looking it up for this post I also see that Amazon (USA) has a page on it; maybe the Canada site does too, but unfortunately my browser is failing right now for some reason so I can't do any more lookups, sorry...
Maybe Radio World?
Some good advice from Jay. I should have mentioned the discone would be an outside antenna and might be over kill. But for the discone I also prefer the Diamond brand. I see Radio World in Ontario does have the telescoping whip in stock for $48.00 CDN but I didn't check to see if their Calgary location has them in stock. I prefer the Calgary location as shipping is quicker and cheaper than from Ontario.
I am still baffled why you don't hear much from your location. What do you hear if you leave the Edmonton location on when you try it at home? Or use a Toefield postal code or Sherwood Park. You should be hearing the Toefield RCMP detachment and I'm thinking the Sherwood Park RCMP. The Diamond antenna Jay suggests may also allow you to get Edmonton.
Some good advice from Jay. I should have mentioned the discone would be an outside antenna and might be over kill. But for the discone I also prefer the Diamond brand. I see Radio World in Ontario does have the telescoping whip in stock for $48.00 CDN but I didn't check to see if their Calgary location has them in stock. I prefer the Calgary location as shipping is quicker and cheaper than from Ontario.
I am still baffled why you don't hear much from your location. What do you hear if you leave the Edmonton location on when you try it at home? Or use a Toefield postal code or Sherwood Park. You should be hearing the Toefield RCMP detachment and I'm thinking the Sherwood Park RCMP. The Diamond antenna Jay suggests may also allow you to get Edmonton.
It does indeed show in stock at GPS Central (aka Radioworld Central) in Calgary.
I tried Sherwood Park and still no go, I am in the country 8 miles from Holden.
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omrail
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Tofield RCMP may even have trouble with coverage when using their portable in the Holden area. I know others have issues when that far out.
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