Question on determining base, offset, and step

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newbie223

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Feb 12, 2010
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mesa, az
I recentley bought a radio shack pro-106 and programmed it by following the shortcut instruction page in the wiki section. Its working pretty good now except for one concern. The only question I have is I got through all the steps on the page, entered all the frequencies in the talk group I wanted, but when I got to steps 21 through 26, I was kind of clueless. Since the paragraph above steps 21 through 26 said the low chan is 380 and last chan is 759, I entered 380 for lo chan, 759 for high chan, and the 380 again for offset. For base and step I had no idea what to put so I just left them blank and saved it. Like I said before, when I scanned its doing pretty good now, but I don't know anything about this stuff and figure it could be doing a lot better for all I know. I read the wiki page on determining base, offset, and step and cannot for the life of me figure out what its talking about. Can anyone tell me if I made a critical error in setting up this talk group by not getting the base, offset, and step correct? And also if I did and need to start over, can someone tell me what I need to put in for the base, offset, and step? Thank you so much to anyone who can help me with this.
 

mciupa

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Hi newbie223 welcome to RadioReference :)

I looked over various Maricopa County database entries to find what you may be listening to.

I'll use the Prison trunk system as an example, the base freq. is 410.5000, you must enter that in place of the default freq. the radio was factory set with.
Next, enter 12.5 for spacing, the default from the factory may be 25.0
Finally make sure the offset is 380 , now enter the site freq's and you should be good to go.

Get back to us with a database link of the trunk system you are trying to set up and we can help you further.

Good luck :)
 

newbie223

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Joined
Feb 12, 2010
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Location
mesa, az
Thanks for your help mciupa. Here's where were at so far. My roomate and I purchased this scanner because we live in a bad neighborhood in Mesa. What were trying to get out of it is to hear anytime there maybe a shooting or a robbery going on nearby. So we went to the city of mesa website that claims these are the frequencies they're fire and pd are using. Here's the link Mesa Police Department Public Safety Communications
Anyway, we've actually been able to get these to come in somewhat clear, clear enough to hear anyway and all it seems like are cops running plates and names and what not. There's never any news about fires, accidents, crimes, etc. Then on the radioreference database, for the city of mesa there are dispatch frequencies completley different from that on the link above. We tried to enter these into the scanner but have got nothing but static. We just don't know what were doing wrong. We first put the codes in by hand and did well with the 800 frequencies. Then we were told the software would solve all our problems and it hasn't really helped. It would help out alot if you could take a look at the frequencies on the link above and the ones on the database and tell us why they are so diffferent. Like, for the 155 frequencies do we need to change the talkgroup type to that of the 800 frequencies? At this point were just trying to troubleshoot ideas like this as to why were having trouble. We hope you have a few of your own. I'm sure you could find this easy but just for convience here's a link to the radioreference database page were referring to Maricopa County, Arizona (AZ) Scanner Frequencies and Radio Frequency Reference and again, its the city of mesa frequencies were trying to get to work. Thanks.
 

newbie223

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Feb 12, 2010
Messages
5
Location
mesa, az
Also, on the radioreference.com database page I listed above, on the city of mesa part, right above will be a link to regional wireless cooperative. If you go to this, you find all the mesa police and fire talkgroups without the frequencies. Its just in hex and dec form. I have more questions regarding this. For instance, is RWC part of p-25? Or how do I get these talkgroups programmed with only the dec and hex? And do I need to switch from p-25 auto to mot/vhf/uhf to get them? If anyone could help with this it would be much aprreciatied. Thank.
 

mciupa

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Program the scanner in Control Channel Only mode for Motorola Type II and enter these control channels from
Site 010 Southeast Center (Mesa) 868.92500c 868.95000c

The best answers for you will come from the Arizona Radio Discussion Forum, (I only happened to see this post because I always browse General Scanning).

See what the local folk are doing. :wink:
 
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