Pro-164 / psr-300
Here are some key elements to picking up a trunked signal .....
1) The system you want to program is MO type. A MO system can have up to 4 different control channel frequencies (per site), but only 1 will ever be active at a time. The Puyallup site has 3 control channel frequencies -
868.35000, 868.57500 & 868.50000. Determine which one is presently active and park the scanner on it. You should hear what people have described as sounding like a buzzsaw or motorboat.
2) While parked on the control channel, with the channel set to "MO" mode you should see how well data is being decoded on the 4th line of the scanner's display. My experience has been you need about 50% or better to have reliable results. If your signal is too low, that could be your problem.
3) In order to actually hear Puyallup, you'll need to "scan" that one frequency (eventually all 3 of them). The individual channels of the scanner which are programmed with the control channels must all be set to MO, the bank which contains the frequencies must also be set to MO. When scanning, if the bank is set to "open", you will hear all radio traffic. I suggest doing this at first.
4) Once you are hearing all radio traffic from the system, the last step is to program the desired TalkGroups into the same bank as the control channel frequencies. You will be able to add text to describe the TGs. Close the bank and you will only hear the TGs you've programmed (that are not locked out and which are in sub-banks which are turned on).
While programming software can handle some of the details of getting the information into the scanner, it still doesn't "drive" the scanner for listening. Everything could be programmed correctly, and still won't give you what you want because the attenuator is on, a sub-bank is turned off, a control channel is locked out or something silly like that.
One last note; according to
data here on RR the site has not yet rebanded. When that happens there is another setting in the scanner which must be changed to tell the scanner it's a rebanded system. Last time I checked the only way to change that setting in the scanner is with software. I use WIN97. Good luck.