Montgomery County Rebanding

[mfmargetis]

I've heard that rebanding in Montgomery County is complete and is supposed to take effect August 13th.

I didn't see anything in the forum, admittedly my eyesight isn't that good.....does anyone have the new frequencies?

 

[ka3jjz]

If true (the original attempt at rebanding failed because of faulty filters on the towers - I'm surprised that it went so fast), the new frequencies are 15 mhz below the current ones (unless they add new frequencies, which is possible). There was an extensive thread on Montgomery county rebanding from their original attempt here. Click the blue 'here' to go there.

Since there's at least 1 freq with a '0' in the 4th decimal position, to properly trunk this system after rebanding, a custom table will be needed....Mike

 

[mfmargetis]

Thanks. I work for the county and we got a memo to stop by the radio shop to get our radios reprogrammed because there was some kind of an error that needed to be corrected or "when the rebanding takes effect August 13th our radio will become inoperable"....my partner took our radios over and when he asked about the August 13th date the tech just rolled his eyes....so, who knows?

 

[jkahn]

I have been monitoring the rebanded system since the "failed" switchover, and there has been no recent testing or activity on it that I am aware of. There is occasionally a control channel running for an hour or two (I presume for testing), but I have not heard it for several weeks.

JK

EDIT-> I just sent a PM to Lt. Dallas Lipp, who posted the good explanation of what happened when they first tried to switch, asking him to update this thread with any new information he may have.

 

[jkahn]

Montgomery Co Rebanding: as of Aug 13 2012

On behalf of all scanner enthusiasts listening to MoCo, "Thank you" Lt. Brown.
My reply today from Lt Brown on ScanDC:

Beginning Today (August 13, 2012), Montgomery County will begin the final steps of the re-banding process as mandated by Federal Law. This process will take approximately one week and result in some changes regarding older radio equipment.

It is important that all MCFRS personnel understand the following:

Effective sometime on 8/15/2012 - ALL legacy radios that were NOT re-banded will cease to operate. This includes station scanners that are incapable of rebanding. We expect that there will be reports of some “radios not working”. All problems should be directed to Captain Baltrotsky by telephone or by email . Do not contact the Radio Shop with complaints about radios not working. All operational radios have been issued prior to re-banding.

Overall system effects:

During various times over the upcoming week, the Radio System will be placed into SITE TRUNKING. These brief interruptions will mean that the ECC is operating on its back-up radios and NOT the primary “computer consoles” that are routinely used. REMEMBER: In site trunking ALL talk-groups are still available to all users.

The following is critical to incident operations:

§ Once re-banded, 7O & 7N in the * zones will NOT work, so any personnel who have not switched to the NON * zones will not be able to communicate on 7O & 7N.



Sent from my HTC smartphone on the Now Network from Sprint!

 

[TopFlite]

Montgomery Control Channel 853.8625

Montgomery CC 853.8625 Loud and Clear here in NW DC. Old TG's are currently functioning. Old frequencies displayed as Voice Channels.

 

[jkahn]

My HP-1 is receiving on the rebanded frequencies, but the repeater is staying live after the transmissions, like it is not seeing the end code,and will stay active for 30-40-seconds, during which, if any other talk group transmits, it will come through on wrong talk groups, too.

Lots of tech chatter as they work on individual towers, which may or may not be working.

Does anyone know if the "standard" custom table is working for this system or is there something different? My 396T is not stopping on anything when scanning, but when holding on the control channel, it shows the different talk groups that are active.

I loaded it with the suggested custom table from the rebanding wiki.

 

[ka3jjz]

2 things re the 396 that weren't mentioned - do you have 3.0 firmware or better and did you set the site type to MOT CUSTOM/REBAND?

Both are needed to properly trunk this system now on that scanner. Here's the Uniden TWiki entry for the 396 firmware in case you don't have it...

BCD396TFirmwareUpdate < UnidenMan4 < TWiki

HTH...Mike

 

[freqhopping]

I'm tracking the system just fine with the lower frequencies but with a standard table.

 

[jkahn]

2 things re the 396 that weren't mentioned - do you have 3.0 firmware or better and did you set the site type to MOT CUSTOM/REBAND?

Both are needed to properly trunk this system now on that scanner. Here's the Uniden TWiki entry for the 396 firmware in case you don't have it...

BCD396TFirmwareUpdate < UnidenMan4 < TWiki

HTH...Mike

Thanks Mike!
I do have the latest firmware, and after checking the radio, it appears that I did not load the custom table properly (or at all!) when I copied the old system and changed the frequenies.

Thank goodness I was able to manually load the custom table (see below) and the 396 is now working OK.

With hold and delay both set to zero, I don't seem to be having the repeater hold problem my HP-1 is having!



Band Plan Base Freq (lower) Base Freq (upper) Offset Polarity Spacing
1 851.025 854.000 440 + 25 khz
2 851.0125 868.9875 0 + 25 khz

I understand there are rumors about the system going encrypted in a few months.

JK

edit> the band plan table is formatted OK on the message, but loses the format when I save it ! Sorry!

 

[md_p97]

OK...So I ADDED the 4 new freq's and left the 4 OLD freqs in place.

Getting TG's just like before on 853.3625 and 867.9125 and 868.3625 and
868.6375 and 868.275, and 867.8875

NOTE: I also selected the 800mhz rebanding tables in Win 500 (using
pro-106)

I dunno...but its working

Paul

 

[FFEMTCURRENCE]

so i have freqhop that has the slandered table and he says its working that way, also others that have the rebanded table and it works for them...so which way do i go, and another question the 868mhz will that be "lowered" when full rebanding has taken place

 

[ka3jjz]

There's only a single table with 2 entries - and it's needed when you are trunking using rebanded frequencies. No 'slandered' (I think you meant 'standard') table was ever needed even before rebanding. Yes, all 868 Mhz freqs will need to be dropped down 15 Mhz.

Keeping the old channels in place will, at some point, become a waste of memory space as those transmitters are eventually retuned to their rebanded frequency counterparts. Thus, IMHO (OK maybe not so humble, hi) it's probably wisest to stick with the rebanded setup and be done with it.

HTH...Mike

 

[FFEMTCURRENCE]

i meant "standard" auto correct gotta love it....but yea i thought just to go with the rebanded table thanks

 

[KennyWeather]

Hey folks, I'm new on the forum but have been a scanner enthusiast for a long time. My HP-1 doesn't seem to be working even after updating the firmware and apparently getting the database update. My HomePatrol Sentinel software is saying I have the database as of 8/12/2012 and won't let me update to anything newer than that. I live in MoCo - any idea what I am missing here? Is the database just not updated yet or do I need to do something to update it to a newer version?

 

[ka3jjz]

If you look at the database for the Mont County trunk, you'll see it was only updated today, so whenever you get the next db download, you should get the changes.

However if you don't want to wait, you can reband the HP1 manually - see this article in our wiki (anything that's blue is a link)

Adding a Rebanded System Manually via Sentinel - The RadioReference Wiki

HTH...Mike

 

[KennyWeather]

If you look at the database for the Mont County trunk, you'll see it was only updated today, so whenever you get the next db download, you should get the changes.

However if you don't want to wait, you can reband the HP1 manually - see this article in our wiki (anything that's blue is a link)

Adding a Rebanded System Manually via Sentinel - The RadioReference Wiki

HTH...Mike

Thanks for the info! I'm pretty tech saavy but I'll definitely have to look into your link before I decide if I want to do it or not. Working on my PSR-500 for now which is proving to be tedious. I wish I had known about the reband sooner so I could prepare for it. I was kind of blind sided by it to be honest.

If I wait for the next database any idea on how often they push them out for the HP-1 through Sentinel?

 

[ka3jjz]

I don't know precisely when the downloads are ready each week - something in the recesses of this foggy brain says Monday morning, but don't quote that as gospel. Anyone?

As to your PSR-500, rebanding can be done, it would seem, pretty easily through software, once you put in the control channels (you really don't need to put in all the channels, although some folks do, assuming that a frequency previously used as a voice channel becomes a control channel, which has happened on other systems). Once again, that information is linked in our wiki here...

Object Oriented Scanner Software - The RadioReference Wiki

See section 2 for the relevant pix and links HTH...Mike

 

[KennyWeather]

Thanks for the wealth of information! I will certainly be using this forum for my scanner needs!

Got my PSR-500 fixed up. I actually ended up clearing everything out of memory because things were getting a little disorganized.

I'm getting all of my old Montgomery Co. channels as normal. Works like a charm. I'm probably going to wait on the HP-1 until the next db update comes out. As long as one is working I feel decent.

Turning on my scanners this morning and hearing silence for 30 minutes was really eerie.

 

[Rost23]

got my Grecom PSR800 and only lisening to PG county Montgomery is silence i ges ill waite for update , or i can chang it by my self ???