Two sites performance improved?

[gcopter1]

Sometime ago, I used to own a G4. One day, for grins, I decided to enter all the frequencies for multiple sites. My thinking was that, it could improve reception in fringe areas. The end result was that the radio locked in on the one site who didn't afford coverage elsewhere. Sold that G4.

I kept thinking about how I organized my talk groups and, had a moment and realized I could, after all, overcome some of the "limitations".

Got me another G4, so, I'm back in the fold!

Anyways, today I was looking at my Whistler scanner and saw something that caught my eye, a talk group was using a site not normally associated with it.

In my favorite system, there are like, 8 sites. Police has their own site and local government comms, have theirs. The remainder sites are support or standby sites, rarely used.

Again, for grins, I "created" a system that combined all the frequencies; cc and vc, and gave it the FFFF wildcard values to it. I then used a knob position and entered talk groups from both sides (PD/LG).

The result was I was hearing traffic from either site and the radio didn't seem affected and or was doing the site selection automatically. Now, granted, I've only have tested this at home and on a short drive away from home. Still, I was hearing traffic from both sites.

I've also been looking at Unitrunker and at the same time at the pager to confirm that, when a talk group transmits, it is using the LG site, while still hearing PD traffic from their own site. This means, to me, that, no overnight changes have been made to the system by the engineers to carry LG traffic on the PD site.

Has Unication made improvements or changes to the way it handles multiple sites?

Again, to sum it up, I've assigned two sites into a knob position and multiple tgid's used from either site, and the radio is listening to them, flawlessly!

Have you guys tried this lately with success?

 

[davidzimmerman]

2 systems

not sure how you did that can you PM me and i'll send you my Email address so you can send me your code plug to look at?

 

[gcopter1]

It's easy.

Letter D;View edit, existing profile.
#2 Tab; Frequency and system setting.
Click on the P25 Trunking system setting
From here, you can do it in one or two ways.

In my case, since I've already had two sites programmed, individually, I just picked one and clicked on copy.

I then clicked under the column where you input the Control Channel List, and add the frequencies for the second site you wish to include.

Be sure to add FFFFF for the WACN ID and FFF for the System ID.

The other way is to manually add all the frequencies for all the sites that interest you.

 

[IAmSixNine]

Can you provide us a link to RR DB so we can see what system your referring to.

 

[davidzimmerman]

i'm trying to do Cleveland Ohios OWN system thats 49F and Ohio Marcs thats 348 2 different systems so far this idea dont work lol

 

[IAmSixNine]

I dont think this will work with 2 different trunking systems.
What the OP is posting is 1 single system with different layers / sites.
Once the OP posts the link we can confirm this.

 

[gcopter1]

https://www.radioreference.com/apps/db/?sid=7073

 

[gcopter1]

I dont think this will work with 2 different trunking systems.
What the OP is posting is 1 single system with different layers / sites.
Once the OP posts the link we can confirm this.

You are correct, a single system with different sites.

 

[davidzimmerman]

WELL i had HIGH hopes lol

 

[IAmSixNine]

weird how your getting traffic to pass when its only monitoring 1 site/control channel.
Technically it shouldnt be passing traffic of the site Control channel its not monitoring.

 

[eorange]

I dont think this will work with 2 different trunking systems.
What the OP is posting is 1 single system with different layers / sites.

I think that's what the OP originally meant. His point was the G4 never unlocked from the 1st site.

To the OP: the FFFFF and FFF are just ways to ID any wildcard site. You show Seminole and Site 1012 both as FFFFF/FFF, but aren't you really just defining a wildcard twice?

 

[gcopter1]

Weird indeed. But I assure you, way things are done here, in this system, PD has their own site and every other LG department within the county uses a different site, yet, I'm hearing traffic from both the PD AND the LG stuff.Could it be the FFF variable telling the radio to look for either CC? This system also has more than one CC for their sites. Some sites have one or more alternate CC's.

 

[gcopter1]

I think that's what the OP originally meant. His point was the G4 never unlocked from the 1st site.

To the OP: the FFFFF and FFF are just ways to ID any wildcard site. You show Seminole and Site 1012 both as FFFFF/FFF, but aren't you really just defining a wildcard twice?

When I was in Seminole county, I had a bit of trouble identifying the site id info so I used the wildcard. That Seminole site is nowhere near where I am, i only have it in the radio for the times I'm up there.


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[troymail]

From my experience, the G4 many times locks onto and holds on a STRONG a single system site even long after you've moved into the footprint of other sites (may or may not be a good thing depending on what is carried on each site). At other times, I've watched the G4 fairly quickly shift from site to site to site - this would be in area where there isn't a good single strong site to receive. In the latter example, I recently saw my G4 (with stock antenna and inside my vehicle on a drive) lock onto a site that was 70 miles away as best I could tell (all I can say is that the RFSS/site ID and CC frequency made sense at the time).

To my knowledge, the wildcards simply tell the radio "I don't care what the WACN, SYSID, etc. are - if you find an active control channel, use it". At that point, the system/site you lock onto will be limited by the frequencies you program for the system (unless you also use a frequency range search for the system).

To reiterate, if you set the WACN, SYSID, and other system parameters as wildcards, the radio will/should stop on any system control channel frequency you have configured (regardless of system). If the signal strength/bit error rate is poor, the radio will just keep looking for something better. However, if you get a good, solid signal from one of the site frequencies (control channel), the radio will simply hold there until the signal fades.

One final limiter will be the talkgroups you have in the current zone/knob position (64 total). You can mix and match anything in that knob position you want including TGs for different systems (they are just TG numbers with labels for display). The only way around that is to put the radio into Monitor Mode (essentially a TG wildcard).

Having said all that, I'm sure if my experiences and assumptions are incorrect, Unication David will help clarify.

EDIT: I also wanted to mention (the reason this thread looked interesting to me) - I now routinely create a "zone" with 8 knob positions with multiple sites for a given system programmed. This allows the radio to determine on it's own which site to monitor (good when driving, sort of). In addition, I duplicate those 8 knob positions in additional zones where I specifically select the system site (1 site per zone). This allows me to have control over the site I monitor at any given point. By default, I simply replicate the knob position across zones/site. However, in some cases, due to the 64 talkgroup limitation, I make adjustments to match what I expect to hear on different sites (i.e. town or county level talkgroups vs. state talkgroups, etc.)

 

[gcopter1]

Well, the two site experiment didn't last long. However, it was interesting to have the radio hear traffic from two sites while it was displaying receiving one.

Whenever the radio locked on to a site, I would simply wait until I moved around a little then do a quick switch back and forth between knob positions to force the radio to look for the site I needed, but then the magic of receiving traffic from two different sites vanished.

 

[Project25_MASTR]

Weird indeed. But I assure you, way things are done here, in this system, PD has their own site and every other LG department within the county uses a different site, yet, I'm hearing traffic from both the PD AND the LG stuff.Could it be the FFF variable telling the radio to look for either CC? This system also has more than one CC for their sites. Some sites have one or more alternate CC's.

That would be the most un-natural setup in the country. Generally, there will be a preferred site(s) for an agency. Others ,at roam to the site (if allowed) but the subs won't leave their perferred sites unless there is an adjacent site which is magnitudes better.

My big issue with the G5 has been related to a lack of a preferred site list and roaming table. When you are dealing with 3 simulcast primes and 40 plus sites on a system built with true n+1 coverage, it becomes somewhat important.

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