SDS100/SDS200: Newbie Warning- DMR Export from Digital Frequencies Question

[AardvarkScannery]

Hello everyone, I am working with a recently purchased SDS100 with Sentinel software and trying to work through the process of getting things set up. I am new to scanning/scanner programming overall. Scanner purchased with DMR key upgrade. I have been working through the Sentinel software getting some favorites lists updated for my area (outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania). I have several favorites lists that are using pieces of county/state sections from the National database in Sentinel.

I started working on some DMR favorites lists and am following the instructions from Boy And A Scanner videos-- going to Digital Frequency Search and using the export function for DMR to get lists of entries for Philadelphia/Delaware/Montgomery/Chester counties in Pennsylvania to cover local areas (some from northern Delaware and southwest counties in New Jersey as well). I added them to Sentinel as new favorite with System Type as "Conventional" as per the video walk-through. All of these are separate favorites lists by county.

Scanning through these lists individually (probably 4,000+ entries in total) I am getting hits on some channels that were exported. Some of the channels from these export lists come up without any audio, but the Color code is flashing along with Slot 1/Slot 2 data. Many of these seem to also flash between CON+ and CAP+.

Is this because a setting is wrong and the actual audio feed is not being processed by the scanner, could I just be out of range, or is this something else entirely?

Also, for the number of entries in these export lists, there is not much traffic being picked up. Is this normal? Obviously it depends on whether people are using the systems, but it is a small number of "hits" for the amount of channels over a period of several hours.

Thank you for any help and I can answer any follow-up questions for information that might be needed.

 

[KevinC]

Digital Frequency Search just queries the FCC database and loads all frequencies that match the FCC emission designator you chose. It has no confirmed frequencies like the Radio Reference database does. Many users are licensed for multiple frequencies that they never use and since all it's doing is a FCC dump you really have no idea if you are hearing who you want to or someone else using that same frequency.

As far as the no audio that could be a control channel or rest channel or data (GPS, etc..).

 

[JoeBearcat]

The flashing CC and no audio is either encrypted (will show on the display) or most likely a control channel.