Philly radio newbie

[N215]

Hi,
I am fairly new to scanners and interested in monitoring Philly PD at the district level, citywide, special events channels. Also Philly FD/EMS and Septa/Philly area university police depts.

What is the best scanner option for this? Is there a way to pair the scanner with a computer or iOS mobile device to download and automatically program the scanner? Explain it to me like I’m 5 basically.

Thanks everyone in advance for your help.

 

[Enforcer52]

Philly has a Simulcast P25 Phase 1 system so you will need a Uniden SDS/100 or SDS200 for optimal performance.

Proscan software ($50) is the best software to use to program either scanner, although the Sentinel software free from Uniden also works.

 

[Whiskey3JMC]

Echoing what was mentioned above. Unless you're on the outer fringes of intended system coverage & not within range of a 2nd tower on the simulcast you're tuned into, you'll miss transmissions due to simulcast distortion if you're monitoring with anything other than an SDS100 or 200. Zone 2 Simulcast carries Police, Fire & EMS. Zone 1 Simulcast carries all other departments. Certain university police departments (U Penn & Jefferson to name a few) are fully encrypted. Anytime you see an uppercase "E" suffix in the "mode" column, this indicates full encryption (Mode "DE", "TE", DMRE" and so on) meaning it cannot be monitored on a scanner. Septa PD is UHF conventional on 502.6875, CSQ. The rest of SEPTA operates on their own TRS with a smattering of T-band conventionals for the el, BSL and others.

 

[maus92]

You could purchase SDRs and use the computer and free software, and not even need a scanner. iOS doesn't really have an applicable solution.

 

[N215]

You could purchase SDRs and use the computer and free software, and not even need a scanner. iOS doesn't really have an applicable solution.

SDR? What’s that? Thanks.

 

[N215]

Echoing what was mentioned above. Unless you're on the outer fringes of intended system coverage & not within range of a 2nd tower on the simulcast you're tuned into, you'll miss transmissions due to simulcast distortion if you're monitoring with anything other than an SDS100 or 200. Zone 2 Simulcast carries Police, Fire & EMS. Zone 1 Simulcast carries all other departments. Certain university police departments (U Penn & Jefferson to name a few) are fully encrypted. Anytime you see an uppercase "E" suffix in the "mode" column, this indicates full encryption (Mode "DE", "TE", DMRE" and so on) meaning it cannot be monitored on a scanner. Septa PD is UHF conventional on 502.6875, CSQ. The rest of SEPTA operates on their own TRS with a smattering of T-band conventionals for the el, BSL and others.

Thanks. I’m within the city so I’d assume coverage will be ok.

 

[Whiskey3JMC]

SDR? What’s that? Thanks.

Software Defined Radios - The RadioReference Wiki

wiki.radioreference.com

Thanks. I’m within the city so I’d assume coverage will be ok.

Again if you're within range of two or more towers so you'll likely face simulcast distortion. Click the zone 1 & zone 2 links I gave to see tower locations

 

[N215]

Software Defined Radios - The RadioReference Wiki

wiki.radioreference.com

Again if you're within range of two or more towers so you'll likely face simulcast distortion. Click the zone 1 & zone 2 links I gave to see tower locations

Hm so you’re saying being near those towers is going to cause problems?

For the SDR, is there one you recommend?

 

[trentbob]

Original poster, not really ready to say too much at this time other than you might want to hold off before you spend any significant amount of money.

Philadelphia police uses a good amount of encryption now but traditionally has had District dispatch and the city-wide emergency talk group called J BAND and administrative M BAND in the clear. There are a few other event tg's in the clear.

I have it on reliable authority that District by District there will not only be redistricting but District dispatch, J and M BANDS will be full time encryption.

I don't have the exact timeline other than I'm confident this process is coming, District by District. I wish it wasn't true.

 

[Whiskey3JMC]

For the SDR, is there one you recommend?

I run a few SDRPlays with varying apps depending on my objectives. One app being SDRTrunk to bring in trunked radio systems like Philly's

 

[maus92]

The SDR hardware/software route would be cheaper than a physical scanner optimized for simulcast systems like Philadelphia's. It is not really a portable solution however. SDR setups can be overwhelming at first and some are a little clunky. For a beginner monitoring Philadelphia's system, I'd recommend a wideband SDR like an Airspy R2 or a SDRPlay RSP1A and SDRTrunk software. The SDR hardware runs roughly $150 - $200, and SDRTrunk is free. One benefit of the SDR/software route is that the software will display some inner workings of the radio system, whereas a scanner just listens to the voice traffic and displays minimal info.

 

[maus92]

Receiving simulcast systems can be problematic with scanners that are not optimized to receive simulcast systems. Receive quality is highly dependent on the location of the scanner, sometimes moving it only a foot or two will affect whether or not a transmission is received. This behavior is caused by the nature of simulcast systems where multiple sites transmit on the same frequency at the same time. In the real world, various factors prevent the signals from being received at exactly the same time. Public Safety grade radios are design to cope with this reality; but most consumer grade scanners are not.

 

[trentbob]

@N215.. I appreciate your question here and I just wanted to make sure you understood my above post.

Simulcast reception is very difficult to receive because of simulcast distortion, especially if you're on the move, it's very location based with regard to your location amongst the different towers.. as has been explained.

You have some great people helping you here to overcome this simulcast distortion and the SDR route is a good way to go and less expensive than the expensive scanners designed to pick up simulcast distortion.

As difficult as simulcast is to pick up, it is impossible to pick up encryption and that's why I prematurely posted the news about all of dispatch and Citywide going encrypted.

I wouldn't want to see someone buy an SDS 100 or 200 to pick up the police only to find it's gone.

As I said, the process is in progress, without going into too much detail the reprogrammed radios have the old talk groups on one zone and the separate new encrypted talk groups on another Zone.

I checked this morning and nothing has changed other than the process seems to be moving a little faster than I anticipated. No one can give you an accurate date of the changeover. At least at this time anyway.

Just want to make sure you understood what my post meant.👍

 

[N215]

Original poster, not really ready to say too much at this time other than you might want to hold off before you spend any significant amount of money.

Philadelphia police uses a good amount of encryption now but traditionally has had District dispatch and the city-wide emergency talk group called J BAND and administrative M BAND in the clear. There are a few other event tg's in the clear.

I have it on reliable authority that District by District there will not only be redistricting but District dispatch, J and M BANDS will be full time encryption.

I don't have the exact timeline other than I'm confident this process is coming, District by District. I wish it wasn't true.

Interesting and thanks for the response. I guess many places are going in that direction.

 

[N215]

@N215.. I appreciate your question here and I just wanted to make sure you understood my above post.

Simulcast reception is very difficult to receive because of simulcast distortion, especially if you're on the move, it's very location based with regard to your location amongst the different towers.. as has been explained.

You have some great people helping you here to overcome this simulcast distortion and the SDR route is a good way to go and less expensive than the expensive scanners designed to pick up simulcast distortion.

As difficult as simulcast is to pick up, it is impossible to pick up encryption and that's why I prematurely posted the news about all of dispatch and Citywide going encrypted.

I wouldn't want to see someone buy an SDS 100 or 200 to pick up the police only to find it's gone.

As I said, the process is in progress, without going into too much detail the reprogrammed radios have the old talk groups on one zone and the separate new encrypted talk groups on another Zone.

I checked this morning and nothing has changed other than the process seems to be moving a little faster than I anticipated. No one can give you an accurate date of the changeover. At least at this time anyway.

Just want to make sure you understood what my post meant.👍

This change isn’t why Broadcastify’s PPD/PFD feeds have mostly been offline recently?

 

[trentbob]

This change isn’t why Broadcastify’s PPD/PFD feeds have mostly been offline recently?

No actually it's not the reason, my understanding is the volunteers who donate their time to operate the feeds are having equipment problems with a computer.

I was just speaking to a retired cop friend of mine and he brought up the potential for rioting in November. I never thought of that. So, with regards to a timeline for encryption on dispatch and Citywide I think we can be pretty sure they're getting ready for post-election unrest, so that seems like the most realistic timeline I can think of, we've got a few months left.

Just an educated guess.

 

[MUTNAV]

If your looking for situational awareness, and not necessarily the intricacies of police communications ( a lot of people here were former police/fire people, or dispatchers and seem to enjoy the communications aspect of it, maybe because it's familiar to them and first responder related).

There may be other ways to get a handle on what going on in the city if that is your objective.

This is (kind of) referring to the possibility of civil disturbances in November.

Thanks
Joel