State Patrol? 2900 District

[JaxTeller]

Hi all!

Greetings from Detroit Lakes. Avid ham radio guy here. Picked up a BCD996XT from a local ham's estate. Been trying to figure this out, with fairly decent success.

So far:
System 1 - VHF frequencies from county. Works great.
System 2 - Airport
System 3 - Local repeater.
System 4 - Becker county. Not sure what I did, but plugged in the DL Control channel, and back up channel. I can hear the jail, dispatch, local police etc.
System 5 - I figured I'd put in State Patrol and this is where I am struggling. Cannot hear anything. I do not have a control frequency or anything to go with on this. How does one monitor the MSP? I'd like to hear district 2900 based here in DL?

Also is this the correct way to setup? Or do one "system" and punch in all VHF frequencies?

Any help appreciated!

 

[ofd8001]

It's workable - they are separate by "interest groups" so if you want to turn one thing off, but leave others on, you can do so easily.

You might want to see this page: https://dps.mn.gov/divisions/ecn/programs/armer/Pages/current-status.aspx and go to the ARMER sites map. It will download a PDF file with a map showing all the ARMER sites. Determine which site is closest to you.

Then go to: Allied Radio Matrix for Emergency Response (ARMER) Trunking System, Various, Minnesota - Scanner Frequencies and for the site on your System 5, assuming you've programmed it as P25 System, enter the control channel frequencies for the site that is closest to you.

Next for the Talkgroups, look farther down on the page and you'll see several TGIDs for the Detroit Lakes SP district. I'd download all of them. Probably would also be good to program the statewide Interoperability Talkgroups as well as those for your Zone. (Lots of interesting stuff on them, particularly L-TAC-1, occasionally). Might even be good to program all the Becker County talkgroups, though I suspect they have not fully migrated to ARMER, judging by reference to patches.

You'll have to have a separate System for ARMER - the scanner cannot mix trunked "stuff" and conventional "stuff" in the same system when you program it.

Unfortunately my monitoring of this area is for about an hour or two each "just passing through". So with the somewhat recent consolidation of state patrol dispatching, I don't know whether Detroit Lakes district is still on their talkgroups. (Having said that, they were last July when I was passing through).

 

[wogggieee]

The state patrol talk groups should show up on the DL control channel you have programmed as system 4. If you're not hearing them it could be that you have ID SCAN mode turned on rather than ID SEARCH mode. If i remember correctly pressing the SCAN button while its scanning will switch the mode. This should allow you to hear everything that comes up on that control channel.

 

[blue5011]

Greetings from Detroit Lakes. Avid ham radio guy here. Picked up a BCD996XT from a local ham's estate. Been trying to figure this out, with fairly decent success.

Download Freescan and get a programming cable for the scanner.

I have three 996XT's, using one at home to log hits daily. Using Freescan will simplify programming.

I have had people come by w/ HomePatrols and Radio Shack scanners which I cannot even begin to figure out. The Sentinel software is so archaic, it is near useless (to me - my opinion).

I got a copy of a Freescan file from someone here on this forum and have since modified it for my use.

Never did learn how to "load" anything manually -- only used Freescan.

 

[JaxTeller]

It's workable - they are separate by "interest groups" so if you want to turn one thing off, but leave others on, you can do so easily.

You might want to see this page: https://dps.mn.gov/divisions/ecn/programs/armer/Pages/current-status.aspx and go to the ARMER sites map. It will download a PDF file with a map showing all the ARMER sites. Determine which site is closest to you.

Then go to: Allied Radio Matrix for Emergency Response (ARMER) Trunking System, Various, Minnesota - Scanner Frequencies and for the site on your System 5, assuming you've programmed it as P25 System, enter the control channel frequencies for the site that is closest to you.

Next for the Talkgroups, look farther down on the page and you'll see several TGIDs for the Detroit Lakes SP district. I'd download all of them. Probably would also be good to program the statewide Interoperability Talkgroups as well as those for your Zone. (Lots of interesting stuff on them, particularly L-TAC-1, occasionally). Might even be good to program all the Becker County talkgroups, though I suspect they have not fully migrated to ARMER, judging by reference to patches.

You'll have to have a separate System for ARMER - the scanner cannot mix trunked "stuff" and conventional "stuff" in the same system when you program it.

Unfortunately my monitoring of this area is for about an hour or two each "just passing through". So with the somewhat recent consolidation of state patrol dispatching, I don't know whether Detroit Lakes district is still on their talkgroups. (Having said that, they were last July when I was passing through).

Boom! That worked. Thank you, sir.


I did not think that they control channel would be the same frequency! I was thinking it would be a different nnumber since, it is a different agency. I program this before being gone most of the day, and it seems like it is working. I just did the DL frequency, since that is closest site to me.

 

[JaxTeller]

The state patrol talk groups should show up on the DL control channel you have programmed as system 4. If you're not hearing them it could be that you have ID SCAN mode turned on rather than ID SEARCH mode. If i remember correctly pressing the SCAN button while its scanning will switch the mode. This should allow you to hear everything that comes up on that control channel.

Got it. I set mine to search, as I was picking up White Earth Tribal and other agencies. No interest in those... but, thanks for the help. I wondered what the scan/search button did

 

[ofd8001]

Glad you got it working. The Minnesota ARMER system was created as a statewide, shared radio system. So that means you could be hearing state government units (SP, DOT, etc.) and local users on the same set of frequencies.

Unfortunately that part of the the state was in the last phase. Plus a lot of local governments don't have the funding to fully migrate to the system. Radios to work on that system are probably $3K per unit.

 

[jason_58201]

You'll also notice that in the evenings and weekends they patch together 3200 and 2900 together so you will hear a wee bit more traffic in evenings and weekends because you are essentially listening to about 1/5 of the entire state then.