Just thought I'd say hi from North Texas. I recently bought my first type of new scanner, a bcd396xt, and like it so far. I manually programmed it some while I was waiting on my usb cable and did o.k., but once my cable arrived I broke out the freescan. wow. much easier, that guy really did a lot of people a huge favor on that deal. Don't seem to have any problems, or at least I'm new enough that I don't know if I'm having problems? I have a question of sorts. I was really concerned about designating the different type systems, thinking that i had to have all the p25's in one p25 system and the analogs in an analog system. but when I downloaded the info straight from RR database, it put them all in one system ? anyway no big deal as long as I can hear em.
Anyway, just glad to be here and looking forward to learning. Does anybody know if there's a radio club in this montague co. area ? I might want to look into the other side of the hobby.
Hi Tbird
Welcome to RadioReference & the Texas Forum
You don't need to separate your P25 (conventional) frequencies from analog conventional frequencies. A conventional system can have a mix of the two, I group mine by agency for larger entities such as Dallas Fire Rescue, Dallas PD, and TX DPS. Each of these are in a separate system in my 396XT's. For the smaller counties, such as Montague in your case, I create a system for the county, then put the various cities in individual groups, with the County S.O. (Sheriff) in a separate group as well. Depending on whether there are a large number of individual fire departments, or mainly just "county fire", dispatched by the S.O., I'll either put the 'County Fire' channels in with the S.O., or have a separate Fire group.
Of course, for a trunked system, such as the one used by
Denton County, the trunked system has everything connected with it, i.e. the site frequencies and all the related talkgroups. I group those by usage as well.
Remember that with the 396XT, your display will be along these lines when it is receiving a transmission:
Conventional Systems
The top line of the display will be the System name <<alternating with>> the Group name.
The second line will be the text tag you've used for that individual channel.
Trunked Systems
Top line: Site name <<alternating with>> Group name
Second line: Text tag entered for that talkgroup ID.
Note that the site name (if imported from the database) does not always reflect the name of the system. For example, the "site name" for the
Carrollton trunked system is labeled simply as "Simulcast". Since that does not tell me who it is, I edited it to show the name as "Carrollton TRS".
