Trunking N00b - Weber County (mostly)

[K5KNT]

The last time I was active in the scanning hobby was in the late 1980s. For the last few months, I've been listening to Weber and sometimes Tooele Counties on Broadcastify. I've decided that I would like more control over what I hear so I'm looking for other options. I currently have two USB dongles, as well as an AirSpy that I've used in the past with SDR#. I've read a little about using unitrunker with the dongles but haven't tried it yet. We just moved and I'm waiting for a new desk to arrive before I set up my computer.

I would prefer the dongle/unitrunker option if this would work otherwise I'll start looking for a relatively inexpensive scanner.
I'm mostly interested in police in Weber, Tooele, and Salt Lake Counties (in that order) with Ogden PD given priority.
I've seen mention of simulcast and UCAN in some other posts that I've read and I have no idea what they are. I'm also very uninformed about how trunking works. Any suggestions on resources to information on these would be appreciated as well as scanner suggestions.

Thanks in advance,

Kent

 

[N7OLQ]

Unitrunker v1 is a good option. v2 is also good, but has a steeper learning curve. Currently the UCA statewide system is on an older Motorola SmartZone system, but there are plans to start moving to P25 Phase 2 with digital voice. The Unitrunker solution will work with the current system, but you'll have to move to SDRTrunk that does digital voice (but does not do our current analog voice) when things go P25. There are also 8 or 10 different scanners that can do P25. I have a couple of Noelec SDRs and a couple of AirSpy minis, that I use in various configurations. Learning DSD+ is also fun since it can decode a bunch of digital formats (but does not trunk track by itself) - you can use virtual audio cable software to feed digital audio from a trunk tracking program to DSD+ to do the voice decoding. Its both fun and confusing and frustrating at times. Its like the wild west of scanning.
EDIT: I just remembered, DSD+ does have trunking, but to me it seems less feature-rich than Unitrunker or SDRTrunk.

 

[K5KNT]

Thanks, @N7OLQ. Can this be done with a single dongle or should I use two? Or would my AirSpy provide more bandwidth? I may have to PM you for help once I get my computer back up and running if that is OK.

 

[bhall7]

Thanks, @N7OLQ. Can this be done with a single dongle or should I use two? Or would my AirSpy provide more bandwidth? I may have to PM you for help once I get my computer back up and running if that is OK.

How exciting! It's a fun time to get into scanning with all the great options for SDRs. I have both a $20 RTL-SDR v3 dongle and an Airspy R2 as well. The Airspy R2 will give you that extra bandwidth for scanning trunked systems that span a wider frequency range (800MHz). The Airspy has amazing quality, and is worth every penny! I also purchased an "RTL-SDR Blog" branded FM band stop filter (Amazon.com: Broadcast FM Block Filter (88 - 108 MHz Block) by RTL-SDR Blog: Home Audio & Theater), which is a must in my opinion.

Do you plan on installing an external antenna? That makes a huge difference, but, you can get decent results with a cheap indoor antenna, too.

I recently switched from Unitrunker V1 to V2, and while it took a little extra work, I'm getting much better audio quality on V2 than on V1. There are tons of tutorials and YouTube videos out there that will show you how to get it set up. Feel free to ask here, too, and we can try to help you out.

As far as the systems you want to monitor, you'll definitely want to setup the UCA site in your area (Utah Communications Authority Trunking System, Various, Multi-State - Scanner Frequencies), and have a look at the RR database for other systems in your locale.

I still use my BCD396XT, which has been so awesome for the last 10+ years, and monitors UCA perfectly. But, I mostly monitor using Trunking Recorder and Unitrunker V2.

 

[cmjonesinc]

I love Unitrunker v1 and v2 but if you're not interested in logging or seeing site traffic you may want to use dsd+ fastlane. It would be a little more streamlined and does a great job decoding. You can use one or 2 dongles with dsd fastlane. Obviously 2 would work better as you can have a constant control channel stream on one and direct the voice channels by priority on the other. But one dongle monitoring works very similar to a regular scanner. If you are in a simulcast area and dongles don't do the trick I highly recommend a Bluetail Technologies P25RX as a cheaper alternative to a scanner that works in a simulcast environment. Hard part is catching them while they are in stock. As @bhall7 said, it definitely is a fun time to get in to scanning. Sdr's are awesome if you don't mind exchanging a little bit of a learning curve to save a good bit of money. I have sdr's and scanners and each have their place, but sdr's have made some significant jumps in recent years.

 

[N7OLQ]

Thanks, @N7OLQ. Can this be done with a single dongle or should I use two?

Bandwidth is better with AirSpy (6MHz) compared to RTL-SDR (2.4Mhz). For control channel only following, the bandwidth doesn't matter (but the receive filtering of the airspy will do better in weak signal environments). Where bandwidth matters is if the trunk site has frequencies that are farther than 2.4 MHz away from the control channel (or 6MHz for the Airspy), your SDR can't reach that far while still tuned to the control channel, so you must use 2 SDRs to follow voice. If all the voice freqs are within 2.4MHz of the control channel, you can just use a single RTL-SDR. If they are all within 6MHz of the control channel, you could do it with just the AirSpy.