TxWarn and Pro-197 Questions

[drguitarum2005]

Howdy Yall,
I just recently decided to reprogram my scanner after I discovered what V-folders are (awesome!). In doing so, I ran across some issues/questions. I am using PSREdit-500 to program it without really any problems. One of my questions is:

Under normal driving around the city, I am scanning a few talkgroups on the Bryan/Brazos County system, a few on the Texas A&M System, and a few on the TxWarn system. The TAMU and Bryan/Brazos systems scan real fast but it stays on the TxWarn system for ~2 seconds or so (even with no chatter), making me miss some traffic that comes through on the others. Is this just characteristic of how it reads the TxWarn system?

Is there a way to make the radio respond (flash the LED, make a tone of its own, flash the screen, whatever) to a specific tone (ie. VFD tone out)?

In another folder I programmed some Harris County talkgroups. For Southside Place Police, for example, on TxWarn Motorola, how do I choose which tower sites those 3 talkgroups us? For the time being I chose all the Harris county tower sites but I feel like that's wasted time scanning if it's never going to use the Tomball tower, for example.

Thanks!

 

[krokus]

Not really. The LED can be lit or flashed for a certain entry, which could be a freq with a specific CTCSS tone. The LED action will apply to all traffic on that entry.

 

[loumaag]

One thing you can do to dramatically speed the scanning process is to remove (or lock out) the extra sites that it may be scanning looking for a signal that it will never find from that system.

 

[drguitarum2005]

One thing you can do to dramatically speed the scanning process is to remove (or lock out) the extra sites that it may be scanning looking for a signal that it will never find from that system.

That was one of the questions I listed above. For Southside Place in Harris County, for example, how do I know which sites their police use? I'm not sure how to make the connection between the big list of talk groups and what frequencies they actually use to narrow down the sites.

 

[loumaag]

That was one of the questions I listed above. For Southside Place in Harris County, for example, how do I know which sites their police use? I'm not sure how to make the connection between the big list of talk groups and what frequencies they actually use to narrow down the sites.

??
They use the closest site. Or maybe I am not understanding your comment.

 

[drguitarum2005]

??
They use the closest site. Or maybe I am not understanding your comment.

You understood correctly. Just wasn't sure if somewhere they were assigned certain towers or just used the closest ones. Thanks!

 

[loumaag]

Okay. Just for general information, of the various scanners I have here, I have one that I am generally only interested in listening to HCSO Disp 4 and Tac SW. It is an older bank based scanner and I only have one site loaded in the bank I am using. Even if I add other banks to scan (local FDs; HPD; HFD, etc.) that first bank monitoring HCSO does not "hang" long because it only has one site to lock, listen, and move on.

 

[motorola_otaku]

You understood correctly. Just wasn't sure if somewhere they were assigned certain towers or just used the closest ones. Thanks!

Short answer: Southside PD and fire primarily use the Med Center analog site along with West University (their most common mutual aid partner.)

Long answer: To best determine which site to use for which agency, break out Google Maps and compare the agency/city boundaries to the site locations. Most of the law enforcement radios on the analog system have full systemwide control channel lists and can talk anywhere, but generally a city or SO/constable district will use two or three sites primarily.