Yet another newbie programming question

[gman59]

I have a new Whistler 1040s radio and have downloaded WIN500 software.
My question is what is the best was to organize trunk groups?

Is it best to create say a "county" TSYS and then multiple scan lists to be under "County" ?
For example these would be under County.
01 - Law Enforcement
02 - Medical
03 - Fire
and so on

Thank you for your input.

 

[tvengr]

That is an excellent way to do it. You can break down the talkgroups on each scan list to be able to monitor what you want. You can organize each county, city or town by Law, Fire, Medical, and Public Works on separate scan lists so that you can easily select what is enabled. For Example:
Scan Lists
1. County Law
2. County Fire
3. County Medical
4. County Public Works
5. City A Law
6. City A Fire
7. City A Medical
8. City A Public Works
9. City B Law
10. City B Fire
11. City B Medical
12. City B Public Works
You will not slow down your scanning with all of the scan lists on the same trunked system. You would organize the talkgroups for another county in a similar manner on a different trunked system. You are limited to 20 scan lists on the 1040 so you have to arrange accordingly.

 

[gman59]

That is an excellent way to do it. You can break down the talkgroups on each scan list to be able to monitor what you want. You can organize each county, city or town by Law, Fire, Medical, and Public Works on separate scan lists so that you can easily select what is enabled. For Example:
Scan Lists
1. County Law
2. County Fire
3. County Medical
4. County Public Works
5. City A Law
6. City A Fire
7. City A Medical
8. City A Public Works
9. City B Law
10. City B Fire
11. City B Medical
12. City B Public Works
You will not slow down your scanning with all of the scan lists on the same trunked system. You would organize the talkgroups for another county in a similar manner on a different trunked system. You are limited to 20 scan lists on the 1040 so you have to arrange accordingly.

Hi
Is there any downside in combining all city and county in a single scan list ?
For example combine all city and county into law enforcement scan list?

My thought is this way I wont have to switch to diff scan list to listen to all law enforcement in my area.

Thank you for your assistance.

 

[tvengr]

Let's say something is happening with the county law that you want to monitor. By turning off the other scan lists, you will be able to monitor all of the county law talkgroups without being interrupted by other activity. You could reduce it 3 scan lists with County, City A, and City B or 4 scan lists with Law, Fire, Medical, and Public Works (as in your original example). You just make the decision on how you want it set up. By placing everything in a single scan list, you lose control of what you want to monitor. As you add additional systems, you may have to do some combining to fit everything in 20 scan lists. If you will let me know your city, county, and state, I will check on what you will be able to monitor with the 1040.

 

[gman59]

Let's say something is happening with the county law that you want to monitor. By turning off the other scan lists, you will be able to monitor all of the county law talkgroups without being interrupted by other activity. You could reduce it 3 scan lists with County, City A, and City B or 4 scan lists with Law, Fire, Medical, and Public Works (as in your original example). You just make the decision on how you want it set up. By placing everything in a single scan list, you lose control of what you want to monitor. As you add additional systems, you may have to do some combining to fit everything in 20 scan lists. If you will let me know your city, county, and state, I will check on what you will be able to monitor with the 1040.

I am located in Hutchinson, KS Reno cnty
I think all law enforcement is scrambling the signal. As I am unable to hear any traffic. I can only hear the HAM chatter.

 

[Swipesy]

Gman what I do with my GRE PSR-500 is create 1 ScanList for each county and include police, fire, ems and other. I also create a ScanList for each community that I want to listen to that is included in one of the County ScanLists. In this manner I can listen to an entire county or just listen to the "special" ScanList for a particular community. Lastly your 1040 has a great feature that was dropped by GRE/Whistler in later models and that is a "Favorite List". You can select individual TalkGroups or frequencies that are located in various ScanLists and mark them Favorites. When action happens you press the Favorite key and you listen exclusively to favorites. Don't make too many favorites or it defeats the purpose.

 

[gman59]

Can a single scan list be used by more than 1 talk group?
For example Does TGRP B overwrite TGRP A or is scanlist 1 unique to each TGRP ?
TGRP A - scanlist 1
TGRP B - scanlist 1

 

[tvengr]

On the KCSIS statewide system, Reno sheriff dispatch and Hutchinson PD dispatch both show encrypted. Highway Patrol troop F Wichita is open to receive. Pretty much all of the other Police and Fire in Reno County are open to receive. Reno Co has 2 sites on the statewide system, Hutchinson and Partridge. For the MPSCS system, you have several options. If you set Multi-Site to Roam, you will use the site with the best signal. If you are able to receive both sites, set Multi-Site to Stationary. That will use both sites and give you wider coverage. You could also set up 2 systems with the same talkgroups on different scan lists, one using the Hutchinson site and the other using the Partridge site. In that case, Multi-Site would be set to Off on both systems. You could then easily select either site or both using the scan lists.. If you have any questions, please let me know. Here are the links for Reno County and the KSICS system:

Reno County, Kansas (KS) Scanner Frequencies and Radio Frequency Reference

Scanner Frequencies and Radio Frequency Reference for Reno County, Kansas (KS)

www.radioreference.com

Kansas Statewide Interoperable Communication System (KSICS) Trunking System, Statewide, Kansas

Kansas Statewide Interoperable Communication System (KSICS) Trunking System Profile

www.radioreference.com

 

[Swipesy]

TVengr your suggestion to duplicate Talkgroups by using multiple sets ups is fine as long as you don't have many TG's. With many TG's it becomes a nightmare maintaining multiple duplications. Just a caveat.

 

[gman59]

On the KCSIS statewide system, Reno sheriff dispatch and Hutchinson PD dispatch both show encrypted. Highway Patrol troop F Wichita is open to receive. Pretty much all of the other Police and Fire in Reno County are open to receive. Reno Co has 2 sites on the statewide system, Hutchinson and Partridge. For the MPSCS system, you have several options. If you set Multi-Site to Roam, you will use the site with the best signal. If you are able to receive both sites, set Multi-Site to Stationary. That will use both sites and give you wider coverage. You could also set up 2 systems with the same talkgroups on different scan lists, one using the Hutchinson site and the other using the Partridge site. In that case, Multi-Site would be set to Off on both systems. You could then easily select either site or both using the scan lists.. If you have any questions, please let me know. Here are the links for Reno County and the KSICS system:

Reno County, Kansas (KS) Scanner Frequencies and Radio Frequency Reference

Scanner Frequencies and Radio Frequency Reference for Reno County, Kansas (KS)

www.radioreference.com

Kansas Statewide Interoperable Communication System (KSICS) Trunking System, Statewide, Kansas

Kansas Statewide Interoperable Communication System (KSICS) Trunking System Profile

www.radioreference.com

I have Multi-site set to ROAM at this time, but I like your Stationary recommendation for wider coverage.
I placed the Armature radio from various counties into its own scan -list .
Mainly because not all are active at the same time and its storm season here.
I want to monitor storm reports as the move across counties.
Thank you for your detailed analysis

 

[tvengr]

For the MPSCS system, you have several options.

That should have been KSICS system. MPSCS is the Michigan statewide system. Too many states, too many systems!

 

[gmclam]

How you organize your lists depends on what you want to monitor and over how large of an area. I monitor so much stuff that I assign a different county to each list. The list will contain LE, Fire, CHP, Federal channels, etc. (for that county) regardless of whether it is a TalkGroup (trunked) or conventional. If there is a large city in a county (lots of channels/frequencies) then it will get its own list. In some cases there is more than one large city in the county.

Especially when travelling, I want to turn on the county ahead of me and turn off the one behind me. At home I divide the monitoring of counties among several radios. I like each radio to have the same profile (within reason) so I can "easily" monitor an incident somewhere using all radios for the same county.