Questions on St. Joe, Elkhart counties

[daggit]

Just became a paid member here. I just got a new bcd396xt. Blows my mind how much scanning has changed since I last listened years ago. . I feel likea caveman waking up in the future.
Anyways Im using freescan and imported freq. to the software. Im still waiting on my rs232 to usb cable so I cant upload them to my radion yet. Will I have to tweak any of the channel options or will they all load into the radio without any tweaking? I imported them all from this site. There were tons of duplicate channels. Also it seems you cant assign a quick key to several channels in a group. Must I have to assign a quick key to the whole group? Example under South Bend publicc Safty there is fire and police. I wanted to assign a quick key to the fire channels and a different one to the police. Maybe I should just put them in thir own groups. I do it this way I wil have to put in duplicate channels in different groups. maybe county, Mishawaka, South Bend police in one group but then would have to make a group of just South Bend PD and Mishawaka PD if I just want to listen to that individual departments. Thanks for any help and tips. Oh, would anyone have a freescan file to share so I can compare with what Im doing to one already working? Thanks.

Jim

 

[fire4456]

Jim,

welcom to the site first off. I live in Indy now but to maybe help you a little bit first off I'll crap shoot for ya on your question.

Not sure how your scanner works but most of the public safety is on traditional systems for the fire departments. I do believe that South Bend PD and St. Joe county sheriff have migrated to the SAFE-T system. So if you havent done so check the SAFE-T page and see the talkgroup assignments and also St. Joe county is set as a simulcast system.

The Mishawaka in question is their own stand alone P-25 system by the way. So you'll have to enter them accordingly.

South Bend Fire, St. Joe county fire, and Notre Dame fire are all still on vhf if i remember right.

South bend uses like 4 channels at the most if I remember right. My old job was a dispatcher 12 years ago and I can only remember them using that many at one time.

St. Joe county fire uses one dispatch channel and then numerous firegrounds. Those are set to the geographic area the fire department are located in the county.

They still do repeat to my knowledge a low band frequency for the outlying areas of New Carslisle, North Liberty, Lakeville, and Madison Township. It's transmit is 46.300 and recieves on 154.250 pl of 146.2 if memory serves me correct.

I maybe a little vague or off in answering your question but hope it helps some. If you need put a shout out to Gardyd 451 or a dswarnke and they should be able to help. Have a great day.

 

[Ghawkman56]

Jim,
Yes, scanning has changed a bit in the past years! I monitor both St. Joe and Elkhart counties. Although I have a GRE600 and loaded my frequencies manually, if you have any specific questions on frequencies, let me know. It sounds like scan list for a GRE is similar to groups for a Bearcat. I segregated by frequencies by city, then county, regardless of agency. One other issue, we are close to a NOAA tower, the SB FD operates on 154-155 frequency range, although I have played with several options, you will find the NOAA channel spills over. Take care.