OPP Tower Question

[CDNCANOER]

I live in London, but travel to the Collingwood area regularily. How do I figure out what tower frequencies to program? I have most of the towers programmed, but find that when I'm in Collingwood I don't get much local stuff. I only seem to get Goderich stuff. Any help would be appreciated.

 

[tonsoffun]

Hi
This is a map taken from Scanont yahoo group of the towers, so it can give you an idea on what to program in there.
http://f5.grp.yahoofs.com/v1/EKqmRO...7CublyN0P3S8jf-E/Maps/OPP Towers Zone 1&2.JPG
I think there is a better one out there somewhere.
Take care

 

[mikewazowski]

Pick the closest tower and program that in. For Collingwood, the best tower is usually Penetang.

You can also try the Simcoe County Wiki page at:

http://wiki.radioreference.com/index.php/Simcoe_County

which is still a major work in progress.

 

[CDNCANOER]

Thanks for the help! I have got the Primrose, Kimberley, Edgar & Penetang tower frequencies all in one bank in the order listed above. Still not much traffic given that it is the long weekend. I also added the Wasaga analog repeater channel listed at the wiki page. Still not getting hardly anything. I was reading somewhere that you need to have your primary tower control channel in your first bank channel. Should I make the Penetang tower my first bunch of frequencies? I dumped pretty much all the OPP talk groups and tacticals into this bank so I don't think I'm missing any. I do get the odd Collingwood, Barrie and once in a while Wasaga talk group displayed so it does recognize them. Any help would be great. It's a busy night here in Wasaga tonight and I was hoping to be entertained??? P.S. - > The yahoo group map link didn't work for me.

 

[mikewazowski]

First of all, what scanner do you have?

Most (if not all) need every site to be in a bank by themselves.

You will probably have to separate each tower out into it's own bank with only the frequencies listed for that tower in that bank.

It's definitely not as busy as previous years. Not hearing much myself.

 

[CDNCANOER]

I'm using a Pro 96. I will try to seperate the towers into seperate banks. I also have analog channels in the same bank as my Motorola Trunked channels. I'm fairly sure that is not a problem since I have London Fire set-up that way at home.

 

[mikewazowski]

Not really familiar with the Pro96 but I checked Forts' excellent Pro96 & Fleetnet tutorial and by the looks of it, you need to put each site into a bank of it's own.

If you're in Wasaga Beach, make sure you have the Penetang tower for sure. Edgar would be the second choice.

412.8875Mhz should be active and you might be able to catch traffic from the Collingwood BEAT repeater on 413.5375Mhz if the Collingwood and Huronia West talkgroups are patched together.

Another good frequency is 154.6950Mhz. You can listen to the Bylaw dweebs trying to figure out what's happening.

Also stick in 46.850Mhz. The MNR repeater is used by the Provincial Park Wardens.

 

[CDNCANOER]

It's working now. Seperating the towers was the trick. I used to have a Bearcat and had a seperate bank for each service (police, fire, EMS) I get the impression that the pro 96 should be set-up a little differently. Since OPP and EMS and some fire stuff is all covered on the same tower and the same system, I should probably put all the talk groups into the same bank. Should I put analog channels into a different bank or are analog mixed with trunked channels OK? Seems to work fine that way in London, but wanted to know what the recommended procedure was... probably a good question for FORTS?

 

[mikewazowski]

With the exception of Guelph FS, there is no fire on Fleetnet. You'll need to program in 154.8900Mhz to listen to Wasaga Beach FS.

You can mix analog and digital in the same bank. Just make sure you only have one site per bank.

 

[CDNCANOER]

Mike,

Thanks for your help! It paid off. Friends staying with us had their dog run away during the big storm last night. We walked and drove the area for a few hours looking for her with no luck. Then heard an OPP call on my scanner about a dog found swimming in the lake. Long story short, we got the dog back. Probably wouldn't have found it unless I had got my scanner working... Thanks to you!

Andrew

 

[slicerwizard]

Hi
This is a map taken from Scanont yahoo group of the towers, so it can give you an idea on what to program in there.
http://f5.grp.yahoofs.com/v1/EKqmRO...7CublyN0P3S8jf-E/Maps/OPP Towers Zone 1&2.JPG
I think there is a better one out there somewhere.
Take care

That doesn't seem to go anywhere.

I always recommend these maps:

http://home.ica.net/~phoenix/wap/Fleetnet/

One of these days, I'm going to suggest that links to these maps should be added to the Zone 1 and Zone 2 pages.