Virginia State Police Whistler TRX2

[anelson5004]

I recently purchased a Whistler TRX2 scanner for Christmas. I am receiving Wytheville (Division 4) State troopers without any problem, but I am not receiving Salem (Division 6) State troopers at all, like I was on my old Radio Shack Pro 197 scanner. The Whistler TRX2 is connected by an outdoor antenna, as was my Radio Shack Pro 197 where I had both Wytheville and Salem. All my settings on the Whistler TRX2 are set to default, the Location setting on the Whistler TRX2 is off, and all required updates have been installed and are current. I downloaded the VSP Stars radio System using the EZ-Scan software that was provided on the micro SD card. Any help will be greatly appreciated.

thank you
anelson5004
anelson5004@gmail.com

 

[n4jri]

See what control channels your radio is gravitating to. Being near Richlands, you may be far enough into Div.4 that the radio could latch onto a site too far west to normally carry Div.6 traffic. By locking out sites or frequencies to the west of you, you can force the radio to choose sites more to the east of you, which are more likely to carry that traffic from both divisions.

I'll leave it there, unless you want more specifics. We have a lot of options on these TRX radios, but sometimes we have to dig deeper for solutions.

See if that helps at all

73/Allen (N4JRI)

 

[Ghstwolf62]

I don't know if you're aware of it or not but the newer GRE, RS and these Whistlers do NOT have stationary or check all CC modes in them like the older scanners do.

Instead they have roam only. Why on Earth they'd do that I have no idea but they did it.

It looks through all sites and locks onto the strongest signal within the parameters you set and stays there until it goes outside those parameters then checks for something in them switching over to whatever meets it.

Which means if you can receive five sties it will lock onto only one of them, the strongest and stay there.

That sucks because it won't pick up all the traffic on other sites.

What I've done on my 668 is put each site of interest into its own bank. Then I set up banks for areas of interest and associate the individual sites with the one area bank.

So for example for one area bank I have North Mtn 222, Peter's Mtn 221, Duncan Knob 223, Sounding Knob 224, Bath 226 and Ft Lewis 218 in their own banks.

I then have an area bank called STARS Local and affiliate those individual banks to the area bank. It now scans all sites in the "STARS Local" bank thereby not missing any traffic.

Have set ups for Roanoke and Lexington area too. Just turn off one and turn on another as you need. Put in different site banks for those other areas and sometimes overlap too. Adding site banks to the area bank is easy. For instance I have 218 in several area banks just by checking banks on the bank list.

Its a pain in the behind to do but the easiest way I've found is to import entire STARS system then duplicate it however many times you need. Then go into all those duplicates and either delete or lock out all sites but the single site for each bank you want in it. You also will need to rename each bank to the site it applies to.

Then create your area banks and affiliate the individual banks you want scanned into the area bank.

It then shows up the old way or like in Unidens scanning each site as it goes along and what site you're scanning shows up on the display.

You then get all the traffic its possible to pick up off the sites you can receive. For example I get a fair amount of stuff off 223 that I don't get on 222 so I'd be missing a bunch if I wasn't scanning the 223 site.

Hopefully this is of help to you.

 

[KI4SXZ]

I don't know if you're aware of it or not but the newer GRE, RS and these Whistlers do NOT have stationary or check all CC modes in them like the older scanners do.

Instead they have roam only. Why on Earth they'd do that I have no idea but they did it.

It looks through all sites and locks onto the strongest signal within the parameters you set and stays there until it goes outside those parameters then checks for something in them switching over to whatever meets it.

Which means if you can receive five sties it will lock onto only one of them, the strongest and stay there.

That sucks because it won't pick up all the traffic on other sites.

Hopefully this is of help to you.

I can think of only one instance that this would be great. And that when your mobile and you truly only want to hear this right around you. And then your still playing the odds that the nearest stars radio is hitting your same tower and same talkgroup you have. Small odds. But valuable if thats what you want I guess.



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[n4jri]

I can think of only one instance that this would be great. And that when your mobile and you truly only want to hear this right around you. And then your still playing the odds that the nearest stars radio is hitting your same tower and same talkgroup you have. Small odds. But valuable if thats what you want I guess..

I'm loving my TRX-1, but agree with you 100%. Now that Whistler's begun to address DMR and NXDN, they need to start adding all the features of the PSR-500 that were deleted for the PSR-800--at least for the next model.

73/Allen (N4JRI)

 

[anelson5004]

n4jri: I tried locking out the towers for the Wytheville division, and did not receive Salem, but I received Wytheville channel 2 off of peters mountain tower. Please provide me more specifics on how to receive both Wytheville and Salem divisions.

 

[n4jri]

n4jri: I tried locking out the towers for the Wytheville division, and did not receive Salem, but I received Wytheville channel 2 off of peters mountain tower. Please provide me more specifics on how to receive both Wytheville and Salem divisions.

I was just going to discuss the specifics of locking out if you needed it. I would think you'd easily get Div.6 from Peters Mtn. Have you gone through your talkgroups tab in the trunk to see if something is strange. Maybe there was an import issue of some kind.

73/Allen (N4JRI)

 

[anelson5004]

Yes and I even did a reimport, but It shows on site options as NFM. I changed that to FM, and Trucking tables shows Autofill, and Digital AGC is off, and I checked AGC on all talk groups, but it was unchecked when re imported.

 

[Ghstwolf62]

I can think of only one instance that this would be great. And that when your mobile and you truly only want to hear this right around you. And then your still playing the odds that the nearest stars radio is hitting your same tower and same talkgroup you have. Small odds. But valuable if thats what you want I guess.



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I suppose but even then I can't see it doing you any good. I know sometimes there is traffic on 221 for this area that isn't on 222 and vice a versa. Scanning only one site wouldn't do it and I'd miss stuff locally doing that.

They need to bring back the check all CCs option.

 

[Ghstwolf62]

n4jri: I tried locking out the towers for the Wytheville division, and did not receive Salem, but I received Wytheville channel 2 off of peters mountain tower. Please provide me more specifics on how to receive both Wytheville and Salem divisions.

Read my post above and set up sites in separate banks which you can receive. Put only those sites you can receive into those individual banks. One site in each bank.

Then create a bank such as STARS Local and affiliate those individual sites with that bank. Alternatively you can scan each of the individual sites by themselves.

I put the instructions for it in my original reply to you.

I'd put money your scanner is only scanning the strongest site it can receive and NOT all the sites you can actually pick up.

Doing it this way will make your scanner scan ALL sites it can receive instead of just one and I bet you get your traffic back. Don't forget Ft. Lewis which covers a huge area down that way.

I doubt AGC and FM vs NFM is going to do much if you're not actually scanning all the sites

 

[anelson5004]

Ghstwolf62: What do you mean in your instructions by "banks"? Same as scan list or not. Was fixing to try your way.

 

[Ghstwolf62]

Whatever the TRX calls banks.

In my 668 they call it play lists.

Banks works for me though as that's how I think of them. I add whatever to the bank and then select it to scan.

 

[anelson5004]

Would you mind to attach an image of how you have yours set up Ghstwolf62 please? I put Salem in a separate scan list and they are still not transmitting. I have my outdoor antenna pointed towards Roanoke. My ADC Gain is -2 and my DAC Gain is -4, and AGC is turned on for all talk groups and the trunking system. Any suggestions from anyone would be greatly appreciated.

anelson5004

 

[Ghstwolf62]

Will get to that later tonight. Putting the TGs in isn't the issue its the sites. So you need to put 152.5475 for instance into its own bank. That is the Ft. Lewis site. Then scan THAT site/ban and only that site. Do that for each bank or put said banks into an area bank.

Bank 1 gets Ft. Lewis 152.5475
Bank 2 gets Dismal Mtn 161.9125
Bank 3 gets Potts Mtn 152.0975 and etc.
Scan all three separately or affiliate them with one area bank which then scans each site entered individually. (Replace with sites YOU know you can receive.)

Anyway will take pics of what I explained in detail to you and put them up later this evening.

 

[Ghstwolf62]

I sent you an email with the pics and a scanner file in it. Figured it was easier that way.

Hopefully it helps