South Bend, IN - Do I Need a New Scanner?

[gunrights]

Haven't had much of a need in some years to listen to my Uniden trunk tracker 3. But like most of the country crime has escalated with us hearing gunshots day and night and the police sometimes not responding to call. We would like to know more about what's going on and so we have been listening to the streaming of our local departments.

I have not kept up with the technology and quite a few years and I was wondering if my Uniden trunk tracker 3 is still good. I know I'm not able to pick up the local police anymore. So the question is this radio even capable of picking up South Bend Police Department anymore or should I get a new radio? Is there any resale value for the old one radio?

 

[RaleighGuy]

That is an analog scanner and according to the database South Bend is using the Indiana Project Hoosier SAFE-T P25 system (digital), so the answer is you will need to upgrade to hear local public safety. As for use of old radio, it is still good for many things, like air, ham, racing, as well as other bands that are still in use on. They sell on E-Bay for $75-100.

Indiana Project Hoosier SAFE-T Trunking System, Statewide, Multi-State

Indiana Project Hoosier SAFE-T Trunking System Profile

www.radioreference.com

 

[AK9R]

This RadioReference Wiki article may give you an idea of what scanner models to look for:

APCO Project 25 - The RadioReference Wiki

wiki.radioreference.com

 

[west-pac]

Haven't had much of a need in some years to listen to my Uniden trunk tracker 3. But like most of the country crime has escalated with us hearing gunshots day and night and the police sometimes not responding to call. We would like to know more about what's going on and so we have been listening to the streaming of our local departments.

I have not kept up with the technology and quite a few years and I was wondering if my Uniden trunk tracker 3 is still good. I know I'm not able to pick up the local police anymore. So the question is this radio even capable of picking up South Bend Police Department anymore or should I get a new radio? Is there any resale value for the old one radio?

Many county fire depts still page on analog VHF. I hear the automated dispatcher from your area almost daily.

 

[gunrights]

So I did end up purchasing a new BCD325P2 this week. I used ProScan to program in the local channels that I wanted and all seems well except when I turn the scanner on there appears to be about a 10-minute delay before I receive anything. I have checked the channels that I programed by listening to the Internet stream and there is traffic I'm just not receiving it.

Could there be anything in the programming that I did that would cause this? it's consistently about 10 minutes every time.

 

[jonwienke]

What site(s) are you monitoring? Some of them are simulcast, and conventional scanners don't handle simulcast well. A SDS model may be needed if one or more sites in your area are simulcast.

 

[tvengr]

Give this file a try and see how it works.

 

[gunrights]

Give this file a try and see how it works.

Thank you, I will give it try.

 

[gunrights]

Give this file a try and see how it works.

So I noticed in your file there are only four frequencies. I had been using 15, so you are using the one primary and three alternates. Is that all I need to use? If so why are there other frequencies?

 

[INDY72]

So I noticed in your file there are only four frequencies. I had been using 15, so you are using the one primary and three alternates. Is that all I need to use? If so why are there other frequencies?

Control CH ONLY scanning. Its all you need for MOST systems. The other CH are for VOICE. Most scanners do not need all of the freqs to trunk track them. Only on an Harris system do you need all of them as the Control CH rotates through all of them. The scanner will follow the voice traffic and show you the freqs etc. It uses the data from the CC's to do this similar to how an actual system radio does.

 

[INDY72]

For more data on how a trunking system works, please check out the wiki. It has excellent data for trunking 101 etc.

 

[west-pac]

Only on an Harris system do you need all of them as the Control CH rotates through all of them.

The American Electric Power P25 Phase 2 system is reported to be a Harris system, but I monitor 2 sites near me with only the listed Control Channel from when they were discovered. Over the past month I've only seen one site rotate to an ACC one time. On UT the MFID comes up as M/A-COM, isn't that what Harris systems come up as?

 

[INDY72]

The American Electric Power P25 Phase 2 system is reported to be a Harris system, but I monitor 2 sites near me with only the listed Control Channel from when they were discovered. Over the past month I've only seen one site rotate to an ACC one time. On UT the MFID comes up as M/A-COM, isn't that what Harris systems come up as?

That is a rare one then. Most of the Harris P25-ip's rotate through all the frequencies, which was annoying as heck til we figured it out. Makes scanning them a pain having to program all the freqs in. Motorola's, and EFJ's etc usually only use 2 to 4 as CC's and rotate maybe 2 of them. Unless they need to do changes etc, then they will flip to another set while they do things. A few actually will rotate all 4.