New Baltimore County P-25 System

[ctripps]

Not copying Baltimore County at all from Harford County on a BCD996T with latest firmware upgrade.

C.

 

[troymail]

Not copying Baltimore County at all from Harford County on a BCD996T with latest firmware upgrade.

C.

Could you yesterday?

 

[doctordave]

Disappointing (but not surprising) mobile performance in the Lutherville area thus far on my 996XT .....very similar to the issues we described when Balt City's system activated. I'll play around with some radio settings & antenna switch-outs, but I'm not particularly optimistic that anything short of a firmware miracle will prove helpful.

From my home in Lutherville, there are some rooms in which stationary reception is fair/good - and others in which it is just horrible. Curiously, my home 996T radios seem to decode better than my GRE 800....exactly the opposite of what I'd have predicted. I'm not especially close to any cell towers, so I don't think we can easily attribute it to front end overload. I have a few 800MHZ verticals & beams that I've not yet needed.....and plan on installing them for some testing very soon. We'll see.

 

[ctripps]

Could you yesterday?

Heard analog trunked system here in Jarretsville no problem. Heard the roll-call switchover on analog at 7AM this morning then switched to digital on the 396T. Nothing but an EMS dispatch or two since then. This is using a discone antenna with/without a preamplifier. Even used a gain antenna on back of set on 2nd floor with window to the south, nothing.

The analog 800MHz system had some serious height on their towers, the new digital system is barely registering signal strength here.

I suspect the terrain also has an impact but considering my discone is almost deaf to it I am not too optimistic.

C

 

[ka3jjz]

Troy during your little tour, did you notice what site was working better in the Woodlawn area? I've yet to hear the new system during the day, but with my hokey schedule, that could easily be that they weren't using it then...was it the South (currently labeled North) site?

best regards..Mike

 

[hpuck49]

Thank you NBVBJ for the help in getting my pro96 firmware updated. After doing the firmware update I still could not get my Pro96 to work.

So I tried the second Pro96 added the 1.4 firmware update downloaded the RR talkgroups into win 96 up loaded into the radio and it worked fine. The difference between the two radios the second one had thVR4 dail fine tuend a couple of years when it poor reception on the analog Baltimore County system.

Went back to the first pro 96 and openned her up (never been done before), went manual on radio and adjusted the VR4 dial, reloaded the talkgroups and now that Pro96 is working on the new system now too

Thanks for the help guys without the input from others I would not have been able to troubleshoot and solve the problem.

 

[troymail]

Troy during your little tour, did you notice what site was working better in the Woodlawn area? I've yet to hear the new system during the day, but with my hokey schedule, that could easily be that they weren't using it then...was it the South (currently labeled North) site?

best regards..Mike

Yup - the South site (currently labelled North in RR) was the site to use until getting north of Shawan Rd (the "Hereford zone")

 

[troymail]

Shift change? Hearing occasional PD units on the analog system -- didn't get the word?

Edit: at least one unit reporting his radio didn't have the new programming -- told to wait until Monday.

 

[2106]

Hello,
New member here. Have been reading the posts. My Radio Shack Pro-2096 was working fine yesterday but today hasn't got a thing on the Balto Co fire or police frequencies. I have line of sight view or the tower in Arcadia (which is north side?). I just did the latest firmware upgrade to 1.4 (thank you for the info), but the radio is still silent. It will get a signal when someone keys up because they didn't manually change over to digital.

I don't understand how most of this works, I though buying a digital p25 capable radio was supposed to be able to get digital and analog systems?

Any ideas or help would be appreciated. Thanks

 

[n3vbj]

Hearing alot of how do I get this radio that wasn't logged on this morning to work? Lots of the med HT's have to be reprogrammed also. I'm hearing in about two weeks P25 will be Active and analog will shut down for good. I think they will mirror the Current analog talk group to the new system when they do. lookd like we program on e more time!

 

[troymail]

Hello,
New member here. Have been reading the posts. My Radio Shack Pro-2096 was working fine yesterday but today hasn't got a thing on the Balto Co fire or police frequencies. I have line of sight view or the tower in Arcadia (which is north side?). I just did the latest firmware upgrade to 1.4 (thank you for the info), but the radio is still silent. It will get a signal when someone keys up because they didn't manually change over to digital.

I don't understand how most of this works, I though buying a digital p25 capable radio was supposed to be able to get digital and analog systems?

Any ideas or help would be appreciated. Thanks

The digital system is using different frequencies for the control channels so they need to be programmed into your radio:

Baltimore County (Project 25) Trunking System, Various, Maryland - Scanner Frequencies

The system (for today apparently) is P25 vs. Motorola so that probably needs to be part of your reprogramming.

From everything heard so far, however, this is only until 0700 tomorrow (Sunday) morning and they are expected to switch back to the old analog system -- unless something has changed.

 

[ka3jjz]

Thank you NBVBJ for the help in getting my pro96 firmware updated. After doing the firmware update I still could not get my Pro96 to work.

So I tried the second Pro96 added the 1.4 firmware update downloaded the RR talkgroups into win 96 up loaded into the radio and it worked fine. The difference between the two radios the second one had thVR4 dail fine tuend a couple of years when it poor reception on the analog Baltimore County system.

Went back to the first pro 96 and openned her up (never been done before), went manual on radio and adjusted the VR4 dial, reloaded the talkgroups and now that Pro96 is working on the new system now too

Thanks for the help guys without the input from others I would not have been able to troubleshoot and solve the problem.

hpuck, what's this about VR4? This might be something we should document in our wiki. More details please - where did you read about this? Perhaps - just perhaps - this might also be helpful for folks trying to listen to the City system as well...

best regards..Mike

 

[hpuck49]

The VR4 dial was on a picture I found earlier today on a search of these forums for tuning a pro96
I did know about it either until we had reception problems with the a P96 we bought on ebay a few years ago.

My radio (original P96 from new) even with the firmware to 1.4 did not get anything until I adjusted the VR4 dial.

There are 3 dials on the left side of the board and they are marked, had to use a magnifying glass to see the markings. I went to manual, and hit the control and had 0% a little slow turn and it jumped to 70+%, pressed scan and it worked.

I guess it is like the old crystal sets or televisions that could be fine tuned

I live in Timonium so I am dead center in the county and picking up both North and South sides

I am no expert, I got lucky , it worked for me

 

[mlevin]

could you post a link to that thread, or post that picture of the VR4 dial, I searched but couldnt find anything.

I am getting the county system slightly worse then I do the city system. I live just inside the city near pikesville.

 

[pratzert]

Here is the post I think is being discussed:

http://forums.radioreference.com/radio-shack-scanners/178696-modifying-rs-pro96-2.html

Post #25.

I wonder what those other adjustments do.

Anyone have a schematic of the Pro-96 who can figure out what all these adjustments do and if the other could help us receive the new systems ?

I wonder if the Pro-106 has one of these adjustment dials ?

It seems the "VR" in VR4 stand for "Variable Resistor" ?

 

[elj1201]

just heard some of you guys just talking about it on 146.67. sorry for eavesdropping

 

[doctordave]

I'm curious if anyone has played around with the P25 settings - - or tried varying antennas to improve performance.....especially for mobile monitoring, where reception seems most troublesome. I'm going to try those measures tomorrow.....although the same efforts surely did not prove very helpful for monitoring the Balt City system. Perhaps our best and only real hope is that the GRE or Uniden wizards will develop some firmware (or hardware) solution soon.

 

[troymail]

We haven't solved the Baltimore City problem yet ---

http://forums.radioreference.com/ma...baltimore-county-p-25-system.html#post1598700

 

[gregsto]

Using BCD996T: I am in Balt City downtown, great reception on what is labeled North in RR database at the moment (854.03750c). Nothing on what is labeled south. There are some new talk groups some of which are EMRC/EMS channels, i.e. 9581.

 

[doctordave]

Gregsto,

Did you do any special tweaking of your radio settings? Are you located in a high-rise or using any sort of an outside antenna? Impressive that you are getting such good reception down there. I popped downtown earlier and got some rare bursts of solid reception on my mobile 996XT (of the south towers, which are mislabeled as "north").....but had horrible reception for the most part.

Dave