Hope this is the appropriate place for this. Can I get some advice on a good, fairly inexpensive trunking scanner that will pickup P25 Phase II broadcasts. Found out last night that my PRO-106 doesn't do the trick.
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- Thread starter acradiodoc
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doctordialtone
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I love my Uniden 325P2 and 996P2.
Here's a listing of scanner models:
Uniden Scanners - The RadioReference Wiki
I bought mine at ScannerMaster.
They'll work excellent as long as you don't have Simulcast Issues.
In that case, you'll need the SDS models.
Good luck!
Acradiodoc, make sure you plan ahead. If you don't have simulcast and don't plan to travel with your scanner, the above suggestions are great. If you travel or spend time in other areas, it highly likely you'll run into simulcast. If you can afford it, I'd future-proof it.
I see you are in Pinal County. If the database is correct, it looks like the Pinal County system does not use simulcast. That's unusual for a county system that is P25 Phase 2. If it isn't simulcast, then you could go with doc's recomendations, which are less expensive than the SDS scanners made for simulcast. You may want to consider moving this thread to the Arizona forum and ask specifically what others are using in Pinal County. Of course, even if Pinal County isn't simulcast, you may have issues if you travel to a simulcast area with a scanner that isn't fully compatible with simulcast.
oracavon
Member
Not sure what you want to listen to, but most of the talkgroups in the Pinal County system are encrypted (according to the RR database), so you won't be able to listen to them with any scanner. It probably isn't worth the money to get a new scanner just to listen to Animal Control and Casa Grande Fire. And if you're in Casa Grande, you're probably too far from either the Maricopa County or Pima County systems to get good reception from them (although I could be mistaken). On the other hand, if do you travel to either one of them at times, then you will need a radio which can handle simulcasting.
ka3aaa
Member
there are no cheap p-25 phase 2 scanners on the market so you mise well forget about them and get ready to spend anywhere from $400.00 and up on a scanner.
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Btt P25RX will do phase 2 and if you ever do have to deal with simulcast it will handle it amazingly. Plus it's way cheaper than a regular scanner at $259. A bit different to use but they work great.
P25RX Digital Police Receiver With Bluetooth Audio Support
The P25RX allows you to listen to unencrypted law-enforcement, fire department, and other agency's digital communications publicly available in your area. Unlike an old-school police scanner, the P25RX is an intelligent P25 Phase1 receiver that learns adjacent and alternate control channels...
bluetailtechnologies.com
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Actually it does. There are 11 sites in the system, and if you click on one of the site names and then on the license you'll see there are multiple towers for each site (simulcast). Given the huge geographic area involved, I'm not surprised that there are that many sites for a 800 MHz system.
But as has been pointed out, it looks like most traffic on the Phase II system is encrypted anyways, so no scanner will be able to monitor it.
@acradiodoc just looking at the database it would appear that Casa Grande police and fire may have moved (or be moving) to the new system and abandoning their analog frequencies. If that's the case, and the listings for their new talk groups are accurate (TE -- Phase II encrypted) then unfortunately you would appear to be out of luck as far as listening to them.
But in a simulcast system, each of those towers would have the same frequencies assigned. I wasn't seeing that. For example, if you go to FCC Callsign WQYJ635 (Pinal County, Arizona), you will see that the Casa Grande tower (Location 4) has its own set of frequencies that are different from the Florence tower, the Kelvin tower, etc. Only the mobile frequencies are repeated. That's not what I'm used to seeing on a license page for a simulcast system - usually the first tower has a set of frequencies, then the next tower repeats the same frequencies, etc. To be simulcast, you have to transmit on the same frequencies from multiple towers.
Good catch. I missed the fact that there are only 3 licenses for the 11 sites, and I didn't even look at the frequencies for each tower once I saw multiple towers listed on the licences.
So you're right ... not simulcast!
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