Thanks and more questions for n0lqt

[bottk]

First of all thanks for the help on the lcn's for fort riley I had a couple of them mixed up.

Ive tried the search mode and still havent recieved any tgid's I have a couple of questions

1. What kind of repeater system do the use , I live about 5 miles west of wamego or about 12 miles east of manhattan, I have a middle of the line antenna rated at 25mhz-1300-mhz should I be able to hear something or not

2.Do you have any of the tgid's and if so would you be interested in sharing them with me once again thank you for your help so far .

 

[n0lqt]

Like I said I wasn't there long enough to figure out any of the Talkgroup ID tags. I was there for a two day conference in Oct. I got there on a Wednesday evening in time to check in, hook up the radio, watch the news and fall asleep... We ended up going all day until almost 6:30pm the first night and then went to a "social gathering" at a local attorney's home. We got out just before 5pm the 2nd day and I drove back to Newton. I listened to the radio just enough to figure out I had it programmed correctly and that I was getting traffic from post activities. Never really heard anything that exciting on the Ft Riley system. Junction City and KSU PD's were far more interesting....

When you say a middle of the line antenna, are we talking outside, inside, back of set, what? I was staying at the Comfrot Suites over on the east side of Manhattan and had great signal. If your antenna is an outside antenna, try upgrading your coax to RG-8M or RG-8X. The old standby RG-58 isn't so hot for UHF and above frequencies. That is especially true if you have more than a 50 foot run.....

 

[bottk]

Thats just it n0lqt

Thats just it my antenna is a spider but i do use rg58 but I recieve digital from topeka,trunked and analog salina, wichita, kta, wabaunsee co, and many other counties,

The spider is on a mast about 20 ft above the roof and the roof is about another 20 ft off the ground

Another question is why are some of RR,s listings for fort riley in frequencies such as 166.000 and 200.000 instead of tgid,s i checked my tgid format there are 2 choices afs and decimal but I can only enter tgid,s not frequencies into the group channels.

I just thought I was doing something wrong when programming

I plan on a new antenna soon I will run better coax this time I dont want to waste a bunch of your time but you have been very helpfull and I do appreciate it.

 

[n0lqt]

Yeah, those 160 MHz frequencies were the old VHF-hi band system they used to use. That has all been replaced by the 400 MHz (UHF) EDACS system. The database says they have analog and digital Pro-Voice capabilities although I don't remember hearing any Pro-Voice activity while I was up there (sounds sort of like a telephone modem (audio sample): http://www.kb9ukd.com/digital/ProVoice.wav ) It is propietary encryption and is not decodable with any scanner I know of.

Try getting some good quality coax first, RG-8m, RG-8X, RG-8U, 8214, 9913, etc. I used to recommend RG-6 cable TV coax if nothing else was available. You lose a bit from the impedance mismatch (75 vs 50 ohm) unless you have balums in the system, but the overall loss is still far less then the RG-58 at 800 mHz. As an example. The attenuation of RG-58 is 9.51db/100 ft at 410 Mhz. RG-8M (or X minifoam) is 7.82 db. RG-8 or RG-8U is 4.38 db/100 ft, and 9913/8214 is only about 2.80 db/100 ft but is quite a bit more expensive. Whereas, RG-6 has about 5.6 db/100 ft of attenuation but is so cheap, most Cable TV companies will give you a hundred feet just for asking. But you have to add about 2.8 to 3.5 db impedence mismatch attenuation also with any 75 ohm cable. The attenuation is even higher at 850 mhz, (about 14.1 db/100 ft for RG-58). If your antenna is 40 ft AGL and figure at least another 10 to 30 ft to the scanner, you'll notice a BIG difference with better coax, especially on the 800 Mhz band stuff.

Most of my antenna for the scanners are at around 35-45 ft AGL on the tower. Right now I use unspliced runs of RG-8 on all but my high antenna. For it, I picked up some Andrew 7/8" hardline to a colinear vertical dipole at 96 ft.....