SFPD Scanning

Status
Not open for further replies.

psmastaslick

Member
Joined
Dec 8, 2009
Messages
3
Hi. I am a beginner at radio scanning and have a question. I am using Freescan with a Uniden BCD396xt. I downloaded the RR database information for all of San Francisco. When I put my radio on SFPD A8 to listen, I hear nothing and the radio flashes with "Finding CtrlChan". I cannot hear anything on any channels.

What am I doing wrong?
 

Eng74

Member
Joined
Dec 19, 2002
Messages
2,035
Location
Kern County, CA
Where are you at? You need to be near SF to pick up there system. I can just pick it sometimes in Foster City when I am up there.
 

psmastaslick

Member
Joined
Dec 8, 2009
Messages
3
Thank you for the reply. I am actually in Burlingame. I moved over to the other side of my house and can get 1-2 bars on the display and it finds a lot of the channels. The only problem I am having and I am willing to bet it's due to reception, is sometimes in the middle of people talking, the radio cuts out and then maybe 1 second or more later it resumes. Not quite sure why that is.
 

dougr1252

Member
Joined
Sep 29, 2007
Messages
264
Location is definitely important if you're not actually in SF. East and North Bay is a lot better than the Peninsula. Foster City sticks out though, so you can hear it over the water. Try testing the scanner outside, or on your roof if it's convenient. The "CtrlChan" message probably means you're out of range though.

A minor possibility is that you somehow got both SF systems programmed in the same place in your scanner. SF has a Public Safety system (Site 001- DECS) and a Public Works system (Site 002 - PWRS). To monitor SFPD, you should have only the frequencies from Site 001 in their own system. These are the freqs that start with 866.0500, 866.2500, etc.
 

cousinkix1953

Member
Joined
Oct 14, 2007
Messages
518
Try using an outdoor 800 mhz antenna if you can pick up the SFPD system, while sitting on the roof or a second story deck. Most of these are small, hardly even noticeable. They aren't as likely to come down in a wind storm like a big CB radio antenna...
 
Last edited:

Eng74

Member
Joined
Dec 19, 2002
Messages
2,035
Location
Kern County, CA
Ok anyone haveing a problem with the 346XT or the 396XT in San Francisco? Since I did the last update for the radio ID's they will scan fine for awhile then when one transmission ends on a TG that I have programed It will show that TG still and get ones that I do not have programed. I have it set to ID Scan so I think there might be a bug in the firmware update.
 

mikegun

Member
Joined
Jan 4, 2010
Messages
3
Location
denver co
Re sfpd scan

I am new to this, am am ret SFPD, now in Colorado and I would like to thank whoever Got SFPD on the Internet,it makes my day as i can listen from Colorado. hope i posted right.
 

psmastaslick

Member
Joined
Dec 8, 2009
Messages
3
Location is definitely important if you're not actually in SF. East and North Bay is a lot better than the Peninsula. Foster City sticks out though, so you can hear it over the water. Try testing the scanner outside, or on your roof if it's convenient. The "CtrlChan" message probably means you're out of range though.

A minor possibility is that you somehow got both SF systems programmed in the same place in your scanner. SF has a Public Safety system (Site 001- DECS) and a Public Works system (Site 002 - PWRS). To monitor SFPD, you should have only the frequencies from Site 001 in their own system. These are the freqs that start with 866.0500, 866.2500, etc.

I am going to have to see if this is the issue. The radio works great when I am closer to SF and in some areas around me. But I can now hear the Fire department on what is programmed in my radio as A8 (SFPD Co's G,H,I). I am not sure how I would have programmed it that way but you never know =).
 

Fifty150

Member
Joined
Apr 16, 2010
Messages
6
New Guy Here

I was listening to San Francisco Public Safety Live Audio Feed, and today when I logged on, it said Status: Permanently Offline.

I kind of got used to the radio traffic in the background as i worked on my computer.

I last owned a scanner back when Fonzie was still on television, SF was using PIC & Low Band, and all the channels were in the 400 range. So listening to the new radio system will require new equipment.

Where do I start? Is there a decent shop in SF? The last time I remembered buying a scanner, the local Radio Shack sold me the unit & programmed it. These days, you go into a Radio Shack & the clerks don't know anything about the products that they sell & you usually know more than they do. Any particular brands & models I should search for online? Is it better to shop online through eBay, Craig's List, & Amazon.com?

I'm a simple guy. I don't want to know too much about it. That's why I liked the simplicity of simply going to a web page with a live broadcast feed. I just want to buy something pre-programmed & ready to use - a "turn key" scanner. Sort of like all those people who buy cars, but know nothing about internal combustion engines.
 

rjyoung

Member
Joined
Aug 5, 2007
Messages
56
Location
California
I was just reading your comments, and would like to know which system I should be selecting on my396T? I thought I had it right, but while in the City over the weekend I did not hear any PD or FD radio action.
 

Eng74

Member
Joined
Dec 19, 2002
Messages
2,035
Location
Kern County, CA
It is an anolog system. if you are programming with software set it for both digital and anolog, can't hurt if some of the TG's might be digital.
 

iToast

Member
Joined
Aug 21, 2005
Messages
1
I am new to Trunked scanning and I would like to learn how to program SFPD and SFFD into my BCD396XT using Freescan. If there are any others here using this combination and may be willing to share their freescan file, I would greatly appreciate it.
 

kma371

QRT
Joined
Feb 20, 2001
Messages
6,204
Wirelessly posted (iPhone 3GS: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8B117 Safari/6531.22.7)

iToast said:
I am new to Trunked scanning and I would like to learn how to program SFPD and SFFD into my BCD396XT using Freescan. If there are any others here using this combination and may be willing to share their freescan file, I would greatly appreciate it.

You don't need a file. You can import directly from the database if you want.
 

mysticzt4r

Member
Premium Subscriber
Joined
Jun 18, 2010
Messages
14
I was listening to San Francisco Public Safety Live Audio Feed, and today when I logged on, it said Status: Permanently Offline.

I kind of got used to the radio traffic in the background as i worked on my computer.

I last owned a scanner back when Fonzie was still on television, SF was using PIC & Low Band, and all the channels were in the 400 range. So listening to the new radio system will require new equipment.

Where do I start? Is there a decent shop in SF? The last time I remembered buying a scanner, the local Radio Shack sold me the unit & programmed it. These days, you go into a Radio Shack & the clerks don't know anything about the products that they sell & you usually know more than they do. Any particular brands & models I should search for online? Is it better to shop online through eBay, Craig's List, & Amazon.com?

I'm a simple guy. I don't want to know too much about it. That's why I liked the simplicity of simply going to a web page with a live broadcast feed. I just want to buy something pre-programmed & ready to use - a "turn key" scanner. Sort of like all those people who buy cars, but know nothing about internal combustion engines.

I am in the same situation, last I bought a scanner from Radio Shack they had crystal. ;)

Anyway I recently getting into it and I decide to go with the Uniden Home Patrol 1 scanner which is suppose to be the most user friendly scanner make so far.

Mine arrives tomorrow so I will find out how easy it is actually to use.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top