Scanning Ohio MARCS-IP - Confused

[Colin9690]

I have noticed that I can pick up CPD Zones 3 and 5 pretty well up here in northern Franklin County. But only those zones. I haven't ever heard a peep out of Zones 1 and 4, for example. Why would that be?

I live about 1 mile from the tower at CFD Station 33 on Lazelle Road. Same thing with CFD, I can hear certain TGs, and some I never hear even though I know they are active (such as 10 FIRE). I am using the Whistler TRX-2 by the way.

 

[northernsummit]

I have noticed that I can pick up CPD Zones 3 and 5 pretty well up here in northern Franklin County. But only those zones. I haven't ever heard a peep out of Zones 1 and 4, for example. Why would that be?

I live about 1 mile from the tower at CFD Station 33 on Lazelle Road. Same thing with CFD, I can hear certain TGs, and some I never hear even though I know they are active (such as 10 FIRE). I am using the Whistler TRX-2 by the way.

I'm going to take a stab at this but I live in Summit County and this may be wrong. In Franklin County there are five separate sites in the RRDB for Columbus:

Columbus City Simul
Columbus MARCS Simul
Franklin Co Simul
Bixby (Groveport)
Discovery (Grove City)

Not being from down there and almost never listening to their radios I can't tell you which sites are used for which, but the first two in that list have a substantial number of voice channels and probably cover the largest footprint. If you are listening to only a subset of those five sites and the Zones you're interested are not affiliating with the sites you are listening to, then you won't hear any of their traffic.

...now after scrolling down to the talk groups to find the Zones you spoke of I found this for Columbus: All talkgroups operate on the Columbus City tower.

Are you listening to that site specifically? Hopefully someone who listens to Columbus will come in and point out what I'm missing and help you out.

 

[wa8pyr]

I have noticed that I can pick up CPD Zones 3 and 5 pretty well up here in northern Franklin County. But only those zones. I haven't ever heard a peep out of Zones 1 and 4, for example. Why would that be?

I live about 1 mile from the tower at CFD Station 33 on Lazelle Road. Same thing with CFD, I can hear certain TGs, and some I never hear even though I know they are active (such as 10 FIRE). I am using the Whistler TRX-2 by the way.

Well, for starters you're using a TRX-2, and even though you're really close to the Lazelle tower, you could still be having simulcast issues.

Apart from that I'd say check your programming. Columbus has their radios set up to always use the Columbus City tower only except in certain rare circumstances, so you should always be able to hear city agencies on the city site.

I've never had a lick of trouble picking up any of the Columbus stuff on that site.

Also, try building a new codeplug by importing from the library built in to the EZ-Scan software rather than typing it in manually or importing; I found with the TRX-1 that when I built the codeplug manually it didn't perform too well, but when I built it by importing from the EZ-Scan library it worked fine. I was never able to figure out why it was happening, but I now build all my TRX-1 codeplugs by importing from the EZ-Scan library and everything works fine.

 

[Swipesy]

Of course Tom, as you know, if you do the direct import from the Library then you cannot export the EZScan config to a .csv file to be able to modify. All modifications have to be done directly in EZScan. I have not had the "not work so well" issue with my Legacy 800. Maybe it is a Trx thingy.

 

[tvengr]

Even if you have multiple sites programmed, the TRX-2 will scan only the site with the best signal. Franklin County has 5 sites. The other zones are probably affiliating with the other sites. What you need to do is setup 5 systems each with all of the talkgroups with each system using a different single site. Assign each system to a separate scan list. With all scan lists enabled, you will scan all 5 sites. You will be able to select each site individually to determine which zones are affiliating with each site.

 

[Colin9690]

Thanks for the insight guys. I'm going to make separate systems for each site, with all the talkgroups assigned to each one. Fingers crossed.

Well, for starters you're using a TRX-2

Yep...finally upgrading to either the SDS-100 / 200, haven't made up my mind yet.

 

[WX4JCW]

Best bet for CPD is the Columbus City Simulcast site they are pretty much dedicated to that

 

[wa8pyr]

Of course Tom, as you know, if you do the direct import from the Library then you cannot export the EZScan config to a .csv file to be able to modify. All modifications have to be done directly in EZScan. I have not had the "not work so well" issue with my Legacy 800. Maybe it is a Trx thingy.

The critical part to import from the library is the system itself and the desired sites, and at least one talkgroup. Talkgroups can be imported from a spreadsheet after that, so you can do any talkgroup name edits desired.

If you want to enter a system manually, be my guest; just be prepared for it not to work very well.

Even if you have multiple sites programmed, the TRX-2 will scan only the site with the best signal. Franklin County has 5 sites. The other zones are probably affiliating with the other sites. What you need to do is setup 5 systems each with all of the talkgroups with each system using a different single site. Assign each system to a separate scan list. With all scan lists enabled, you will scan all 5 sites. You will be able to select each site individually to determine which zones are affiliating with each site.

As noted earlier, the only site the OP needs to be concerned with in this instance is the Columbus City site. Apart from the City of Columbus, most suburbs also use the Columbus City site. Only a few use the Columbus MARCS site.

 

[Bswartz95]

Thanks for the insight guys. I'm going to make separate systems for each site, with all the talkgroups assigned to each one. Fingers crossed.


Yep...finally upgrading to either the SDS-100 / 200, haven't made up my mind yet.

I live in eastern Franklin County and the SDS100 solved most of the simulcast issues I was having with the BCD436. I have Columbus City and MARCS as separate systems (sharing "Favorites 1" on my scanner). All the CPD Zones come in clear on the Columbus City system. I attached my "departments" list. Almost everything after my CFD departments comes across the MARCS system.

Scanner Favorites

docs.google.com

 

[Colin9690]

I live in eastern Franklin County and the SDS100 solved most of the simulcast issues I was having with the BCD436. I have Columbus City and MARCS as separate systems (sharing "Favorites 1" on my scanner). All the CPD Zones come in clear on the Columbus City system. I attached my "departments" list. Almost everything after my CFD departments comes across the MARCS system.

Scanner Favorites

docs.google.com

Awesome, thank you ! And yes, the TRX-2 is horrible with simulcast. I know it all depends on everyone's individual situation, but I have never been able to solve simulcast distortion with the TRX. Thanks again.

 

[amcferrin90]

I have noticed that I can pick up CPD Zones 3 and 5 pretty well up here in northern Franklin County. But only those zones. I haven't ever heard a peep out of Zones 1 and 4, for example. Why would that be?

I live about 1 mile from the tower at CFD Station 33 on Lazelle Road. Same thing with CFD, I can hear certain TGs, and some I never hear even though I know they are active (such as 10 FIRE). I am using the Whistler TRX-2 by the way.

If you're only hearing a couple city talk groups on the Ohio MARCS cluster, that's because there's a radio affiliated to the Ohio cluster on those talk groups that are probably not city radios but other police departments monitoring those talk groups to know what's happening in neighboring zones. It's been a couple years but I was hearing CPD zone 1 out east of Granville on MARCS once. If you were to run one of the control channel decoding apps and filter for the CPD talk groups, I bet you could catch an affiliation or deaffiliation and see the radio ID. That would give you a clue maybe.