METCAD (Champaign County) NEW 800 MHz ASTRO Trunked System

[Highlander_821]

I live between St Joseph and Sidney and use a Pro-2096 for MDICE, and I actually get pretty good results. Audio is not the greatest, a little "gurgly" sometimes, and every so often I get a burst of digital artifacts. But it gets most of the traffic and it is readable. The radio seems to handle Starcom21 a little better, both in terms of audio and digital bursts.

 

[N9JIG]

Is the bearcat BC296D any good or is it discontinued too?cause i would like to bid on it

The BC296D will hear MDICE as it is currently configured but with rebanding coming eventually there may be some issues then. (Same goes for the BC796D and RS Pro96 and 2096). These will get you started so if you get a good price it might be worth it.

These will also not allow tracking 700 MHz. trunking, already used by some StarCom21 sites and likely to be used on others.

I would save up and get one of the current radios:

Uniden BCD396T or BCD996T
GRE PSR500 or PSR600
Radio Shack Pro 107/196 (coming soon, essentially reworked GRE's)

All of these will work with rebanding and 700 MHz.

 

[n8dhw]

I believe you meant Pro-106 not 196 for the new Radio Shack handheld scanner coming out. Unless Radio Shack changed the model number on it since it received type acceptance back in late July.

 

[greeneyes965]

Hi,everyone on here i just won the uniden bcd396t and i cant wait to get it

 

[greeneyes965]

Now i have a bcd396t,pro92,pro35 and a pro79

 

[cubn]

I find the BCD396T works very well for MDICE. If you use the Butel ARC396T software, I can send you .mem files for MDICE and other area systems/frequencies.

 

[greeneyes965]

Ok kool that suonds good thank you cubn

 

[greeneyes965]

I just won a bcd396t scanner

 

[N9JIG]

I believe you meant Pro-106 not 196 for the new Radio Shack handheld scanner coming out. Unless Radio Shack changed the model number on it since it received type acceptance back in late July.

I meant to say Pro106/197, the 197 is the mobile.

 

[greeneyes965]

I would like to know why champaign county changed to digital because everytime i see a police stop a car i get mad cause i dont know whats going on like when i used too use my pro92 scanner

 

[greeneyes965]

does anyone know what this frequency is 868.8250?

 

[cubn]

does anyone know what this frequency is 868.8250?

That is the control channel frequency currently being used for the MDICE system.

 

[Highlander_821]

I'm not sure if they have been tweaking the MDICE system or not, but it seems to me that my Pro-2096 is really picking up the system well in the last 3 to 4 weeks. Dropouts and digital artifacts are getting pretty uncommon now, maybe one in every 100 or so transmissions.

 

[KC8RFE]

I know with the 396 V3 has helped out a lot once you get it tweaked. It's still very spotty in a lot of Rantoul though. But it has gotten better. There's still room for improvement up here.

 

[chet1]

I noticed that someone recomended the GRE PSR 500/600. I bought one and it won't decode MDICE system which is apparently a CQPSK simucast. They took my radio back and sent me a new one but won't pick up anything except a chopped word every 15 minutes. They said my old radio bench tested with no problems and they said they had done everything they can in firmware to optimize the DSP for CQPSK. I live in Rantoul and copy about 90% of their ttraffic on a Pro 96.

 

[Highlander_821]

That's good to know about the GRE. I was thinking about getting a 600.

 

[n8dhw]

I noticed that someone recomended the GRE PSR 500/600. I bought one and it won't decode MDICE system which is apparently a CQPSK simucast. They took my radio back and sent me a new one but won't pick up anything except a chopped word every 15 minutes. They said my old radio bench tested with no problems and they said they had done everything they can in firmware to optimize the DSP for CQPSK. I live in Rantoul and copy about 90% of their ttraffic on a Pro 96.

I know several people who own PSR-500's and have had good results with it monitoring the Hamilton County/Cincinnati Public Safety System here in Ohio better than the Pro-96. And it is also a CQPSK simulcast system. It's also possible that your 500 was getting overloaded with near by strong signals. They have very hot recievers and it don't take much to overload them. Just a thought.

 

[cubn]

Interesting topic…I was wondering if the GRE units would decode MDICE well or not.

I too have noticed how weak the signal is in Rantoul. I was at the Rantoul football game Friday and sitting at the top of the bleachers, my 396 with stubby 800 mhz antenna couldn’t even get the scanner to recognize the MDICE control channel! I haven’t heard the Rantoul officers complain about dropouts or poor signals though. Also, in the past, the scanner could barely pick up MDICE in Fisher and couldn’t get the signal at all in Penfield.

In Champaign-Urbana, I find that the 396 does a good job of decoding MDICE. Sitting right next to the Pro96, the 396 decodes just find while the Pro96 sounds garbled on 90% of the transmissions making it unusable. The Pro96 does just fine on Starcom21 however. When I was first listening to MDICE, the 396 would break up a lot while trying to decode but now it thankfully doesn’t.

 

[Highlander_821]

I should mention that I am about a mile south of St Joseph.

 

[gabbott]

From looking at the GRE web site, neither the 500 or 600 will decode Motorola Astro, which both MDICE and StarCom21 are.

As a side note, MDICE will never sound as crisp as StarCom21 on a scanner due to the nature of simulcast and the receiver likely 'hearing' more than one signal. Highland 821 is in a good position being about 4 miles from one of the simulcast sites and likely getting a pretty good signal.