State Patrol Channnels

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winsongs

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Good Day,
Attempting to download State patrol ARMER channels and am overwhelmed with information. I can find the groups but there are no separate listing for the sites. Everything for the state of MN is listed. Where can I find the break out for State Patrol only?
Thanks for the help!
 
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kb0nly

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What part of the state are you in? Only parts of the state are actually on ARMER at this point, the system just isn't done yet... Some of the sites listed in the database aren't even on the air yet either!

And unfortunately the database isn't well organized in my opinion. Would be nice if it was organized by county, so one could look at the county they are interested in and see the sites in that county.

However you can look at the site maps online, either on the ARMER website or through the links in the MN Wiki or the database and then find your county on the map and then find where the towers are in your county. From there you have to find the towers by the same name in the list on the database and program those in.

http://www.srb.state.mn.us/pdf/ARMER Site Map 2010-02-12.pdf

And again depending on where you are you might not even have all the traffic on ARMER yet. Down here we are only just getting towers on the air in a neighboring county, i have been listening with ID Search since none of the talkgroup numbers are known for the area yet, but all i have heard so far is the radio tech talkgroups.

And you won't find a state patrol only thing other than the district map, in places that they are on ARMER then are just assigned the talkgroup.
 
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winsongs

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I see that I just stumbled into a convoluted mess.
I live in Anoka but travel to Duluth quite frequently. If I understand your instructions I will need to find a Site in each County I pass through and set that up in my 396xt as a System for each County with the State Patrol Groups under each site.
How would the Bear in the Air communicate in all of these counties?
I do appreciate the help.
This can get pretty complicated when you look at at all the System frequencies listed.
Thanks again.
Have a good day.
 
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kb0nly

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I see that I just stumbled into a convoluted mess.
I live in Anoka but travel to Duluth quite frequently. If I understand your instructions I will need to find a Site in each County I pass through and set that up in my 396xt as a System for each County with the State Patrol Groups under each site.
How would the Bear in the Air communicate in all of these counties?
I do appreciate the help.
This can get pretty complicated when you look at at all the System frequencies listed.
Thanks again.
Have a good day.

LOL... Yes it is a freakin MESS... I have family up in Two Harbors and the last time i went up i got frustrated and just shut off the scanner.. Why? Because its constantly flipped back and forth between ARMER sites and conventional systems right now.

Between Anoka and Duluth is a lot to cover... Best i can suggest is to program in each county, and all the towers for each county, that you would be passing through. Then also have a bank with the Statewide State Patrol frequencies and District 2700 frequencies for Duluth. If you go very far North of the Duluth then you also need to put in the District 3100 frequencies.

Then you would also need a bank of all the current conventional frequencies still being used. For example i have a friend who is an LEO in Pine County, they have ARMER sites coming online up there but they are not on the system yet, so if you listen to the ARMER site in Pine County you won't hear much but MNDOT and a few others that are on up there. It sounds like the SO should be on there later this year or early next year.

MN is a bugger to scan right now if your on the move, if your stationary in one place its not too bad to keep track of, but driving across state is just a headache for listening.
 

wogggieee

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Duluth SP is still conventional, so programming ARMER north of the cities will not get you what you want.
 

winsongs

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Yep, they call this progress.
Anyhow knOnly, thanks for your insight. It is appreciated.
 

mmtstc

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The Bear in the Air usually uses the frequency or talkgroup of the agency that they are working with or one of the P Tac, L Tac or S Tacs.

what kind of scanner are you using? there are a handful of people who dont mind sharing their scanner files with others and someone is bound to have a program that they are actively using and dont mind sharing...

Duluth SP rebroadcasts the dispatch end of their VHF channel on ARMER TG 36500
 

ofd8001

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Sounds like you have an excellent opportunity to make good use of the GPS function on your scanner (presuming you have one with that feature). I've traveled all the way from Louisville to East Grand Fork and let my GPS turn on conventional systems and P25 sites whenever I got in range. Just like cruise control.
 

mmtstc

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And unfortunately the database isn't well organized in my opinion. Would be nice if it was organized by county, so one could look at the county they are interested in and see the sites in that county.

Would it be helpful to add in an Item to every county's wiki page going over the most useful public safety frequencies or talkgroups? Maybe the 10 most useful items for the rural counties...

I'm not volunteering to do all the work on it, but i would set up every county for people to enter it into the Wiki...

I'm thinking that trying to tackle counties like Hennepin would be silly and a waste of time with as many different PSAPs and independently operating agencies there are in some of those counties...
 
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kb0nly

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Would it be helpful to add in an Item to every county's wiki page going over the most useful public safety frequencies or talkgroups? Maybe the 10 most useful items for the rural counties...

I'm not volunteering to do all the work on it, but i would set up every county for people to enter it into the Wiki...

I'm thinking that trying to tackle counties like Hennepin would be silly and a waste of time with as many different PSAPs and independently operating agencies there are in some of those counties...

I was thinking about something like that also... Maybe a section on each counties Wiki where we can post as the system progresses... It wouldn't have to be a duplicate of the database, for the counties still on conventional systems maybe just a comment that the county is still on conventional? And then as these counties go onto ARMER could we maybe put it on the database page for each county, like an ARMER section with the map of the county showing the tower locations and then list the frequencies for the tower and the talkgroups?

The current ARMER statewide page just isn't well organized. I could volunteer some time to edit each counties database page if necessary? I'm thinking below the conventional frequencies another table showing the tower names, site number, frequencies. And then below that a list of the talkgroups for that specific county.

Sound reasonable??
 

mmtstc

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Makes sense... NDRADIONUT is the DB admin and he is who you would wanna talk to bout database related stuff..., but im all for making the wiki more useful... i also think that will augment the travel reference wiki article that i am working on... im working all day tomorrow in south central minnesota and by proxy will not be very busy (except making my car really shiny), so ill have to do some brainstorming and will toss you an email or PM or something...
 
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kb0nly

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Ok, i will be hanging around most of this weekend i think, at least so far nothing scheduled but something could pop up yet.

I was looking at the PDF file from the ARMER website, i could easily export that state map to a image file and crop out each county to make an ARMER tower site map for each county. Would take some time but would look nice in the end.

Take my county for example, Lincoln, the database info will all pretty much be obsolete after ARMER. I think there is maybe one or two conventional frequencies listed that will remain. Even the school buses are talking about going to ARMER now.
 

NDRADIONUT

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"The current ARMER statewide page just isn't well organized. I could volunteer some time to edit each counties database page if necessary? I'm thinking below the conventional frequencies another table showing the tower names, site number, frequencies. And then below that a list of the talkgroups for that specific county."

ANY IDEAS OF HOW TO BETTER ORGANIZE IT ?
THE ARMER TALKGROUPS ARE A MESS TO REORGANIZE IN ANY LARGE SCALE.....
WHEN I STARTED HALF OF THE CURRENT STUFF WAS ALREADY THERE SO I KINF OF FOLLOWED ALONG WITH WHAT WAS STARTED.....
 
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kb0nly

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Not really sure the exact best way to handle it... The hardest part for me down here is no talkgroup info is know yet for the counties, so i don't know how much table space would be needed to organize the talkgroups...

I think the database as a minimum should have a site map for each county so people dont have to keep asking where the towers are, and then just a list of talkgroups in place of the conventional frequencies table on there now, well once the changeover is complete.

Until this is all done and all the data is on hand its going to be a mess, thats all there is to it.
 

mmtstc

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the RACOM DB entry is starting to put the county name in parentheses after the site name... It looks kinda Messy now btu i suspect in the future it will look cleaners.. they may be doing such after each site gets rebanded, but you would think they would be done with that by now...
 

NDRADIONUT

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There is a statewide site map where you could look up which towers you'd need to enter....a little research goes a long ways !
 
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kb0nly

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There is a statewide site map where you could look up which towers you'd need to enter....a little research goes a long ways !

We are aware of that... But the problem is there is no order to the list on the database. So even if you know which site you need you still waste a lot of time searching through the page.

I think after the system build out is done we should put the talkgroups for each county on the seperate county database pages along with the tower site frequencies for each in the county.

Then all one has to do is go to the database, click on MN, then click on the county your interested in, and there is the sites and talkgroups for that county.

Leave the statewide page as a database of everything maybe? But it would be nicer if each county had its info seperate. Another thing is how long it takes to load the current ARMER database page, and not even a 1/4 of the info is listed there yet.
 

NDRADIONUT

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There are no separate pages in a trunk system...the sites are entered by zone and site number and the talkgroups are on the same page with as many divisions as you want to make...I couldn't do it any differently if I wanted to.
 

mmtstc

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for the uniden users, one could build a freescan file for each county, post those files to the Wiki and then you can just skip county to county, download the freescan files and merge them...
 
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