Passaic County Help Please

[k4gps]

Just returned to visit the wife’s family after several decades. I had formerly been active in a few volunteer agencies in the area and a Deputy for a short time in Passaic County. I am currently in Pompton Lakes and brought my 536HP with me. Not hearing ANYTHING on the NJ Interoperability system under the county listings. I had refreshed my scanner with Sentenel prior to leaving home yesterday so everything should be up to date. System shows to be in Ringwood my guess is Skyline drive which is just up the street from me. Any reason I can’t pick anything up? I have actually locked the scanner down to dispatch and have not heard anything for PCSO in the last hour.
Another thing I noticed is Wayne’s system does not seem to lock on while scanning the National Databse when I enter our zip code. BUT if I manually lock on the system in a few seconds the signal strength picks up and I can hear traffic.

We live I rural SC and normally have NOTHING to listen to other than my County P25 system, out of range from everything else than some conventional VHF repeaters for FD from a County away. My guess is the 536HP can’t lock into the various types of systems as quickly as they change? Did PCSO go encripted or changed TG recently?

 

[ht396jm]

I have had no luck at all mitigating LSM distortion on the Wayne or NJICS systems with any scanner other than an SDS-200. I would try and lock your scanner on the Ramapo site on NJICS. PCSO is on NJICS, database is still accurate and new TGs pop up with their RIDs ever once in a while.

 

[NParkNJ]

Passaic county is on both West Orange and Ramapo site. Not encrypted.

As for Wayne’s system, it is a PITA system to listen to.

Every scanner besides the SDS has a very hard time following it. I’ve tweaked multiple scanners to the very best I could. Keep the squelch low on Wayne. And if you put the system in manually, be sure to put every control channel in, Harris systems can choose any at random(and Wayne’s systems jumps around alot).
For starters listen to 471.8000 DCS 115, Thats Bloomingdale/Riverdale/Pompton Lakes PD. Plenty to hear there.

Any other questions PM me, I know the area well.

 

[k4gps]

Thank you....we will only be here for another day and not a ton of time since I am running around with the wife’s family. All I have done is DL the latest Sentinel update just before we left on Christmas Eve. I have a 536HP and if I scan based on zip code I stop on nothing Wayne or PCSO based. If I lock on the Wayne system vs scanning everything it does seem to work fine but I can’t listen to anything else since I am locked in to that system only.. I then sat on the Sheriff’s group for a few hours and head NOTHING, even locked on to PCSO for Department and would not even pick up any signal strength on the display as if it could not hear the system. The Ramapo site I am guessing is on Skylime Drive somewhere and I am just underneath it, on the Oakland/Pompton Border, about 2 miles from the summit where the 10/70 and .49 repeaters were located 30 or so years ago (I was a member of both clubs into my teen years) . Thought I may be in the shadow so I drove out to Wayne and took it with me no luck either. RR may be wrong since I believe Sentinel uses the RR databse to do its updates.

 

[GTR8000]

RR may be wrong since I believe Sentinel uses the RR databse to do its updates.

The database is up to date and correct. I was just listening to the PCSO among other talkgroups from several sites, including Ramapo (Site 22, aka "Skyline Drive"). No issues. There are a lot of people who actively monitor the NJICS, and the system is kept very much up to date.

If your scanner is not showing any signal bars, then there is something else going on. You might want to try deleting or avoiding all other sites except Site 22 Ramapo, then see what happens.