Scanner doesn't pick up rigs

[treydawgmt]

Hello,

I work for a fire dept. I have a couple of Uniden BCD996P2 scanners at my house, and at all three of our stations. We recently (about 5 months ago) went to a Starcom P25 P2 system. At my house (9 blocks from our main station, in the town I work for) I have these programmed and can pick up all the dispatch and rigs for my dispatch center, as well as the other dispatch centers and rigs for the surrounding area, both on our county site system, and other county site systems.

At the station, I can pick up multiple dispatch centers & rigs on our county site system, but for *our* dispatch center I can't hear rigs almost all of the time. It is the most baffling thing in the world. Basically for depts/dispatches 8-50 miles I can hear everything just fine in the stations, but for our center, located .5 miles from one station, 2 miles from another, etc, I can't hear our rigs. Anyone have any thoughts at all?

Thanks

 

[N9JCQ]

Treydawgmt, you might want to have your question moved to the Illinois forum where people closer to you can address the questions. My assumption is that it has something to do with how your 996P2 is set up for the Starcom SC21 system. Understand that Starcom uses remote towers (like cell towers) rather than direct point to point like your previous dispatches were sent. I am not sure if you are using the Dekalb Tower or one of the nearby towers towers in the surrounding counties. Also, I am trying to find the talkgroups for your FD on Starcom but I am not seeing them listed. All I see is what may likely be out of date?

 

[wscranston]

Try taking one of the scanners from your house to one of the stations to see if the problem persists. That will rule out any programming issues.

 

[Ubbe]

Basically for depts/dispatches 8-50 miles I can hear everything just fine in the stations, but for our center, located .5 miles from one station, 2 miles from another, etc, I can't hear our rigs.

It could be that the rigs are too close when they transmit and overloads the scanners. Try using the attenuator in the scanner as you seem to have a very strong reception.

/Ubbe

 

[werinshades]

You might be listening to a site that you have a difficult time receiving and/or the site is simulcast, which would explain the intermittent reception.

 

[treydawgmt]

Treydawgmt, you might want to have your question moved to the Illinois forum where people closer to you can address the questions. My assumption is that it has something to do with how your 996P2 is set up for the Starcom SC21 system. Understand that Starcom uses remote towers (like cell towers) rather than direct point to point like your previous dispatches were sent. I am not sure if you are using the Dekalb Tower or one of the nearby towers towers in the surrounding counties. Also, I am trying to find the talkgroups for your FD on Starcom but I am not seeing them listed. All I see is what may likely be out of date?View attachment 110222

I'm actually living in Carpentersville now. So I'm mainly taking about the Kane County site. We can hear Elgin/South Elgin and Tri-Com using the exact same site, as well as SeeCom, NWCD, etc.

 

[treydawgmt]

Try taking one of the scanners from your house to one of the stations to see if the problem persists. That will rule out any programming issues.

Why didn't I think of that. I will try that tomorrow when I work.

 

[treydawgmt]

You might be listening to a site that you have a difficult time receiving and/or the site is simulcast, which would explain the intermittent reception.

I'm pretty positive the site isn't simulcast, as the dispatch goes over VHF, but none of the talking. And I can pick up elgin and tri-com dispatches and rigs on the same exact site.

 

[mmckenna]

Anyone have any thoughts at all?

In the instances when you cannot hear your own trucks transmitting, how close is the scanner to the truck?

It might be that if you are too close, the transmitter is overloading the scanner and making it not able to hear the trunked system.

 

[fredva]

Kane County is listed as a simulcast site. The type of simulcast we're talking about has nothing to do with whether there is an additional VHF channel for dispatch or not. It's about multiple transmitters sending out digital signals on the same frequency at the same time. In this case, the frequency would be on the 800 mhz system. The BCD996P2 was not made to be compatible with simulcast. And simulcast effects are location specific, so this COULD be the reason you receive transmissions intermittently at the dispatch center, but it works fine at home and the stations. This has not been proven to be your issue, but it's a possibility.

 

[werinshades]

You might be listening to a site that you have a difficult time receiving and/or the site is simulcast, which would explain the intermittent reception.

Kane County is listed as a simulcast site. The type of simulcast we're talking about has nothing to do with whether there is an additional VHF channel for dispatch or not. It's about multiple transmitters sending out digital signals on the same frequency at the same time. In this case, the frequency would be on the 800 mhz system. The BCD996P2 was not made to be compatible with simulcast. And simulcast effects are location specific, so this COULD be the reason you receive transmissions intermittently at the dispatch center, but it works fine at home and the stations. This has not been proven to be your issue, but it's a possibility.

Yes...agreed.

 

[treydawgmt]

Ok,

I've done some more work/attempted to fix this problem, and I'm still confused.

I'll try to add some things to help a bit. I work for Carpentersville Fire Department, Kane County, IL. I live in the 300 block of North Green St in Carpentersville. We have 3 fire stations, but I'm currently only working on 2 stations. (The 3rd doesn't care as much about listening, I'm not even sure if it's working or not).

Station 1 - 213 Spring St, Carpentersville, IL
Station 3 - 5000 Sleepy Hollow Rd, Carpentersville, IL

Station 1, the radio in the kitchen wasn't working well. I hooked a Diamond D130NJ antenna in the hose tower using the existing cable. When it was hanging upside down, I could hear both FD Main & FD Ops 2 frequencies relatively great. When I pulled the antenna to the top of the hose tower, but sitting on a large wooden beam, now you can't hear anything at all. My goal is to get this outside on the top of the hose tower, which I'm hopefully going to do at the end of this week.

Station 3, I put one of the D130NJ antenna's on the roof (certainly not highest peak or anything, but on the roof still) and when someone transmits on the FD Ops 2 channel at Station 1 it locks into that channel, but I hear nothing. When someone in the next room keys up, nothing.

What is super strange is that they work great for Elgin/South Elgin, TriCom N & TriCom S, both which are on the same exact Kane County Simulcast site.

If anyone has anymore ideas, I'd appreciate it. Is it something being done differently at our dispatch center (QuadCom, 500 Elm Ridge Rd, Carpentersville) versus the other dispatch centers?

 

[wtp]

if someone transmits close enough to a scanner, it can go deaf.
it is called signal overload and with trunking they are transmitting on the input frequency which is different than the tower/output.

the trouble with simulcast is that with a better and/or higher antenna you could then 'hear' more than one tower and that is the problem.
as a human you can listen to someone talking with a small echo in their voice.
but with digital signals, your radio can not make any sense of the extra 1's and 0's it is now hearing (echo)
usually people then use stock antennas and even paper clips to decrease hearing other towers.

 

[werinshades]

The problem here is he's trying to listen to a simulcast system with a non-simulcast friendly scanner. Paper clips, standing on your head won't improve this. Yes..it says digital, phase 2 and you saved a couple hundred dollars. It won't be consistent until you get the SDS200. If you can return the 996P2 and use the money towards the right scanner for the right job. Save the money on all the better antennas, paper clips, tin foil and get the SDS200.

 

[RoninJoliet]

There is something weird about T102 directivity , I used to hear it perfect here in Joliet which is 25 miles away now here I can't get it at all since other depts have joined it... When I go up Randall Road to my daughter in So Elgin on a 325P2 it's in and out, at her home off Hopps Rd it's perfect....

 

[werinshades]

There is something weird about T102 directivity , I used to hear it perfect here in Joliet which is 25 miles away now here I can't get it at all since other depts have joined it... When I go up Randall Road to my daughter in So Elgin on a 325P2 it's in and out, at her home off Hopps Rd it's perfect....

As you're aware, it's a simulcast site and it could have been adjusted to accommodate the additional departments. You might have to break down and get an SDS series of scanners and many of the issues will disappear.

 

[Awesomeman92]

It doesn't sound like simulcast distortion as much as the receiver being desensed, for the lone reason that Elgin & TriCom work fine. If it was simulcast distortion then the problem would be the same on all talkgroups all the time.

 

[werinshades]

It doesn't sound like simulcast distortion as much as the receiver being desensed, for the lone reason that Elgin & TriCom work fine. If it was simulcast distortion then the problem would be the same on all talkgroups all the time.

I think Elgin and TriCom is on a different site? I'm sure the SDS100 would work better on those sites.

 

[Awesomeman92]

I think Elgin and TriCom is on a different site? I'm sure the SDS100 would work better on those sites.

No, all the same Kane Simulcast site. The 100/200 would work better if simulcast was the problem, but if Elgin & TC are coming in fine then it's not and he'd be spending $700 on a radio that will do the exact same thing more than likely.

Neither station you mentioned are super close to a transmitter site-little over a mile for station 1, little over a mile and a half for station 3-so you're probably not getting overloaded from that. I don't know if you'll know this or not, but do the stations have in-building bidirectional amplifiers? These normally would transmit signals coming from the outside too unless they were arranged like a mobile extender would be, OR was set up to only repeat relevant talkgroups (in this case, QuadCom Fire), and I'm not familiar enough with the infrastructure side of P25 to know if either of those are even possible or not.

Just to be clear with the OP, at BOTH locations the scanners work fine for Elgin & TriCom? Getting the antennas outside the building may help, it may not.

Very bizarre.

 

[werinshades]

No, all the same Kane Simulcast site. The 100/200 would work better if simulcast was the problem, but if Elgin & TC are coming in fine then it's not and he'd be spending $700 on a radio that will do the exact same thing more than likely.

Neither station you mentioned are super close to a transmitter site-little over a mile for station 1, little over a mile and a half for station 3-so you're probably not getting overloaded from that. I don't know if you'll know this or not, but do the stations have in-building bidirectional amplifiers? These normally would transmit signals coming from the outside too unless they were arranged like a mobile extender would be, OR was set up to only repeat relevant talkgroups (in this case, QuadCom Fire), and I'm not familiar enough with the infrastructure side of P25 to know if either of those are even possible or not.

Just to be clear with the OP, at BOTH locations the scanners work fine for Elgin & TriCom? Getting the antennas outside the building may help, it may not.

Very bizarre.

I'm still going with a simulcast issue...he might be missing transmissions on his non-simulcast scanner and don't realize it. Many of us understand the frustration and experienced it. Save the headaches. go with the best.