New Baltimore County P-25 System

[tlm300]

Any Tweaks for GRECOM PSR-600?

I live in the Lutherville area. I've given up on trying to receive the Baltimore County P25 system on my Uniden BCD996XT, and I am trying the GRECOM PSR-600.

I am using Butel ARC500 Pro software. Does anyone have any suggestions for tweaking the trunk system settings, or should I just use the defaults?

Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[ka3jjz]

Read the first 2 articles contained here (anything blue is a link)...the 2nd one has specific suggestions as to how to proceed. You may want to investigate updating your 996XT firmware, as noted in the article...the first one will give you some background as to why you're having so many problems

Baltimore County P25 system - the RR Wiki

You may find, as several of us have, that you may need to run the attenuator when receiving this system. If you are receiving signals from more than one tower at a time, that's going to cause you issues, as also described in the article above

I don't have a GRE scanner, so I'll let those that do chime in here...

HTH...Mike

 

[dcr_inc]

You definitely need to have the latest DSP code on board.. Ver 2.1 is the current version.. Have you ever updated the DSP?..

If your not sure how to do it.. Check out Harford Fire Blog on FB.. Theres a guy on there who does Custom Scanner Programming... He can do the update for you..

I have a 500 and several 600's that work fine in Baltimore County..

Good Luck

 

[ginky4]

I live in the Lutherville area. I've given up on trying to receive the Baltimore County P25 system on my Uniden BCD996XT

I own a BCD396XT and have programmed several of those for customers along with firmware updates. I just programmed a BCD996XT for a customer in the Towson area and they were raving to me how good it worked. Are you sure you programmed it correctly?

You should be getting your signal from the Towson Fire Station 1 tower. The new LSM update coming out should correct the garbled audio you hear once in a while since Baltimore County is operating in a dual zone using simulcasting.

 

[dcr_inc]

Found another Tip... I programmed a Pro197 for a customer and the audio would drop in and out.. I updated the dsp and it helped by I wasn't happy so I programmed the AGC OFF on the Baltimore County and Baltimore City systems..No garble from Rosedale all the way up into Harford county along Rt.1.. I programmed my personal Pro2096 the same way and I can now receive Balto Co way up into Harford County and 100% in PA on the outside antenna..South system is what I am listening to.. North works the same now as well.

 

[pratzert]

Found another Tip... I programmed a Pro197 for a customer and the audio would drop in and out.. I updated the dsp and it helped by I wasn't happy so I programmed the AGC OFF on the Baltimore County and Baltimore City systems..No garble from Rosedale all the way up into Harford county along Rt.1.. I programmed my personal Pro2096 the same way and I can now receive Balto Co way up into Harford County and 100% in PA on the outside antenna..South system is what I am listening to.. North works the same now as well.

dcr_inc.

Thanks for the tip, I'll give it a try on my 106 and report back on the results.

 

[2106]

Thanks,

I will also try AGC off. It's been on for a year since I got a new Pro-197 and most times is OK but sometimes will get alot of garble and the transmission cuts completely in and out. I just updated the internal radio software and am trying to get carroll county working again since I understand they rebanded last week. No luck yet.

 

[pratzert]

dcr_inc.

Thanks for the tip, I'll give it a try on my 106 and report back on the results.

I went ahead and turned OFF AGC on my Pro106. I have to say, the jury is still out on whether it has improved the Simulcast reception or not.

One thing I have noticed is the volume of some tranhsmission seems to be much louder and suffers from overdrive problems occassionally.

But, in some cases, the audio seems to be more understandable with AGC off.

I think I may have to get TWO 106's side by side... one with AGC turned on, and the other turned Off to really get a true comparison.

I had always thought that AGC dealt with the Audio portion and didn't realize it dealt with the actual signal reception.

 

[ThePhotoGuy]

Was listening to Baltimore County today. A talkgroups that aren't in the database. Any information on what these talkgroups are?

9401
9402
9627 ENC
9631 ENC
9684
9687
9693 DPW?

 

[riveter]

Interestingly I just got a snippet of whatever was on 9693 simulcast on FiRST in my recordings.

Plus... Interestingly, seems like 9403 (which I just picked up now that I'm sniffing) seems to be a patch of various FD incidents around the county. 9402 was carrying something PD side in PCT 12 that had a 10-3 for a few. RIDs popping up are not individual unit RIDs- there seems to be a generic mobile RID pops up for any portable/mobile that keys up.

9401 was carrying something that I didn't even recognize.

 

[GordieJ]

Balt County QRT/HNT Talkgroups

Before Baltimore County went digital, I listened to HNT and the Quick Response Team often. Now, I can only find the talkgroup for HNT (supplied by RadioReference database). What is the talkgroup for listening to the swat team while on scene? thanks.

 

[KC2ZHY]

Before Baltimore County went digital, I listened to HNT and the Quick Response Team often. Now, I can only find the talkgroup for HNT (supplied by RadioReference database). What is the talkgroup for listening to the swat team while on scene? thanks.

Perhaps you're looking for the "BCPD CIDSWAT" talkgroup?

 

[vividvisions]

Before Baltimore County went digital, I listened to HNT and the Quick Response Team often. Now, I can only find the talkgroup for HNT (supplied by RadioReference database). What is the talkgroup for listening to the swat team while on scene? thanks.

Balt county uses an encrypted channel for SWAT / Negotiations. (not narcotics warrants etc, but barricaded subjects) I just submitted it to the database today.

 

[forgottenalarm]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 4.1.2; en-us; SPH-L710 Build/JZO54K) AppleWebKit/534.30 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/534.30)

Good morning everyone! I'm back at it and got alot further on my bcd996xt. But still aren't pulling anything in on a p25 standard system using freescan. I installed all the control/alternate frequencies for south. Do I need to program in the talkgroups or apco bandplan?

 

[ka3jjz]

If you're using ID Search mode you don't really need any talkgroups...

And if experience is any guide with my 396T, depending on where you are, turn your attenuator on for that system. Hearing more than one tower at a time is a major pain, because it does cause distortion issues.

You may need to play around with the levels and gain to make it work better (note that I said better, not necessarily the best...)

Mike

 

[forgottenalarm]

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Sorry for the late reply. Thanks! I built a new antenna and placed it off off the roofline on my back porch. It seemed to help a little bit as well.

 

[Holshey]

Help! I'm a girl and I can't figure this out... How can I program my GRE PSR-500 portable for the new system in Baltimore County? I paid to have my scanner programmed years ago and now I have nothing... Any help would be greatly appreciated. I just want Baltimore County police, specifically the White Marsh and Parkville precincts.

 

[Spleen]

I'm still laughing....haven't heard the girl excuse for years...
But anyway, I'm assuming you don't have a programming cable?

Help! I'm a girl and I can't figure this out... How can I program my GRE PSR-500 portable for the new system in Baltimore County? I paid to have my scanner programmed years ago and now I have nothing... Any help would be greatly appreciated. I just want Baltimore County police, specifically the White Marsh and Parkville precincts.

 

[Holshey]

Believe it or not, I do have the cable and got as far as plugging it into the USB and going to my ARC software, where I could see I needed to download the Trunking channels. I can't figure out what to do from there and how to find them on my actual scanner...

 

[Spleen]

I'll PM you...

Believe it or not, I do have the cable and got as far as plugging it into the USB and going to my ARC software, where I could see I needed to download the Trunking channels. I can't figure out what to do from there and how to find them on my actual scanner...