Listening to FIRST

[xawen]

I'm trying to listen to the FIRST system and not having a lot of luck. Hoping for some guidance/clarification from someone smarter than me.

I've got a bcd436hp in Edgewater. I've been able to get a little bit of activity off of a couple of the FIRST talk groups, but it's really rare to hear anything. When I do get a hit, it's always from the Tracys Landing or Greenbury Point sites. I've been doing discovery/database scans against those two sites and the Anne Arundel Simulcast. I get a moderate signal from Tracys Landing/Greenbury Point as well as the occasional hit. However I get nothing from the simulcast. I know the 436 doesn't have the best simulcast performance, but my understanding is that it might be garbled audio. In this case I get no indication of any signal at all, and never any hits.

Am I misunderstanding how the simulcast should work? I'm just hoping to hear a bit more activity from FIRST.

Thanks.

 

[maus92]

I monitor the FIRST Anne Arundel simulcast site from Annapolis. Depending upon where you are in Edgewater, Tracys Landing *might* be the closest site to you, and if you live close to the water, Greenbury Point should also be receivable. You might want to program some Eastern Shore sites - it's possible you could receive them. The bad news is those two multicast ASR sites only carry a subset of the traffic that is carried on the AA simulcast site. Based on your description, it really sounds like simulcast distortion / multipath is interfering with your reception of the simulcast site. Garbled or missing transmissions entirely are both symptoms of the issue. You are at a disadvantage monitoring with the 436 - I had to sell mine because it was almost deaf to FIRST, and when it did work, most transmissions were annoyingly garbled. Weirdly, the 536 does ok. Note that I live well within the footprint of the simulcast site, unlike Edgewater which is on the fringe of the simulcast site's coverage area. The two simulcast tower sites that are closest to the Edgewater area are the MNG Armory in Annapolis and one in Crownsville. When the PG simulcast site is completed early next year, tower sites in Bowie and Upper Marlboro will fill in coverage in the area. My recommendation is to purchase a SDS or Unication radio that is designed to receive simulcast digital systems, noting that Anne Arundel County will be transitioning to a similar system by 2022.

 

[tvengr]

At my location in Baltimore County, the 436 and 536 are useless on the FIRST system. The SDS100 and SDS200 are the only scanners that will receive it.

 

[Mr_Boh]

I'm trying to listen to the FIRST system and not having a lot of luck. Hoping for some guidance/clarification from someone smarter than me.

I've got a bcd436hp in Edgewater. I've been able to get a little bit of activity off of a couple of the FIRST talk groups, but it's really rare to hear anything. When I do get a hit, it's always from the Tracys Landing or Greenbury Point sites. I've been doing discovery/database scans against those two sites and the Anne Arundel Simulcast. I get a moderate signal from Tracys Landing/Greenbury Point as well as the occasional hit. However I get nothing from the simulcast. I know the 436 doesn't have the best simulcast performance, but my understanding is that it might be garbled audio. In this case I get no indication of any signal at all, and never any hits.

Am I misunderstanding how the simulcast should work? I'm just hoping to hear a bit more activity from FIRST.

Thanks.

The 436 (speaking from experience) can miss transmissions entirely due to distortion. Good example is the second I leave the borders of PG, their system goes deaf. Usually the best indicator of this is if you are locked on a site you will see the signal strength bounce between nothing and full constantly.

Since you already have money invested in them, there are tricks you can do to help:

• If you are close enough to a site to support it, you can try attenuation so that only the strongest signal is accepted.
• If you are stationary, use a yagi pointed at the desired site.
• Use an intentionally weaker antenna (such as dummy load or even a paperclip).

Best of luck. A lot of us share in your pain.

 

[xawen]

Thanks everyone for the really good info. It's a huge help to get local real world feedback. I could probably do without FIRST, but the fact that AAC is (eventually) going to go over to a similar system would be a problem. I'm going to have to suck it up and give the SDS100 a try. Fortunately I'm still in the exchange window for my 436 (just getting back into the hobby).

 

[jkahn]

I only partially agree with Mr. Boh (do you only have one eye, like your picture on the water tower in Balto?) !

I have a 436 and HP 1 & 2. on the road, I find the 436 more sensitive than the HP 2. I do agree with the PG drop out (I live just 1 beltway exit from the NH Ave exit into Moco and when driving, somewhere between the 2 exits PG disappears.) I do still get them at home on the standard antenna but sporadically.
When driving to the Eastern Shore I monitor FiRST and either radio picks up the Bay Bridge and Baltimore transmissions, several of the old Tri-County that moved to FiRST, unencrypted MSP and the OC talkgroups.

I do not lock out any site channels so it does take longer to scan through them all, but when they sometimes change control channels, I still catch them all.

 

[maus92]

You'll find that the 436 is missing entire transmissions if you compare what it receives next to an actual subscriber, Unication or SDS radio. Well documented behavior.

Another southern Anne Arundel County FIRST reception note. I was at Galesville harbor earlier today, listening to Dorchester Fire via the Talbot simulcast site.