NXDN Upgrade for BCD436HP and BCD536HP Now Available!

[sibbley]

WOW! I read a post that told of a guy who ran LCN for over a year to finally get that last number.He didn't do that with batteries lol.

What I said was, "I had one system that took almost a year till I could get the LCN's due to lack of activity. That system only had 3 frequencies."

I did not run LCN finder for a year, LOL. Just took that long for there to be enough activity on all 3 frequencies to allow the LCN finder to work. The system actually has 4 frequencies listed. It's been another year and still no traffic on frequency #4.

Yes, some systems are easy and some are a real pain in the rear.

 

[rescue674aa]

Then you have to figure then Ch IDs...that’s harder too


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[sibbley]

Maybe a precursor to LCN Finder use should be monitoring the frequencies to see which ones are active, then program those only into the trunk them run LCN Finder.

Best way to check the frequencies before using LCN finder. I always use conventional scan on the listed frequencies before wasting time on LCN finder.

Doing that very thing right now on two NXDN 4800 systems that should be going on line in my area in the next few months. Once I have determined that each frequency has been used I'll run LCN finder. In the meantime, the scanner just scans while ProScan logs the hits.

 

[sibbley]

Then you have to figure then Ch IDs...that’s harder too


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Ch ID's can be found easily with DSD+. I believe with NXDN, LCN finder will also populate the Ch ID's instead of LCN. I haven't actually had the need to find Ch ID's yet with the 436/536.

 

[hiegtx]

Ch ID's can be found easily with DSD+. I believe with NXDN, LCN finder will also populate the Ch ID's instead of LCN. I haven't actually had the need to find Ch ID's yet with the 436/536.

I can confirm this is correct. I used it for the two public safety NXDN systems in my area.

 

[garys]

Not using LCN finding, but using DSD+, in some cases it has taken me over a year to track down both LCN and frequencies used by particular Con+ systems. The nice thing about NXDN is that once you have the channel number, in most cases you can calculate the actual frequency.

With 900 Mhz licensing, at least in my area, it's a guess as to what frequency is actually in use at a particular site.

As you know, patience is needed for this game.

What I said was, "I had one system that took almost a year till I could get the LCN's due to lack of activity. That system only had 3 frequencies."

I did not run LCN finder for a year, LOL. Just took that long for there to be enough activity on all 3 frequencies to allow the LCN finder to work. The system actually has 4 frequencies listed. It's been another year and still no traffic on frequency #4.

Yes, some systems are easy and some are a real pain in the rear.

 

[Voyager]

Best way to check the frequencies before using LCN finder. I always use conventional scan on the listed frequencies before wasting time on LCN finder.

Exactly.

 

[Voyager]

I believe with NXDN, LCN finder will also populate the Ch ID's instead of LCN.

That's because they are the same thing. The Channel Numbers simply aren't sequential like most LCNs are. But both are numbers that equal a particular frequency.

Call Channel Numbers "Listed Channel Numbers" (also LCN) if it helps you remember.

 

[bearcat]

It would be helpful if LCN Finder would at least give us what it has found. If you run it and it finds, say 2 of 4 and you end it and press "E" to save the LCN#s as it prompts you, it actually does not save them unless the process is completed (4 of 4 in this case). At least that has been my experience.

In some cases you may not be able to hear all the sites on a given system from one location. In that case I guess the best thing to do is to not put the repeater you cannot hear in the system at all.

 

[Jay911]

It would be helpful if LCN Finder would at least give us what it has found. If you run it and it finds, say 2 of 4 and you end it and press "E" to save the LCN#s as it prompts you, it actually does not save them unless the process is completed (4 of 4 in this case). At least that has been my experience.

If you press FUNC+System when you have an incomplete LCN Finder session, it will ask if you want to save what it's done. You can say yes to that and the LCNs that were found will be saved into the proper slots in the site.

 

[u2brent]

maybe he keeps finding the same 2 and doesn't see any changes in the numbers!

 

[buddrousa]

It does show you what it found. It has been posted here several times we learned how to do this for the DMR updates and it works the same on the NXDN sites.
After running the LCN finder for each site in the system.
#1. Edit the site.
#2. Edit EACH frequency just by using the enter key.
#3. READ THE LCN number listed for EACH Frequency you have in the tested site.
#4 Run LCN finder for EACH SITE LISTED.
#5. Read each site same as above.

 

[Voyager]

and you end it and press "E" to save the LCN#s as it prompts you, it actually does not save them unless the process is completed (4 of 4 in this case). At least that has been my experience.

In some cases you may not be able to hear all the sites on a given system from one location. In that case I guess the best thing to do is to not put the repeater you cannot hear in the system at all.

I tried it several nights ago on a system near me and I stopped it after it found 2 of 5, and it saved those two. You have to use the FUNC-System.

On the multiple sites, it analyzes one site at a time, so that really isn't an issue unless you have multiple sites programmed as one site.

 

[WX4JCW]

im posting an excel Spreadsheet to help calculate channel numbers , you may have to adjust the formula to adjust for deviations in a channel map, it may or may not work depending on the system but maybe someone wants to use it or maybe even improve on it

this will not work for some systems, it depends on if they use the default map or not

https://www.dropbox.com/s/hvfu66ac6041d6u/NXDN_Channel_Calculator.xlsx?dl=0

 

[garys]

This is very nice. One thing I noticed is that when I tried it out on a known Channel/Frequency combination the result was exactly 1 Mhz lower than the actual frequency. I've also had that happen using the formula that wb1hbu posted in the digital radio forum.

im posting an excel Spreadsheet to help calculate channel numbers , you may have to adjust the formula to adjust for deviations in a channel map, it may or may not work depending on the system but maybe someone wants to use it or maybe even improve on it

this will not work for some systems, it depends on if they use the default map or not

https://www.dropbox.com/s/hvfu66ac6041d6u/NXDN_Channel_Calculator.xlsx?dl=0

 

[W5RGP]

im posting an excel Spreadsheet to help calculate channel numbers , you may have to adjust the formula to adjust for deviations in a channel map, it may or may not work depending on the system but maybe someone wants to use it or maybe even improve on it

this will not work for some systems, it depends on if they use the default map or not

https://www.dropbox.com/s/hvfu66ac6041d6u/NXDN_Channel_Calculator.xlsx?dl=0

I’m thinking this won’t work on the homeland 7 site they are all over the board on that system
Lol
But thanks for the work it will be nice for systems setup correctly [emoji106]


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[buddrousa]

Bob I checked 4 sites and the numbers do not match up its like they made up their own list.

 

[troymail]

The calc behind that spreadsheet works for a business system provider in my area but not for a public safety system here.

The public safety system does have a pattern/standard but it's not the same. However, the LCN finder worked very quickly and found the proper values - you just have to be certain you have the correct frequencies programmed for each site you run the LCN finder against.

 

[mtindor]

The best explanation is here:

https://forums.radioreference.com/v...derstanding-nexedge-trunking.html#post2249645

However, it does require you to be able to do a little math (and know how to switch around the formulas to calculate frequency if you know the LCN.

But that's cart-before-horse. You first have to determine if a standardized bandplan of some kind is even in place. Many systems do not have a standardized bandplan and LCNs are assigned arbitrarily. For instance, I know of multiple systems using 480 mhz frequencies where 483.25 on one site may be (as an example) LCN 736, while on another site of that same system which also uses 483.25 the LCN might be 753.

Mike

 

[kh6sz]

I'm in the process of writing another NXDN calculator in Excel that will hopefully be customizable depending on the date that you enter into it. I took WX4JCW's info on his sheet,as well as the other information I've found here. The problems that I kept coming up with is that nothing seems to follow the standard settings. So in my program, you enter 2 known channel numbers and their frequencies, and it will give you the Step Size as well as the Base Frequency, and then entering a NXDN channel number will display the frequency for that channel, even displays 10 lower and 10 higher than the entered channel.

I would also like to have where you can enter a frequency, and given the base, step size, and frequency, I would like it to find the Channel number.

I know the formula to find the Frequency is this:

Freq = Base + ((Channel - 1) * Step Size)

I'm hoping someone that is good in algabra can come up with a formula from the above that will let you have the Freq, Base, and Step Size and display Channel. Any takers!?!?!?!

Edit: Also if you do come up with the formula, maybe you know enough about excel to send me the formula that will work in excel!