SDS100 not working on Nextgen in Imperial County

[desertscan]

My SDS100 not working when I program by zip on Nextgen for Imperial County. San Diego works but not Imperial County. Non of the repeaters in Imperial County have signal except the El Centro repeater located at the Sheriff station and that has good signal but picks up not one single talkgroup. East Simulcast works just fine. Now when I program it myself on a favorites list everything works just fine and the repeaters within range now have signal. Talkgroups do come in just fine but I need to Program the names of the talkgroups. Would anyone happen to know why the preprogrammed database by the sentinel software does not work for Imperial County?

 

[jonwienke]

The database has Location Control turned on. It has to, or you'd be scanning everything in North America. If the location data for the sites or departments is incorrect, or you live a long distance from the geographic center of your zip code, Location Control will turn off stuff that's actually in range.

Get your actual location coordinates from Google maps and program those instead of a ZIP code. Try setting Range in the scanner menu to 30-40 miles, and hold on the nextgen system. Better yet, look at the system in ProScan, where you can look at the location settings on a Google map instead of just seeing numbers.

 

[desertscan]

The database has Location Control turned on. It has to, or you'd be scanning everything in North America. If the location data for the sites or departments is incorrect, or you live a long distance from the geographic center of your zip code, Location Control will turn off stuff that's actually in range.

Get your actual location coordinates from Google maps and program those instead of a ZIP code. Try setting Range in the scanner menu to 30-40 miles, and hold on the nextgen system. Better yet, look at the system in ProScan, where you can look at the location settings on a Google map instead of just seeing numbers.

Im not an expert but I know enough to check the settings and other features to get it to work. I have everything set the same unless I missed something. like I said preprogrammed (program by zip) or by sentinel software does not pickup anything. only Sheriff repeater and San Diego East simulcast have signal. Brawley, Calexico, Superstition, Hendrix Peak and Black Mtn repeaters have no signal bars. I hear nothing by preprogrammed programed except on the East simulcast that works just fine. BUT I programmed a favorites list myself entered all information for the sites manually and it works just fine all mentioned sites are working. I have switched to and from zip and favorites list checked all settings I can check and it dont work on Zip or Sentinel programming it only works with the favorites list ??? oh, yes I have ID search on range is at 50 miles.
I will look at this with ProScan

Thank you

 

[MisterLongwire]

I have a feeling you are monitoring RCS versus the NextGen, as I have said that to the mods here. Regardless of zip code you put in, the RCS will still be in there. Don't know what more to say

 

[Robertolson]

Zip code is a temporary fix, until you build your favorite list......you have way more control over your scanner with building your own favorite list...... sounds to me the zip code is scanning the old smart zone ?? Who knows... just one uncheck box could mess everything up in zip code mode.

 

[dbelleperc]

I just downloaded Sentinel and it has all the old frequencies and talkgroups. I clicked the update systems or whatever button and everything popped up. It now says the date of the update on the bottom left.

 

[jimbrogers]

What area do you live Desertscan?

 

[gmclam]

It sounds like you programmed your zip code into the radio out of the box. You should at least run Sentinel, update the DB, update the radio and try again. I haven't used the zip feature, nor the DB for that matter; running entirely from Favorites. But that definitely has a steep curve to get started.

To try something quick, enter your lat & long location and set the distance to the largest reasonable value you can. Often a "closer tower" is not where the best signal comes from.

 

[inigo88]

Agreed with all the above. The database in the scanner out of the box only has the old RCS system. I had to update the database in Sentinel as well and upload to the scanner in order to get the updated Nextgen system.