Howdy all,
after attempting to use my old radio shack scanner to listen to the goings on around me I have found it is just about worthless. Now I’m scanning the classified to see what’s available. I see the sds100 is all the rage but pricey. Any other suggestions or words of wisdom, or just bite the bullet and go for the sds100. I see one in the classifieds now but I guess I don’t have the permissions yet to contact seller. TIA
Welcome to RadioReference & the Texas forum.
Johnson County is on the
FWRRS trunked system. While, for now, the Johnson County cities on the system are using P25 Phase I, the system is capable of P25 Phase II. At present, of the various cities on FWRRS, several are using Phase II: Arlington, Grand Prairie, Irving, and several in Ellis County. I would suspect that, eventually, all the agencies would move to Phase II.
Most of the law enforcement agencies in Johnson County are encrypted. No scanner can decode encrypted transmissions. However, the various fire departments are not encrypted.
The Johnson County layer on the system is simulcast. You indicate that you are in the Godley area. One of the simulcast sites is in Crowley, one in Cleburne, & the third in Alvarado. Simulcast can make it hard to receive the system reliably. It is extremely location specific. If you were really close to one of the sites, it's stronger signal might override signals from the other sites. If not, then transmissions from the sites will arrive at your location at slightly different times, depending on the distances. With the signals being out of synch, most scanners (except for the SDS series) will have a hard time monitoring a simulcast system. You might hear some radio traffic, some garbled & some relatively clear, or maybe not be able to hear anything at all. The problem is so location dependent that in some cases, moving your scanner to a slightly different place may make a huge difference. There's no way to know in advance whether or not you'll be affected. If you eventually decide on a scanner other than the SDS100, or it's base/mobile sibling the SDS200, buy it from a dealer that will allow you to return it without a hassle or large restock fee.
Read more about simulcast in this article in the Wiki:
Simulcast digital distortion - The RadioReference Wiki
Options other than an SDS series scanner to deal with simulcast would include one of the Unication pagers. Most users of that unit praise it's performance in receiving simulcast systems. However, it is not a true scanner, and you are limited to the number of talkgroups that you can monitor at one time.
Another option is the Blue Tail receiver. It also is reported to work well, but like the Unication pager, there are limitations. on what can be monitored.
BlueTail Technologies – BlueTail Technologies
I don't have either of these two, so check the forums for more comments on their performance.
Your other option, if you only wanted to monitor at home, would be to use your PC and one or more of the SDR dongles, Here again, I am not using this option, so check the forums for more information.
(You need to have a few more posts under your belt until your status is upgraded & you can use the messaging option to contact a seller of a scanner in the classifieds.)
