Opinions on marcs scanners

[mstevens0510]

Good evening,
With the new 700mhz primary channel for stark county my rs pro96 is now a apart weight. I'm looking into a new to me scanner handheld or base that will work with stark county. Does anybody have a suggestion of a brand and or model I should lean towards. I'm not looking to break the bank I would most likely purchase a used if available scanner.
Thanks
Mike

 

[n8dhw]

That will depend on how much money your willing to spend on a new scanner. You can go all out and get the Uniden SDS100 for like $599 maybe a little less if you shop around. Or if the fancy color screen of the 100 doesn’t empress you then you can look at its predecessor the 436HP.


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[wa8pyr]

That will depend on how much money your willing to spend on a new scanner. You can go all out and get the Uniden SDS100 for like $599 maybe a little less if you shop around. Or if the fancy color screen of the 100 doesn’t empress you then you can look at its predecessor the 436HP.

Ditto. However, your mileage may vary with the 436; some folks have had good success with it on simulcast sites while others have had mixed results.

I have both SDS100 and BCD436HP models, as well as a Unication G5 pager. The 436 performs pretty well on simulcast sites, but does sometimes have issues depending on where I am. The SDS100 and G5 both perform flawlessly, but are a bit more expensive than the 436.

However, there are tradeoffs with the G5. It has superior reception and scans P25 trunking talkgroups just fine, but that's about the extent of it. There's no "Hold" button to lock on to a particular channel when something interesting is happening, so you have to program it to make desired talkgroups capable of manual monitoring; if you have a lot of talkgroups you may potentially want to stop and monitor, it's not really going to be feasible. It also only does VHF or UHF as a secondary band, not both.

There is also a slightly less expensive G4 pager which does not have a secondary band (VHF or UHF), nor does it do conventional paging. Otherwise the capabilities and limitations are the same as the G5.

If you're looking for something that will unquestionably work with no fussing about with placement, antennas or what have you, look at the SDS100 or G5. If you also really want to be able to hold on a specific channel and really prefer to have VHF and UHF, look at the SDS100.

 

[Nasby]

Mstevens I sent you a private message.

 

[Volfirefighter]

I agree with the others who say that the SDS100 is the only "true" solution and can attest that mine performs flawlessly on Stark Simulcast. Also, the SDS200 just came out at the bargain price of $699. I will be getting mine tomorrow and expect it to perform as well as the SDS100. As the others have stated, older scanners are a hit or miss to work. It may be my location, but my Radio Shack Pro197 and my Uniden BCD996P2 also both work very well.

 

[gtaman]

IMO the solution is to get a RELM KNG P800. You can get one for around 1k if you look in the right places.

 

[santafe2016]

Ditto. However, your mileage may vary with the 436; some folks have had good success with it on simulcast sites while others have had mixed results.

I have both SDS100 and BCD436HP models, as well as a Unication G5 pager. The 436 performs pretty well on simulcast sites, but does sometimes have issues depending on where I am. The SDS100 and G5 both perform flawlessly, but are a bit more expensive than the 436.

However, there are tradeoffs with the G5. It has superior reception and scans P25 trunking talkgroups just fine, but that's about the extent of it. There's no "Hold" button to lock on to a particular channel when something interesting is happening, so you have to program it to make desired talkgroups capable of manual monitoring; if you have a lot of talkgroups you may potentially want to stop and monitor, it's not really going to be feasible. It also only does VHF or UHF as a secondary band, not both.

There is also a slightly less expensive G4 pager which does not have a secondary band (VHF or UHF), nor does it do conventional paging. Otherwise the capabilities and limitations are the same as the G5.

If you're looking for something that will unquestionably work with no fussing about with placement, antennas or what have you, look at the SDS100 or G5. If you also really want to be able to hold on a specific channel and really prefer to have VHF and UHF, look at the SDS100.

 

[santafe2016]

Tom I heard a rumor from a friend of mine in Dayton that MARCS is 40% full and MAY be going Phase two within the year, allegedly holding off while Springfield went to Marcs, now that they have Clark with the systems up the Dayton / Montgomery system will be turned over to the state or will be State run. if that is true one MUST only consider a Phase two capable, Right? have you hear anything like this

 

[northernsummit]

Tom I heard a rumor from a friend of mine in Dayton that MARCS is 40% full and MAY be going Phase two within the year, allegedly holding off while Springfield went to Marcs, now that they have Clark with the systems up the Dayton / Montgomery system will be turned over to the state or will be State run. if that is true one MUST only consider a Phase two capable, Right? have you hear anything like this

I'm not savvy to Montgomery county but my personal theory on this is that there are far too many agencies out there with a fleet of radios that they can't easily afford to upgrade to Phase II capable any time soon. Some of them relatively recently receiving grant radios from OSP that I believe are Phase 1 only. I imagine that from that perspective we'll probably see MARCS sites move towards a hybrid approach where talk groups gradually move to Phase 2, but sites would be capable of supporting either so the migration would be seamless to the users. Pure speculation on my part, but would make a lot of sense to me.

A Phase 2 scanner would become ideal to future proof you, but not necessarily critical if the talk groups that interested you drag their feet due to the reality of the cost of new radios.

 

[gtaman]

Tom I heard a rumor from a friend of mine in Dayton that MARCS is 40% full and MAY be going Phase two within the year, allegedly holding off while Springfield went to Marcs, now that they have Clark with the systems up the Dayton / Montgomery system will be turned over to the state or will be State run. if that is true one MUST only consider a Phase two capable, Right? have you hear anything like this

Won’t be that quick. Way too many XTS5000s still deployed.

 

[santafe2016]

I appreciate your knowledge and opinion on this, and thinking back he mentioned Phase 1 & 2 mix with ability to do both. Here in Clark we have several fire still on VHF the rest on MARCS, are the rest going to be forced to go to MARCS at the request of the County who dispatches for them or what? And sometimes I hear OSP here in town running stolen car duty on main channel with encryption on trooper radio and Post in the clear.

 

[gtaman]

Sure Clark county can force everyone to Marcs, but they cannot go to Phase 2. That is up to the board of directors for Ohio Marcs not the county.

 

[wa8pyr]

Tom I heard a rumor from a friend of mine in Dayton that MARCS is 40% full and MAY be going Phase two within the year, allegedly holding off while Springfield went to Marcs, now that they have Clark with the systems up the Dayton / Montgomery system will be turned over to the state or will be State run. if that is true one MUST only consider a Phase two capable, Right? have you hear anything like this

Just a rumor. There are no plans for such an upgrade, and the system isn't even ready for Phase II; it would require updated firmware at the system level, and every repeater at every tower site would have to be upgraded. Millions of dollars.

On top of that, thousands of radios across the state would have to be replaced or upgraded to Phase II compliance. Most users would regard that as an unfunded mandate, and tell the state where to go and what to do when they got there; many simply couldn't afford it.

When it comes to system capacity, traffic management plays a major role and all efforts in that direction are generally expended (or should be) before a massive system expansion like Phase II is considered. MARCS has a low number of busies for such a large system but even so there's a concerted effort afoot right now to "cull the herd" of excess talkgroups which haven't been used since they day they were created, as well as restrictions on roaming in order to preserve site capacity.

MARCS also has frequencies available should a particular site get uncomfortably loaded; because of the nature of trunking, the addition of a single frequency to a site makes a much bigger improvement to capacity than it might seem.

Not sure what that "40% full" number refers to but also not true. There are thousands of unassigned talkgroups and hundreds of thousands of radio IDs available for use if they're needed; the system is capable of 65534 talkgroups and over 16 million radio IDs.

 

[kf8yk]

Not sure what that "40% full" number refers to but also not true. There are thousands of unassigned talkgroups and hundreds of thousands of radio IDs available for use if they're needed; the system is capable of 65534 talkgroups and over 16 million radio IDs.

While the P25 standard has addressing space for 16 million radio ID's the current MARCS platform (Motorola Astro 7.17) has a limit of 250,000 radios. The State claims 100,000 radio subscribers on the MARCS web site, which is 40% of 250k.

Of course going to Phase II does not increase the radio ID capacity.