Iredell County Trunking Question

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RF-Burns

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On the new BCD536 and BCD436 how would I program the Mooresville Trunked System. Under Trunk Type would it be P25 Trunk or Motorola? I only ask because all the Dispatch Channels are in Analog but all the Fire Ground and PD Tac/Ops Channels are Digital.

Please advise if you could. Thank you in advance.
 

KE4ZNR

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On the new BCD536 and BCD436 how would I program the Mooresville Trunked System. Under Trunk Type would it be P25 Trunk or Motorola? I only ask because all the Dispatch Channels are in Analog but all the Fire Ground and PD Tac/Ops Channels are Digital.

Please advise if you could. Thank you in advance.

Here in the RR database the Mooresville Trunked Radio System is listed as a Motorola
System....which would indicate you should program it as a Motorola system.
The ONLY time you program a system as a P25 System is when it is listed as such
in the RR database.
Please don't make the mistake that just because a system has some digital voice talkgroups=P25.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
A P25 System will have NO analog talkgroups at all.
Marshall KE4ZNR
 

RF-Burns

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Ok Guys Thank You!

I just moved too Mooresville two days ago. Next question, I programmed the 536 before asking the question to you guys and I programmed it P25. Is there to change it from P25 to Motorola without deleting the system and starting over?
 

RF-Burns

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I have the 536 programmed to Motorola. It is catching about 50% of the traffic. I am monitoring on my Motorola VHF Portable the simulcast. Things that are coming over Iredell VHF are sometimes not coming over the 800 Trunked System. I am receiving the system full scale, when I hear it on VHF but not on the 536 I can see the display catching the signal real fast but then dropping it. I'm thinking a setting is wrong maybe the P25 Wait Time, P25 Threshold Mode, or the P25 Threshold Level. Any suggestion

I answered my own question above.
 

KE4ZNR

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I have the 536 programmed to Motorola. It is catching about 50% of the traffic. I am monitoring on my Motorola VHF Portable the simulcast. Things that are coming over Iredell VHF are sometimes not coming over the 800 Trunked System. I am receiving the system full scale, when I hear it on VHF but not on the 536 I can see the display catching the signal real fast but then dropping it. I'm thinking a setting is wrong maybe the P25 Wait Time, P25 Threshold Mode, or the P25 Threshold Level. Any suggestion

I answered my own question above.

Look at the System Hold Time in Sentinel. You probably have it set at "0". Bump it up to 2-4 seconds and see if that does not help.
Marshall KE4ZNR
 

KM4WLV

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Marshall makes a good suggestion. Try that and if you still have trouble getting it dialed in let me know and I'll send you my email address. You can send it to me and I'll be happy take a look at it, or if you would like to send it anyway and let me take a peek I'd be glad to do that too just to give the whole file a once over. Let me know and if so then I'll PM you my email address.
 

RF-Burns

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The hold time improved it and so did switching the bandwidth to FM instead of NFM which Upman had sugguested in another thread, but I am still missing about 25%

Does anybody on here currently have a BCD536 and have it running on the Mooreville system? If so, can you please tell me your hold time and P25 settings? I would like to set my radio exactly like yours.

I am a Ham Radio Operator (Extra) and have been into scanners for over 25 years. I am very familiar with these scanners, that's why this is making me go nuts. I came from a county that used a Harris Phase 2 system and it worked just fine. Thats whay makes me think its just a setting.
 
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WA4MJF

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Are you sure they on the 800 system and not VHF? I know we had Patrol(wo)men here
that use the low band car to station instead of VIPER so "everyone can't hear me".

Ronnie
 

WA4MJF

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I don't mean to be rude but you may want to look in the database before you waste your time commenting on something you know nothing about.

Mooresville Trunking System, Mooresville, North Carolina - Scanner Frequencies

What would the data base tell me about the system beyond the OP said they still had VHF and 800?
They could pick up the VHF mike and by pass the 800 system. He said he was hearing it on VHF and not 800,
so they might not have been on 800. Happens sometimes down here where more than one system in use. Our
older fire apparatus still has VHF and we use that sometimes. More private. No offense taken, BTW.

Ronnie
 

RF-Burns

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The system is simulcasted so no matter if they pick up the VHF mic or not it will be transmitted over 800Mhz

What would the data base tell me about the system beyond the OP said they still had VHF and 800?
They could pick up the VHF mike and by pass the 800 system. He said he was hearing it on VHF and not 800,
so they might not have been on 800. Happens sometimes down here where more than one system in use. Our
older fire apparatus still has VHF and we use that sometimes. More private. No offense taken, BTW.

Ronnie
 

KM4WLV

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Motoman55 is correct. Everything that is transmitted on VHF is retransmitted on 800, and vice versa.

The setup used there in Mooresville is identical to what we use in Rowan County (neighboring county) and have been using for the past 25+ years since our original 800 system came online. On RFD DISP (Rowan County Fire) and EMS DISP they are both simulcast (TX & RX) on VHF 24/7/365.
 

WA4MJF

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Cool, do they have like a cross band rpt from each talk group to the old equivalent VHF freq. Say Dispatch talk Group to VHF Dispatch, TG TAC 1 to VHF Firegrounds 1, etc. or is everything sent on just one VHF channel and you hear a mish mash of the TGs? It would be nice if Wake did that and we could still use all our old VHF Portables etc. and not have to buy expensive new mobiles, etc. Prolly a lot of upfront cost for the county, but saves the departments a heap of money.

Ronnie
 

KM4WLV

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Cool, do they have like a cross band rpt from each talk group to the old equivalent VHF freq. Say Dispatch talk Group to VHF Dispatch, TG TAC 1 to VHF Firegrounds 1, etc. or is everything sent on just one VHF channel and you hear a mish mash of the TGs? It would be nice if Wake did that and we could still use all our old VHF Portables etc. and not have to buy expensive new mobiles, etc. Prolly a lot of upfront cost for the county, but saves the departments a heap of money.

Ronnie

In Rowan here's how we've got it set up........

RFD DISP (Rowan County Fire Disp) on the TRS is linked fulltime to the RFD DISP VHF transmitter. Anything said across the 800 TG is transmitted across our VHF dispatch channel/frequency. Vice versa, anything transmitted using VHF in turn goes across 800. When dispatching a call here in Rowan our comm center (Rowan) actually keys the VHF transmitter for dispatch, not the 800 TG though as I said it's transmitted across 800 because of the patch.

EMS DISP is exactly the same way as RFD DISP so I'll not type that all over again.

Here in Rowan we have 35 OPS talkgroups that are shared between Rowan County FD's, and the City of Salisbury FD. Salisbury uses OPS 1-11, while 12-35 are assigned to the county. We are still licensed for our old VHF fireground channels but they rarely get used at all, but the ability to patch them is there. They aren't linked to the system unless communications does it, or a few of the departments that still have the Motorola RIC's installed from back in 1996 when county fire moved to 800. The old fireground channels (4 of them) are more like a "party line" these days. Just about every department in the county still have VHF's in their apparatus for back up.

In Mooresville AFAIK the last I heard they have no fireground channels linked to the 800 system fulltime. That may have changed since I last did radio work over there.

**My apologies for veering off topic and talking about Rowan. Just wanted to give an idea of how we do it, and how Mooresville has a similar set up.**
 

FireCop

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Motoman 55 you want to make sure you have the system set up for rebanding. I don't have the new Unidens, so I can't speak for them, but the other scanners out there will require the bandplan entries for rebanding. As for patching and simulcasting, only county fire dispatch, EMS/rescue dispatch, and sheriff dispatch are simulcast. To be honest, the Mooresville 800 vs county vhf/uhf simulcast is OK, but the VIPER 800 simulcast of those is horrible. Best of luck in getting things set up! :)
 

RF-Burns

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FireCop,

I got everything all set up correctly now. On the new Uniden Scanners you can set up service types for every channel which I did so for example, Iredell County Fire Dispatch I can have a tag say FIRE DISPATCH. I didn't have Service Tags turned on in the menu so nothing would scan. I finally have it all worked out.

Thanks everyone,

Motoman55
 
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