Middlesex County Monitoring? Looking for some local knowledge

[rrpilot]

I just recently moved to the Spotswood area, after adding the Middlesex County Municipal systems and Troop C on my BDC-436 it seems that all I ever hear is the State Police....I know Spotswood is encrypted, are most of the PD's around here encrypted or am I doing something wrong?
Any advice would be welcome, I'm from NY and not very familiar with how NJ organizes it's radios.....

 

[kd2pm]

You definitely should be hearing alot more on the Middlesex Co trunked system. Sayreville, South Amboy and others come in fine where I live I pick them up from the Monroe tower(s) which should also be where you would probably get your best signal. I also have my NJICS and Middlesex county in separate favorite lists. Make sure that the 436 has all the service types checked. I will assume you used sentinel to load up the scanner from the RRDB.

 

[X9009X]

Spotswood is using the East Brunswick Public Safety TRS. A vast majority of the County Law Enforcement Community is encrypted. The exceptions being Jamesburg and Milltown. The system is built with outstanding coverage in building and will only get better when the two new Edison sites go live in September.

 

[Whiskey3JMC]

Simulcast Distortion - The RadioReference Wiki

wiki.radioreference.com

Could be the issue at hand. You'd be much better off using an SDS100 to monitor this & other simulcast systems. Additionally any talkgroup ID'ed as Mode "TE" here is fully encrypted

 

[rr60]

Not local to Spotswood but do hear activity. Fire pages are what is in the RR database.

The County P25 TRS has a great signal. If you are getting the CC signal bar you should get something. @kd2pm had suggestions to check x36 settings are a must. I will add one. Squelch. When on TRS I use 0 or 1 at most. My x36’s handle P25 LSM poorly and I use the G5 which has excellent decode performance.

155.610

KED697

BM

167.9 PL

Spots Fire

Fire Dispatch

FMN

Fire Dispatch

 

[rrpilot]

I can literally see the police station almost from my window I can see the antennas Thank you for the suggestions we'll check the settings when I get home later today

 

[rrpilot]

This is what it shows, system type "Conventional" and no option to change it.....ugh, I really need to learn this radio better

 

[rr60]

YouTube has some great tutorials. I have not used that SW in a long time.
Try on the left columns clicking on the + Middlesex. That should display the systems in the County. You need the East Brunswick System and perhaps Middlesex TRS. YT likely
to be the best learning pathway.

Mouse says…..

 

[APX8000]

Why don't you try downloading the system as a separate favorite list (which has the correct info) and then you can customize it.

 

[rrpilot]

Lots of good advice, I really appreciate it, gonna try some of your suggestions when I get some free time from the railroad and report back...

 

[kd2pm]

This is what it shows, system type "Conventional" and no option to change it.....ugh, I really need to learn this radio betterView attachment 126852

There is a difference between middlesex conventional which has the conventional channels for certain municipalities and then there is middlesex TRS or county P25. Looks like you have the conventional list downloaded but I would need to see which departments you decided to import so hard to say how close or far you are from them.

 

[mdsxfire]

there are a few PDs that are in the clear on Middlesex TRS but most are E, all FD that are on the system are in the clear and with the edison move, metuchen partial move there is a lot of FD traffic to monitor, dunellen was assigned TGs on the county system so there will be more to listen to in the future.
as said above with that scanner u will more than likely miss a lot of traffic on this system and NJICS

 

[rrpilot]

What makes the SDS-100 so superior to the 436 in receiving Simulcast?

 

[a417]

What makes the SDS-100 so superior to the 436 in receiving Simulcast?

It's an IQ based reciever, they are vastly superior as they were designed to deal with Simulcast. The 436 was not.

Here's a good quick explanation.

 

[mdsxfire]

sds-100 is the way if u are monitoring multiple TRS and don’t want to spend a fortune, i run 3 unication G5 and absolutely love them, 1 is my actual pager for my dept then the other 1 monitor 2 other TRS. when we first went to the county TRS i bought a 436 and thought the radio system was down since i couldn’t even get a CC lock, after that i dove down the LSM rabbit hole and learned a great deal here.