Can you confirm if all the I-TAC repeaters have been heard in Ottawa? Also any luck with the OFD Simplex Freqs? I have just more or less permanently moved back to Ottawa area and am confirming/programming up my radios for the Ottawa region.
Going back four years, I heard some activity on ITAC1 and ITAC3 (GWB) and last
year a bit on ITAC1. Both were event-related so not known if they are temporary
setups.
I've been searching on and off over the last five years for OFS simplex and
VR, but found nothing. VRs are turned on only sometimes, and you have to be
near to have any chance of catching it. My hope was that on-scene people
without EDACS scanners could catch some action. Simplex seems to be used
rarely, and I've never been near enough to catch it. Searching 851-866 is an
ordeal, due to the number of iDEN signals to dodge, or lock out if the scanner
allows. I've resorted to searching 1-2MHz at a time, which lowers the chance
of catching something.
Last fall with the Canadian dollar at $1.05US I grabbed a cheap BC92XLT refurb
with CloseCall. I tried it at a highrise incident recently, but didn't catch any VRs. I
did see a hit on 420.6875, which seemed to come from a vehicle, which is odd
because it's the dispatch side of the CAD.
A VR exercise was held months ago at Place de Ville. I heard the tail end of it
but again did not catch anything.
Unrelated, but when searching 868-869, found two P25 signals on 868.1875 and
868.2125 which are not listed. May be related to Gatineau system, or something
else.
Dave