Scanning on multiple systems

[emanuel32804]

Hi all,

I've been working on my scanner codeplug and I've come across this option in the scanlist settings. "Multi system scan". My local county is big enough that they have multiple towers, and therefore multiple control frequencies. I'm wondering if I can add multiple trunking systems, each with their designated personality to cover the towers I'm interested in, and then use the multi system scan to effectively act like smartzone. One thing to note is that my system is simulcast. Does that mean that all TGs are broadcast at all sites?

Thanks,
Emanuel

 

[chrismol1]

Multisystem scan allows you to enter talkgroups from more than 1 system in a scan list. I have a 15 member scan list with multi system scan with 3 systems. Works ok. I'll remove TGs by scan program so it becomes 2 systems. You can change the system search time which determines how long it will stay on each control channel. Is your system simulcast, a simulcast system will carry all TGs on that simulcast control channel. If the other control channel carries the TG's so that they're on both control channels full time, if so you can drop 1 system since its redundant

 

[emanuel32804]

This is my local system here. My tower is the Orlando simulcast, but I'm also interested in some other talk groups like the convention center. It has it's own tower and RR doesn't show simulcast on that one. Does that mean that the Orlando tower broadcasts all TGs but the cc tower does not? I certainly don't seem to be getting all the TGs I have programmed in. Then of course, there is also just a tower labeled "simulcast". Maybe I should try just that one.

 

[chrismol1]

You'd have to scan the system or find out from the florida forum whats up with each site to find out what talkgroups and if theres a common TG thats full time on each site. Usually sites broadcast traffic when a unit is subscribed to that site, that lets the controller know where to send the traffic to which site and conserve frequency usage among the system

Click the name of the system and it will bring up the site FCC licenses, click the licenses and it will show you the locations of the towers. From this with the knowledge of the operating area of the agency you want to monitor and of the locations of towers, you can figure out which site it'd likely be on

 

[emanuel32804]

Gotcha. Now my other question was in essence reproducing the smartzone tower switching by just making a duplicate system/personality for each tower and it's respective frequency. Then I would make my scanlist multi system and put TGs from both personalities. This would allow roaming between zones wouldn't it?

 

[chrismol1]

Yea you can roam if its set to smartzone, and the radio will roam to adjacent sites with better signal but..... I have smartzone systems setup as Disabled, (smartnet), as 2 smartnet systems instead of 1 smartzone, that way it wont switch sites and keeps you on the site you want because certain talkgroups in my case are not on the same sites but some are, so I omit that 2nd system sometimes in efort of quicker scanning. It will roam to adjacent sites if its on smartzone and detects a better site and the radio may go silent because it switches to a better site but that may not always be the site a real radio is affiliated to, because the adjacent sites are typically broadcasted on control channel of each site so it doesnt matter if the other control channel is or isnt in the freq list, it will find it from the CC data stream, thats how the smartzone system will work. but with NAS you can't register on the system so you might miss traffic unless those radios are registered/affiliated on that site.... unless talkgroups that you want are on both sites. yea you got right there, 2 systems and make them disabled and multi scan will yea I suppose it will function like smartzone in multi scan without the actual smartzone feature working. I really cant give you a concrete answer cause I dont know how the talkgroups are setup on that system

 

[emanuel32804]

Great. Now I noticed you mentioned that you have 15 TGs in a scanlist. How did you get past the 10 trunked member limit?

 

[WX4JCW]

Best Practice County Talkgroups on the "Simulcast" and the Orlando Talkgroups on the "Orlando Simulcast" if you don't want to miss anything

 

[emanuel32804]

Ah another local, thanks for the tip!

 

[WX4JCW]

If you run unitrunker you can see how it works, mostly it really affects Medcom and Law Enforcement which the latter is encrypted so not a huge deal, most of OFD will be on both OFD 1 and 2 and maybe 3, but some of the OCFR stuff won’t be on the Orlando site

 

[chrismol1]

Great. Now I noticed you mentioned that you have 15 TGs in a scanlist. How did you get past the 10 trunked member limit?

Hex edit patport, (copiedfrom w3axl). Switch scan from talkgroup to conventional and back and it will stick

CPS	Hex Offset	Original Value	New Value
Portable	0x009301A1	0A	0F

 

[emanuel32804]

Chrismol:
That worked beautifully, thanks!

Jason:
I've noticed that OFD and OCFR are mostly on both, but I primarily use the "simulcast" one. Medcom is one that has been seemingly very quiet for me up until last night, but I did finally start hearing some of it. I have a number of other TGs programmed in from OCCC, UCF, Lynx, OUC, and OIA and I haven't heard anything from any of them aside from Lynx. OCCC apparently has it's own tower and it's not labeled simulcast, so I'm wondering if it just isn't something I'm going to be able to pick up since I'm out of range.