If I was closer to Mobile I would monitor the control channel and see which talkgroups pop up on the Mobile simulcast, but I'm just far enough away where I can't get any reliable decoding. My bet is they're all on the system but encrypted so no one's figured out which talkgroups are theirs. Or maybe some of the smaller towns north of Prichard are all on one talkgroup and handled by a common dispatcher, like Silverhill, Summerdale and Elberta are in Baldwin County.
As for the small town stuff north of us, I've had mixed luck (with a discone about 35 feet up) but during the evenings when conditions were better, I heard a little from Washington, Conecuh, Clarke and Monroe counties down here in the Foley area, so it may be possible with a decent antenna in Mobile to get some traffic. I never did hear all that much, though, and oftentimes it was low audio deep in static so I couldn't make out what was going on. But it was interesting nonetheless.
The one area I've had basically zero luck with is Escambia County and their VHF DMR systems. I think I got a little traffic from one of the ESCO PD DMR channels (east or west?) but nothing from the Rural Fire DMR network at all. The only semi-regular traffic I could get from Escambia AL was the Georgia-Pacific NXDN system. And it was a great thing to check because if it was in, then the S&P NXDN system that serves the wiregrass region would also be in and I could usually hear quite a lot from them, like Andalusia PD and some of the smaller towns like Geneva.
I've got a short in the coax to my discone and no easy way to get it down off the pole and get it fixed, so it's out of commission for the time being.
