I can NOT hear radio transmissions for police and fire services in my home city of Turlock, CA. I understand via the RR database that they use a trunking Motorola Smartnet II radio system.
I can hear radio transmissions throughout the county, but not those right near home. In fact, I can hear a radio system from the neighboring city of Ceres, that as far as I can tell is identical to that of Turlocks. I programmed both systems with identical methods and both from the database.
I am using a Uniden BCD396XT, programming with Freescan software. I have tried every modifier/setting in the software in order to receive Turlock transmissions to no avail. I also purchased two different aftermarket antennas from radioshack - the telescoping one, and another rubber antenna that is stated to be specific for trunking systems in the 800mhz band.
I get the same results scanning with all three antennas, no turlock traffic. The only exception being one possible bad reception of a transmission one late night that APPEARED to be from the Turlock system, but it came up with an TGID # that was drasticially different from any that I have programmed into my radio. I was probably on ID search at that point.
I admit that I don't really know how to use band plans, but I have tried all the different settings I know of and sort of hope that the problem is indeed just an antenna or reception issue, as I am on the other side of town from the transmission location. Or did they possibly update TGID #'s?.... Yet even when driving close to the police station/transmission location I still don't hear city radio traffic. I spent hours searching the web for any other possible frequencies and they were almost all identical to whats in the database. I did find what seemed to be older pre-rebanding freq's but they don't seem to work either.
Any advice on how I ought to proceed would be appreciated. My Uniden scanner has been great, but I would feel a lot better being able to hear the radio system in my home town with it.
I can hear radio transmissions throughout the county, but not those right near home. In fact, I can hear a radio system from the neighboring city of Ceres, that as far as I can tell is identical to that of Turlocks. I programmed both systems with identical methods and both from the database.
I am using a Uniden BCD396XT, programming with Freescan software. I have tried every modifier/setting in the software in order to receive Turlock transmissions to no avail. I also purchased two different aftermarket antennas from radioshack - the telescoping one, and another rubber antenna that is stated to be specific for trunking systems in the 800mhz band.
I get the same results scanning with all three antennas, no turlock traffic. The only exception being one possible bad reception of a transmission one late night that APPEARED to be from the Turlock system, but it came up with an TGID # that was drasticially different from any that I have programmed into my radio. I was probably on ID search at that point.
I admit that I don't really know how to use band plans, but I have tried all the different settings I know of and sort of hope that the problem is indeed just an antenna or reception issue, as I am on the other side of town from the transmission location. Or did they possibly update TGID #'s?.... Yet even when driving close to the police station/transmission location I still don't hear city radio traffic. I spent hours searching the web for any other possible frequencies and they were almost all identical to whats in the database. I did find what seemed to be older pre-rebanding freq's but they don't seem to work either.
Any advice on how I ought to proceed would be appreciated. My Uniden scanner has been great, but I would feel a lot better being able to hear the radio system in my home town with it.
