New BCD396XT user help please

[fgregory]

Hello,

First thanks in advance for any help given. I read in the "getting started for new users" forum that it is best to post your new user questions in your region forum first. I did that but with not much activity I thought it would be OK to post here. I just got a BCD 396XT scanner and plan on getting a HAM license over the next couple months.

I am a new user. I did research and bought the Uniden BCD398XT, Easy to read manual, 6 months of Radio Reference, and ARCXT-Pro. I started with FreeScan but after two days went strait to ARCXT for the better UI. After much reading in the RR forums and Easy to read manual I took a stab at setting up my new system.

I have a couple questions that I would appreciate help on with regard to the way I setup the systems using ARCXT and understanding quick keys. I am attaching three pictures showing my setup.

PROCESS:
1. First on the attachment called "site list" from the RR database file I downloaded, I choose the sites in the counties in Colorado I wanted to listen to.
2. Then in the attachment called "System Import" I choose those sites in the ARCXT software import system window on the left and the corresponding talk groups on the right side of the import system window.
3. Finally I end up with a schema for my systems shown in the attachment called "ArcXT Systems." My thought was to have each county setup with talk groups for the different police agencies, fire agencies, and one for other.

QUESTIONS:
1. Am I close at all? Is this a good process and schema for systems?
2. I dont understand on the system import window how there is every talk group in the right for the entire state that I can choose from even when I have only choose one county on the left.
3. Finally, my thought was that I could have a quick key for each county to turn on each county individually, and each talk group within that county have a quick key. Thinking was that if I wanted to listen to police agencies in three counties I can do that. Likewise if I only wanted to listen to fire in two counties I can do that. What is the best way to arrange quick keys for best functionality?

Thanks again everyone and I hope I haven't asked too many questions right off the bat. Any help is much appreciated and thanks for this great resource.

 

[kbehning]

Welcome to the forum. You've obviously come along way in your studies, quickly, so there's no question you'll grasp it with just a little more study. Also, congrats on pursuing your ham license. Its a great capability to have and there are so many different "departments" of the hobby that there is literally something for everyone. (like public service, emergency management, or just plain experimenting with radio equipment and building things, to just visiting with other hams (ragchewing)).

What you're seeing is an artifact of the way that radioreference stores its data for systems.

The Colorado DTRS P25 System, is made up of a large group of linked towers (or sites, as they're called). You've got to think of the whole system in terms of a blanket of coverage area that routes communications from users of a certain talkgroup id to other users of that same talkgroup, regardless if they're under the same site tower or not.

So you've got all these user groups with their talkgroup id's. Their radios will operate under their closest tower site to gain access to the system to pass and receive their traffic. So the reason that they have all the talkgroups lumped in there is because they could all be received from all sites IF there is a radio under that tower that needs to receive that talkgroup's messages. Make sense?

On your radio there are System Quick Keys (SQK) and Group Quick Keys (GQK). I'll explain them a bit further later. On these multiple Site systems, I like to assign a System Quick Key to the individual Sites (towers) that I'll be monitoring since then I can control which Site, or tower I listen to by knowing which one is closest (and therefore likely clearest signal). Using a System Quick Key is like turning a bank on or off in the older style scanners, if you haven't used bank type scanners, don't worry about it. Just think of it as you're telling the radio which tower (site) within the Colorado DTRS P25 system to listen to.

So now with that System Quick Key (lets say it's System Quick Key #5) you've told the scanner to monitor a specific tower. Now you want to tell the radio which talkgroup id's you want to hear. You don't have to listen to every transmission that comes over the tower, you can choose which groups you want to hear. I do this with Group Quick Keys.

Lets say there are some police, fire, and EMS agencies you want to monitor, say from Denver or something (I don't know if they're on this system, just making an example). I would make a group of Denver Police talkgroups, another group of Denver Fire Dept talkgroups, and a third group of Denver EMS talkgroups. You can then assign a Group Quick Key to each of those 3 groups. Lets say Denver police is GQK 1, Fire is GQK 2 and EMS is GQK 3. So remember we have System Quick Key 5 enabled, and under that Site, we can turn on and off these Group Quick Keys to further slice and dice the traffic to be just what we want to hear. While monitoring the site for SQK 5, we can turn GQK 1 on, and GQK 2 and 3 off if we don't want to be bothered with Fire and EMS calls. See how it works? You can turn off GQK 1 and turn on GQK 3 if you just want to hear the EMS calls and nothing else. Let me caveat these statement by saying that the radio needs to be in ID Scan mode for it to pay attention to these groups. If you put the radio in ID Search mode, it will just play through any traffic that is not locked out (look lock out up in the easier to read manual if you're not familiar with it).

There are so many different ways to enable and disable traffic that it can be daunting to understand how it all comes together. The XT scanners are very powerful in this regard and it just takes time playing with them to understand how all the layers play together to rule in and rule out which traffic on the system you actually hear. I think of them as a series of clear transparency sheets stacked up, Each contribuiting its inclusion or exclusion of traffic to the final product which you hear.

OK, back to the SQK and GQK setup. Remember how we setup SQK 5 to monitor a specific site and we had 3 groups setup each with their own GQK so we can turn them on and off. Lets say we know that when we go to a friend's house in another town, there's another Site there that we can monitor, so we add that Site from the database into the programmer software and assign it SQK 6. Now we can tell the scanner to monitor the first site or the second site with SQK 5 and 6. Under each SQK we can control which GQK's are turned on or off.

Note that the way that ARC-XT imports groups into your software might not be the way you leave them. Since you only get 10 Group Quick Keys per system, you may need to bunch agencies together, like having police, fire and EMS all on their own GQK's and then putting the dog catcher, garbage collection and water dept all on a shared GQK since its all "similar" traffic, likely to be turned on and off together. This means you may need to cut and past talkgroup ID lists into specific Group lists. It doesn't have to stay the way that it dumps out of the radio reference database is all I'm saying here. Make it the way that works for you with your available 10 GQK's per System.

The way this is all set up in the ARC-XT SW, you Create a System, That would be at the Colorado DTRS level. In that system you would define the Sites that you want to be able to tune in to. Assign each Site a SQK (you can assign up to 100). Your Groups will be a common set of talkgroup id's and names that apply to all the sites above it. Assign GQK's to your groups (you can assign up to 10) so that you can turn on and off chunks of traffic.

Then you'd setup another System file for a system that's different than the Colorado DTRS system, maybe it would be a family of conventional, non trunked frequencies. Another System File could be a trunked radio system used by taxi's or security companies or something.

You'll get the feel on how to organize your stuff at the System and Group level for conventional non trunked systems, and at the System, Site and Group level for Trunked systems. Programming a 396XT or 996XT or 15X scanner just the way you want it in order to receive just what you want and to be able to turn individual chunks on and off is really an exercise in systems engineering.

Also, make a spreadsheet that lists what your system quck keys are and which Sites/Systems they support so you can refer to it until it's memorized. Try to develop an approach that can work with multiple scanners (you'll get more) so they can use the same SQK and GQK schemas.

You're certainly on the right track though based on the questions you're asking. I remember when I was there back in Nov 2011 when I upgraded to my first DMA scanner where you can make it basically any setup you want.

 

[fgregory]

Wow thanks so much for putting in this amount of effort to help me out. I wish there was something I could reciprocate. I will read over this today and try to absorb as much as possible. I just wanted to say thanks as quick as I could because this is awesome.

 

[fgregory]

Couple follow up questions

First, thanks for the advice on the IDScan mode. I had not really covered that yet and would never have thought about it. Couple follow up questions for you.

So if I drive from Colorado Springs to Boulder on a regular basis and I wanted to ensure as I traveled through each County that I had good reception and didn't miss any conversation, I would program each site (tower) in that County on the Colorado DTRS System. I would then assign each site in each County a different SQK and groups of talk groupIDs a GQK. Additionally, because I only get 10 GQK's / system I could assign all local police in all the Counties a single GQK and all local fire departments in all those counties one single GQK using only two group quick keys leaving eight for other assignments.

Is this Correct?

In this arrangement my new schema would look more like the following and is way different than I started out in my first post.

Colorado DTRS P25 system (System Definition)
SITES (all sites in all the counties I want to listen)
Cnty1 Site1 (SQK1)
Cnty1 Site2 (SQK2)
Cnty2 Site1 (SQK3)
Cnty2 Site2 (SQK4)
Cnty3 Site1 (SQK5)
Cnty3 Site2 (SQK6)

TALK GROUPS (All talk groups in all counties I want to listen to in the system)
Cnty1 Police (GQK1)
Cnty2 Police (GQK1)
Cnty1 Fire (GQK2)
Cnty 2 Fire (GQK2)

Another assumption I was making based on what I read was that in the way I need to program the sites with regard to closest sites and control channels. My understanding was that if my County had two sites and I turned on the site quick key closest to my house, if every police car was closer to the other tower across town, I would not hear any police traffic because there was no car in they talk group close to my tower because no control channel was activated through my tower. If on the other hand I could still listen to my tower even though the conversation is closer to the distant tower, this tells me I can turn off the other towers. This assumption explains why I felt I needed every site in a county activated.

Dont think my understanding here is correct so any clarification would be much appreciated.

Finally a question about control channels. I read in the easy to read manual that I only need to download the control channels to the scanner and the talk groups I want to listen to. From there the scanner will get the freqs dynamically from the control channels so no need to program individual freqs. However, when I choose the sites and groups in ArcXT Pro and program the scanner, what I see in ARC XT Pro software if I select a site and view the trunk freqs is the channel freqs and no control channels.

Am I seeing this correctly, do I need to manually add the control freqs to the trunk tab of a selected site in the software?

Thanks again for taking the time to walk me through this. This is incredibly thoughtful and shows what a fantastic resource this really is.

Best Regards

 

[kbehning]

No problem, glad to help. I'll see if this works, I'll respond in the quoted text below in bold:

First, thanks for the advice on the IDScan mode. I had not really covered that yet and would never have thought about it. Couple follow up questions for you.

So if I drive from Colorado Springs to Boulder on a regular basis and I wanted to ensure as I traveled through each County that I had good reception and didn't miss any conversation, I would program each site (tower) in that County on the Colorado DTRS System. I would then assign each site in each County a different SQK and groups of talk groupIDs a GQK. Additionally, because I only get 10 GQK's / system I could assign all local police in all the Counties a single GQK and all local fire departments in all those counties one single GQK using only two group quick keys leaving eight for other assignments.

Is this Correct?

KB: Yes, correct

In this arrangement my new schema would look more like the following and is way different than I started out in my first post.

Colorado DTRS P25 system (System Definition)
SITES (all sites in all the counties I want to listen)
Cnty1 Site1 (SQK1)
Cnty1 Site2 (SQK2)
Cnty2 Site1 (SQK3)
Cnty2 Site2 (SQK4)
Cnty3 Site1 (SQK5)
Cnty3 Site2 (SQK6)

TALK GROUPS (All talk groups in all counties I want to listen to in the system)
Cnty1 Police (GQK1)
Cnty2 Police (GQK1)
Cnty1 Fire (GQK2)
Cnty 2 Fire (GQK2)

KB: I think this is exactly what you should do (Its the way I lay my 396/996 out)

Another assumption I was making based on what I read was that in the way I need to program the sites with regard to closest sites and control channels. My understanding was that if my County had two sites and I turned on the site quick key closest to my house, if every police car was closer to the other tower across town, I would not hear any police traffic because there was no car in they talk group close to my tower because no control channel was activated through my tower. If on the other hand I could still listen to my tower even though the conversation is closer to the distant tower, this tells me I can turn off the other towers. This assumption explains why I felt I needed every site in a county activated.

Dont think my understanding here is correct so any clarification would be much appreciated.

KB: It will really depend on how your Colorado system routes traffic through the system. I'd say program more Sites than you think you'll need because then you can just test it and see how the traffic is being shared across the sites and listen to whichever one suits your needs. With radio towers on mountain-tops out there, its entirely possible that a distant site may be a better bet for you OR even for a deputy or police cruiser to use. You should just program them up and see what comes across each site. That will be part of the fun of listening is making sure you know you're getting all the traffic you should be.

Finally a question about control channels. I read in the easy to read manual that I only need to download the control channels to the scanner and the talk groups I want to listen to. From there the scanner will get the freqs dynamically from the control channels so no need to program individual freqs. However, when I choose the sites and groups in ArcXT Pro and program the scanner, what I see in ARC XT Pro software if I select a site and view the trunk freqs is the channel freqs and no control channels.

Am I seeing this correctly, do I need to manually add the control freqs to the trunk tab of a selected site in the software?

KB: If you look at the frequency list for they Colorado system on radioreference for a given site, the primary and alternate control channels are colored red and blue. Other general voice channels would be black. Now I haven't actually downloaded systems that much with ARC-XT from radioreference in the automated way, but from what I remember ARC-XT should be pulling down every frequency listed for the particular sites. The frequencies tab for each site in ARC-XT would be where these frequencies should be listed, so it seems like you're looking in the right place. I can't explain and am not familiar with what you're describing though. I'd start by making sure that all of the system frequencies are listed in the frequency tab, and I'd check the Control Channel Only option on the General tab for each site. This will be your superset of configuration. If that tracks the sites, then you can consider removing the "black, non control channel frequencies" from the frequencies tab. It's been said that only loading the control channels helps the Uniden scanners on P25 Trunked systems, which this Colorado system is. Further, its been said that setting the squelch to 0 also helps. I don't have personal experience with that so I can't advise. Only reporting what others have said. Also note that you're dealing with a P25 Trunked system here, and in case you haven't heard yet, those systems are not necesarily cut and dried monitoring with the Uniden scanners (or GRE scanners for that matter). You'll probably have to play with the P25 mode and level settings to have a chance at getting good audio. [If your scanner has the 1.10 or 1.11 firmware, you can adjust these settings. Power on the scanner while holding down the "hold" button. Then under settings you will see P25 Adjust Mode and P25 Adjust Level. Check out the easier to read manual on those settings.] Just beware that there are people who are unable to get good copy on their local P25 system regardless of how they do their P25 audio adjust. So if you're not getting good copy, you might be doing everything right and its just a characteristic of your colorado system that might not be allowing you to copy. At that point you would go to the Colorado forum on radio reference to see what other local listeners are doing to get the best P25 copy on the DTRS system.

Thanks again for taking the time to walk me through this. This is incredibly thoughtful and shows what a fantastic resource this really is.

Best Regards

KB: Same to you. Once you get up to speed, just keep it going by helping others...

 

[morrisr3nd]

Fgregory,

I'm sure glad you asked this question. I've been struggling with this myself for a while now.

Kbehning,

Thank you for explaining this so clearly. I really needed this.