San Diego RCS and Other San Diego Area Programming Advice

[SCPD]

I'm going to be visiting family in San Diego County, specifically Fallbrook, in early October and am starting to plan out how the PSR-500 and 600 is going to be programmed. We plan to do some traveling all around the county so I want a program that will cover most of the county. I had already made plans to write a San Diego County V File, but this trip pushes up the date it must be completed. I need some advice on how to lay out my scan lists and such.

It looks to me that I can program the control channels for the North, South, and Northeast loops as one TSYS and then write separate scan lists for such things as the Sheriff's Department, Heartland Fire, Inland Fire, North County Fire, Small Cities Fire, Caltans, San Diego County Misc. Services, and then Mutual Aid. It looks like I can handle the eastern portion of the County with a separate TSYS that has all the Intellirepeater Sites frequencies and have talkgroups associated with those Intellirepeaters that are used in the eastern portion of the county. Since the PSR-500 and 600 will seek out the strongest signal among the many control channels you put into one TSYS, I should be able to travel around and not worry which loop I'm in or what intellirepeater I'm near, correct?

I would really like to hear from those folks who monitor the San Diego RCS frequently for any tips on listening to this system. My experience with trunking systems does not include a system as large and complex as the San Diego RCS.

I'm also going to be programming quite a bit of conventional stuff for natural resource agencies, but have extensive information on Cal Fire, USFS, State Parks, DFG, and such. The only frequency I can't seem to locate is the one for the San Diego area National Wildlife Refuges.

I will also be writing a TSYS for the San Diego City trunked system, the military systems for Pendleton and the Pacific Fleet, and the conventional frequencies for the Zoo and Sea World, which we may or may not visit on this trip.

I have the Scannerstuff 3rd Edition and of course, the RR Database to use.

 

[JoeyC]

Hi, I would not program the simulcast zones as a single TSYS. Make a TSYS for each of the three zones. I've found there is significant overlap in some areas that if you are running in ROAM or STAT you may find yourself not listening to the appropriate site for the area.

Since I am out of range of the NE zone, I can't comment on what is carried there, but you will find that the north and south zones carry unique traffic. A few talkgroups are carried over both sites routinely, but most of the sheriff and small city police departments and fire talkgroups are site specific. Just about everything that is carried on the East zone is carried on the North or South sites as well, at least for the stuff I listen to.

I don't have any experience with the IR sites as I don't often travel in the areas that are covered by them but I probably would set them up in a multisite ROAM config and see how that worked.

If you have WIN500 I can send you my county file. It lacks CALTRANS stuff but you could always add that.

 

[Mike_G_D]

San Diego scanning

Exsmokey,

Well I'd like to extend a warm welcome to North San Diego County, or rather pre-welcome, as the case may be!

I live in Carlsbad which is northeast a tad of Fallbrook. I have built a rather extensive PSR500 file for SD county. Actually, I divided it up into two v-folders, one for north and one for south. Technically, according to an old RCS boundary map the south system uses the 52 freeway as a dividing line so I use that as a rough estimate for the north vs. south RCS districts. The map also shows where the old East system boundary was supposed to be but now there is a new Northeast system and I have not been able to find an updated RCS boundary map that includes it.

What I ended up doing was creating two V-folders, one for North and one for South. Within each I have four RCS TSYS's, one specific for the City of San Diego, one for the SDG&E system, and, depending on the area, various TSYS's for miscellaneous LTR business systems and a few military systems including Camp Pendleton (North V-Folder) and the Regional Naval System (South V-Folder). Each also contains one or more TSYS's for surrounding areas that I normally will have locked out but may find useful when certain out of area incidents occur that transcend county boundaries; to this end, the North file includes the Orange County and Riverside County TRS's and some major talkgroups for each while the South includes Imperial County talkgroups (Imperial county uses the same RCS as SD county but I have it setup as a separate TSYS and normally locked out - plus it uses some far east and inside Imperial county sites that are specific to that system - and, again, it's normally locked out unless needed).

The four RCS TSYS's are subdivided as follows: Common, Coastal, Inland, and East. So, for example, the North file has a North Common, North Coastal, North Inland, and North East. You can obviously guess what the South file would have! I define coastal as including cities and areas with at least some part bordering on the ocean, inland areas have land all around but are not too far from the coast such that they all pretty well fall within the large North and South RCS loops. The East areas include many rural areas and are intended to represent areas that are covered by the East or Northeast loops. Since I don't have good information about the boundaries between the Northeast and East loops I have had to guess how to subdivide these. Generally, I stayed conservative so I have some overlap. The Common TSYS includes all mutual aid and tactical talkgroups that are common either to the entire county or to the North or South loops as well as the East talkgroups. During normal scanning, I usually leave the Common TSYS always on and choose which others I want to monitor. In Carlsbad, for instance, I may only have the Coastal TSYS engaged but may have the others activated as well depending on my interests at the time.

In both files I have a myriad of conventional channels including as much federal and state forestry and fire channels as I know of. Much of these have been extensively modified and augmented according to information provided by and inspired by you, thank you very much, by the way! I include all state park channels that I am aware of - you will find many state beach lifeguards on these along the coast while those east will have rangers. The National Forests that I can monitor well from my Carlsbad location include the San Bernardino National Forest and the Cleveland National Forest. Further south you will probably only be able to monitor the Cleveland NF. But in Fallbrook I think you should be able to get the San Bernardino as well. As you have instructed, I have included what 415MHz link frequencies I can get. Currently, all I can receive, link-wise, is the Cleveland Forest Net link which repeats 168.75MHz on 415.45MHz and the San Bernardino Admin Net link which repeats 172.225MHz on 415.475MHz. The socal system on 415.525MHz, unfortunately, I cannot receive too well but I do have it in my programming.

It's a work in progress, of course, always improving and changing. However, should you be interested, I would be happy to send you my files! Everything is labeled, of course. Let me know.

I've enjoyed and benefited from your posts so would be happy to help in any way I can!

-Mike

 

[Mike_G_D]

More SD county info

Exsmokey,

I forgot to mention in my last, though you probably guessed it, (and it sounds like you were thinking along similar lines anyway) that my scanlists are divided according to category with rough geopolitical or usage subdivisions as follows:

1) County Fire

2) County Law

3) County Emergency

4) County Medical

5) County Roads

6) County Misc.

7) State Fire

8) State Law

9) State Emergency

10) State Roads

11) State Misc.

12) Federal Fire

13) Federal Law

14) Federal Emergency

15) Federal Forestry/Parks

16) Federal Military

17) Federal Misc.

18) Utilities

19) Rail/Bus Transport

20) Misc. Conventional

-Mike