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ok. I have King co and EPSCA in my Pro-97 and have no issues. I have my BC780xlt hooked up to an outdoor antenna ( on deck of 3 story) its on a mast about roofline. I should get good reception. ok I input all the same king co freqs for the king co TRS and get TG ID's ok but many are very scratchy and some are not even listenable(on the BC 780) but if i use the EPSCA TRS site freqs, I get very clear reception on King Co TG ID's. Yet I seem to be having issues even still.I have My pro-97 running beside the BC 780 and one will stop on say King co. Metro/transit pd TG 23952 and the Pro-97 will be loud and clear yet the BC780 is nothing. no sound no nothing. I have noticed this with many TG ID's on that system.
This seems really weird. So i re-entered the King co TRS Freqs into the BC780 from the Intercept NW site and all the TG ID's are active but very scratchy again. Some not even audible. Ok so is this just a reception issue? or is it a TRS site freq issue(like the wrong site freqs being used or what is the issue. its really dam,n frustrating, I have never been this troubled with scanning or trunked system than i have with these Puget sound ones. Can someone maybe help or clear things up for me. What Site freqs should i use? I'm in woodinville.I thought my outdoor antenna would get primo reception on all systems but my pro-97 with a good rubber duck gets better reception on these systems..

:D All radios are not the same. Bearcat uses a special 10.8 or 10.85 IF conversion -- not the standard 10.7 mhz IF. ---- Two radios of the same model and company -- might not receive the same.

Multipath fading can wreak havoc on 800 MHz trunk reception. Try repositioning your antenna, or using a directional antenna if you can (I use a WA5VJB PCB yagi). Doesn't matter which way you point it, as long as there is some front-to-back gain and sidelobe rejection. Paradoxically, even moving the antenna indoors can help.

I have found that a nice outdoor discone, mounted high and in the clear, is actually a pretty terrible antenna for receiving the local trunk systems.

It's no big surprise to receive EPSCA more reliably since you are, after all, on the east side. And it's no surprise that the Pro-97 with the rubber duck is less-vulnerable to multipath. (Also: how long is your antenna feedline, and what tyep of cable is it? You may benefit from an antenna-mounted preamp, once you rule out multipath problems.)

My run is about 75 feet give or take. My coax is Mini 8 by Belden?? at least thats what it says. It is a good coax...Belden i believe. Maybe like you suggested just a re-positioning of the antenna. maybe try to raise it a little higher. i do have another 5 ft mast. maybe get it above the roofline? or move it to another location on the deck... At this point I'm just confused as to what group/set of freqs to use for the best reception. It seems when I use the EPSCA freqs and input the King co TG ID's I get them very clear but it seems like I only get a portion of them. seems as if not all Tg come alive. Even though my pro-97 will be active on a certain Tg, i will not recieve it on the BC 780, yet others will be active at the same time.

oh and I'm using a 1/4 wave groundplane. It worked awesome before I moved. Maybe just the location of the antenna now is not working out.

75 feet of RG-8X (aka Mini8) is fairly lossy at 860 MHz, over 10 dB once you take the usual CB-grade connectors into account. Not the end of the world, but not a good thing if your signal levels are already marginal. Multipath troughs alone can exceed 20 dB, and when you take 10 dB more loss on top of that... you get the idea.

Just for fun, bring your antenna indoors and connect it with a shorter piece of coax. I'll bet it actually works better.

I have since( in the past few mins) went out and re-connected my coax to the antenna and made sure everything was very secure and it made a small improvement. Is it ok to use the EPSCA site freqs and program in the King co. TG ID's using the better recieved site freqs? I should still recieve all the TG's correct? Theres no reason i should only recieve partial TG ID's on a system right?

My understanding is that if you are monitoring the EPSCA control channel (868.775), you will receive only those Seattle-specific TGs for which at least one radio on the Eastside is affiliated. (Someone who knows the trunk system better can probably clarify/correct that.)

In practice you can always receive at least some Seattle PD talkgroups, but you will not hear location-specific users like the Seattle Center staff via the 868.775 control channel.

This is the set I'm using.

851.1375
851.8875
852.6375
853.3875
854.2375
866.2125
866.4625
866.9125
866.9875
867.3125
867.4875
867.8125
867.8875
868.2000
868.5250
868.7750
868.8250

I'm getting many TG's fine. I'm using those EPSCA site freqs then programming in the King Co. TG's It seems to work or will I not get all of them>? I'm not trying to get Seattle city specific stuff. Although in "open mode" i do hear many Tg Id's just fine. I am using those freqs I just showed and scanning all the TG ID's I have programmed for the King Co stuff. (S.O., various cities,Renton,Tukwilla, Fed way, etc and so on.) It seems to be ok. they all are very loud and crisp I'm just not sure if I'm recieving all the TG ID's of the system by using the EPSCA site freqs.

My understanding is that the only way you can be sure to hear the TGs associated with a particular system is to actually be monitoring that specific system; i.e., to be sure to hear a Seattle TG, you need to be locked on to the Seattle system.

To echo what John said, you can often hear TG's from other systems (such as Seattle TG's on the Eastside system) if a radio happens to be "affiliated" with the alternate system at that particular time. For example, if a Seattle Police unit happened to be in Bellevue, its radio would be set to a SPD talkgroup, but the radio would lock on to the Eastside trunking signal and thereby become "affiliated" with the Eastside system. During the time that this was happening, you could hear the SPD talkgroup assigned to this unit on the Eastside system. When the unit came back to Seattle, it would rejoin its home system, and the "affiliation" would no longer be in effect - meaning you could no longer hear the SPD TG on the Eastside system.

In reality, because lots of units are traveling all over the place all of the time, and because radios sometimes receive a stronger signal from a neighboring system than from their own system, dozens or more cross-system affilliations are likely to be occurring at any given time. This means that you can often, but not always, receive TGs from alternate systems. Again, the only way to guarantee that you will receive a specific TG is to be tuned to the system that is "home" to that TG.

I have been scanning the EPSCA site freqs tonight using the King Co TG ID's I have programmed in. they all seem to be coming up ok. I have the BC780 in "open" mode. I see many many Seattle TG ID's popping up. Some have said that its only when someone wonders out of thier Site into another TRS site. i understand but it seems to me if i put in the EPSCA site freqs in another bank and just programmed all the Seattle ID's I would get the sysytem fine. I seem to get the same ID's coming up. I(t seems that i could use this set of Site freqs for all 3 systems and just put them in different banks.

From the receiver point of view, there's no distinction between EPSCA, KC/VC, and Seattle. Group your talkgroups into banks according to how you want to listen to them, not who financed them.

You have to choose which control channels to program - that's a trade off between good reception (site close to you) and the odds of your desired talkgroup actually being active on that site (site near the primary users).

Flash