After being away from the hobby for over a decade due to life events (birth of kids, divorce, etc) I am looking to get back in.
I'm in Arlington and from what I've read on here the landscape has vastly changed - rebanding, narrow banding, digital changeover, ENCRYPTION!
Looks like we can only listen to FD/EMS now.
What radio(s) have the best success at listening to Arlington and Ft Worth (is simulcast an issue on these systems?) and what about TxDOT, TX DPS, Feds, Railroad (is NXDN needed now around here)?
Not looking to start a flame war (Uniden vs Whistler, Ford vs Chevy, etc), just what works best for this area.
I was saddened to read that Paul Opitz had passed. I met him at a Starbucks in Arlington many years ago when the BC246T was coming out. A tragic loss...
Thank you for any and all input,
-Scott
Hi Scott
Welcome to the RadioReference & the Texas Forum.
Things have indeed changed over the past few years, Most of the various cities in the DFW Metro area are using various trunked systems. Dallas is not, so far, but will be moving to a new system, along with Dallas County, in the not too distant future.
In
Tarrant County, just about all of the various cities and agencies, with few exceptions, have moved to some part of
FWRRS. Fort Worth, Tarrant County, and the majority of the smaller cities are using what is referred to as Layer 1 & Layer 2. There is a separate layer for the Northeast Tarrant County cities (Bedford, Euless, Grapevine, and several more). Arlington, Grand Prairie, as well as Mansfield, have their own individual layers. Hurst has their own separate system. With the exception of Mansfield, all of the other Tarrant County layers in FWRRS are simulcast.
Also using FWRRS, there are separate layers for Irving (in Dallas County), for Johnson County, and Ellis County.
The simulcast layers of FWRRS (Layers 1 & 2 in particular) have been problematic for monitoring. Simulcast can result in either not being able to hear the radio traffic, or having much of garbled and unintelligible. It can be extremely location specific, and at times, moving a scanner a few feet in one direction or another makes a difference of being able to receive the system, or completely losing it. More on Simulcast is in the Wiki.
Simulcast digital distortion - The RadioReference Wiki
Arlington PD is fully encrypted, are are the majority of FWPD talkgroups, including dispatch channels. Fort Worth Fire, Tarrant County agencies, and most of the smaller cities, are not encrypted. Look at FWRRS in the
database. In the Mode column of the talkgroups, if you see an
E, that TGID is encrypted at all times. A lower case
e means that encryption is used part of the time.
A few weeks ago, when we had a small round of scattered icy weather, I tried monitoring TxDOT, without much success. There was a thread on that.
https://forums.radioreference.com/threads/txdot-winter-weather-prep.419399/
TX DPS is using their MDTs more, reducing radio traffic substantially. The units working Parker County are still using Vhf more than the rest. You may be able to pick up the mobile repeater in Aledo. That group also has a TGID on FWRRS. I keep the DPS channels in my scanners, but rarely hear much activity.
Many of the Fed channels are encrypted. I don't normally have their frequencies active to be scanned.
For the most part, railroad comms in this area are still using Vhf NFM, While they, eventually, are supposed to convert to NXDN, the only rail NXDN around the metro area is within the large intermodal yards, like the BNSF facility near Alliance. There are two NXDN public safety systems in Dallas County.
SWRCC, which covers Cedar Hill, Desoto, & Duncanville, and Lancaster has their own
system. There is on DMR public safety trunked system, Highland Park in Dallas County. However, there a number of business users of DMR. One I monitor is the
Megahertz system. Both JPS Hospital in Fort Worth, and Parkland in Dallas, use this. The user that I monitor more on the system is CareFlite, which has six medevac copters stationed around north Texas.
You are almost certain to encounter simulcast issues if trying to monitor FWRRS layers 1 & 2. Possibly Arlington as well. The only true scanners designed to deal with simulcast are Uniden's SDS100 & SDS200. I've been in many parts of the metro area, where others have reported problems from simulcast. My SDS100 works well, with no issues. Other than the SDS series scanners, if simulcast is an issue, your other options would include one of the Unication pagers, or this
device from Blue Tail Technologies. See this
thread for more on Blue Tail. Neither the Unication pager and Blue Tail receiver are true scanners. You're limited to one system at a time on the pager, with a small number of talkgroups; and the Blue Tail covers only P25 & DMR systems, so there will be a lot that neither device can cover. See this
comparison between an SDS scanner and a Unication pager.
The SDS series scanners are more expensive than any of the other options, but they are true scanners. Other scanners that can cover the local systems, but can have problems with simulcast, would include Uniden's 436HP/536HP as well as the 325P2 or 996P2. In the Whistler lineup, their current models the TRX-1 and TRX-2 cover P25 Phase I & Phase II, and can also receive DMR & NXDN transmissions. They don't track those system types, but if the system is not extremely busy, you might find them satisfactorily, though they also have simulcast issues. All of the Uniden scanners, including the SDS series, require a paid upgrade to receive DMR or NXDN, but do trunk track the systems.
If you want to try a scanner other than the SDS100 or SDS200, purchase it from someone that does not penalize you heavily for returning it. If you are very lucky (location wise), one of the other scanners might work. If not, and you can return it with no, or a very low, restock fee, then you could instead buy one of the SDS scanners.
You do have one other option, if you only want to listen at home, and can use your PC. Purchase one or two of the SDR dongles, and use downloaded software to monitor. That is not a 'portable' solution, but does work. (I'm not using these, so I would defer to someone else if you want more information. See this
forum for discussions of how these work.)
