I live in the very south of my county. The county public safety system is P25 phase I and it has two simulcast sites, North and South. As I live in the south should I just monitor the South site for best performance? I can achieve this if I were to delete the North site frequencies with the Sentinel software.
Uniden SDS200 P25 Phase I system monitoring at base station
- Thread starter Hagen001
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Run a log on each site for a few days and see if any TG's are missing from one or the other.
Are the control frequencies different between the sites?
Someone correct me if I am wrong, but that isn't simulcast. (Simulcast = same control freqs on all, correct.
Someone correct me if I am wrong, but that isn't simulcast. (Simulcast = same control freqs on all, correct.
A simulcast cell is a virtual "site" comprised of multiple physical sites (known as subsites), all of which simultaneously transmit and receive the on same pool of frequencies. The system itself can contain multiple simulcast cells, as in North and South in this case. Each simulcast cell would have its own set of frequencies, all unique to that particular cell.
I believe people confuse “Multicast” sites with “Simulcast” sites, as I did early on. And I now understand the difference as simulcast sites all use the same control (and alternate control) channel frequencies, and multicast sites don’t, each multicast site has their own unique control channel frequencies? I’m looking for clarification. Is this a correct statement?
So I am in a Simulcast Phase 1 setup as well.
Although I have a simulcast tower near me - it doesn't broadcast all the channels.
What I do is an import of the Favorites list into my Profile. Then I assign a Quick Key to say your Simulcast North and then a quick key to your SImulcast South. You can then easily turn on a Simulcast on or off... That way you can test Simulcast North and South.
Search on You Tube for "
Uniden Bearcat BCD536HP Favorite List Programming
- K4DPS does a great job explaining quick keys with sites (simulcast sites in your case).
Although I have a simulcast tower near me - it doesn't broadcast all the channels.
What I do is an import of the Favorites list into my Profile. Then I assign a Quick Key to say your Simulcast North and then a quick key to your SImulcast South. You can then easily turn on a Simulcast on or off... That way you can test Simulcast North and South.
Search on You Tube for "
Uniden Bearcat BCD536HP Favorite List Programming
- K4DPS does a great job explaining quick keys with sites (simulcast sites in your case).
In terms of a trunked system, a "simulcast" aka "simulcast site" or "simulcast cell" is a collection of two or more physical locations (subsites) that share an identical set of frequencies. That includes all frequencies being used in the cell, not just the control channels. Primary (active) control channel, alternate/secondary control channels, traffic channels (voice and data). This collection of subsites form the complete simulcast cell, which appears as a single site # in the system, even though the transmissions are actually coming from multiple physical locations at the same time.
Multicast refers to the transmission of the same talkgroup across dissimilar RF resources. Within a trunked system, this can mean that a talkgroup is being broadcast on two or more sites of a multi-site system. For example, TG 100 might be coming over both a North (Site 1) and South (Site 2) simulcast cell at the same time.
A trunked system can be made up of something as basic as one standalone transmitter site, or one single simulcast cell (multiple transmitters sites on the same frequencies), or any combination of those two including multiple simulcast cells and/or standalone sites. Any transmission that comes across more than one of those disparate RF resources at the same time would be said to be "multicasting".
Multicast can also refer to transmissions that are being broadcast over completely different types of RF resources at the same time. For example, a talkgroup on a digital trunked system could be patched/linked to an analog UHF repeater.
The two terms, simulcast and multicast, can be and often are mixed up. The explanations I've provided are the most common usage when it comes to radio systems.
This is a very good explanation, thanks.
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