Madison & Oswego Counties ready to go P25 July 23rd

[Chauffeur6]

For those in the know, I'm looking for verification that 460.1125 will be replacing 153.995 as the Fire/EMS Dispatch frequency at some point?

[theicomman]

Originally Posted by Chauffeur6

For those in the know, I'm looking for verification that 460.1125 will be replacing 153.995 as the Fire/EMS Dispatch frequency at some point?

Yes. Planned drop date of the 153.995 is still unknoiwn. at that point the county SAR Team will migrate to the 153.995 repeater pair.

[k2hz]

I see Madison County is licensed for both 453.1625 and 460.0625 for paging. Will this be like Onondaga County with 453 for fire and 460 for EMS?

[c0untyb0y]

Wirelessly posted (SCH-U750L/1.0 NetFront/3.0.22.2.17 (GUI) MMP/2.0)

so far this morning i have id only a few talk groups in Madison County.
7101 Law Dispatch
7102 Law Data
7904 Radio Checks
will post any more later during the day.

[WatnNY]

Did Oswego County stop simulcasting on 155.250? I was in the county for about 30 minutes today and didn't hear a single transmission.

Mike

[jraymond68]

I happy that I'm able to decode the P25 audio for Madison County. Sounds like law enforcement only at this time. Onondaga & Oswego are too far away.

John

[c0untyb0y]

Wirelessly posted (SCH-U750L/1.0 NetFront/3.0.22.2.17 (GUI) MMP/2.0)

at home i am stuck in a little valley (not Little Valley, NY that is) where i barely decode the P25 signal from Madison at all. last night around the 6 o'clock hour seemed to be the best but silent for most the night.
anyone have a good recommendation on an external antenna used with success on the CNYICC systems? i presently use a RS discone that works wonders on analog. thanks!

[ab2ms]

Analog and digital make no difference as far as antenna is concerned, any discrepency as far as receive on the new system would be tower location and frequency related. I use the cheap radio shack ($20ish) antenna and have great luck, but as close to the tower as I am I'd probably get a great signal on a bent paperclip.

[DaveNF2G]

I drove through the area on the Thruway between 1 and 2 am this morning. Onondaga County was putting out calls on 453.850, but I heard absolutely nothing via CNYICC.

I was using a HP-1E w/GPS. CNYICC was one of the systems being scanned at the time, but I received no traffic.

[tomhrrs69]

Should i be able to monitor the Onondaga system in Auburn? I have the RS 20-176 on my roof, and can't pick them up, though i am able to listen to the dispatch on 453.850.

[alphaacres]

if reception is poor try this
enter this as conventional Group
Mobile F 1 465.0375 Digital Audio Nac 2A4
Mobile F 2 465.0750 Digital Audio Nac 2A4
Mobile F 3 465.0850 Digital Audio Nac 2A4
Mobile F 4 465.1625 Digital Audio Nac 2A4
Mobile F 5 465.1875 Digital Audio Nac 2A4
Mobile F 6 465.2000 Digital Audio Nac 2A4
Mobile F 7 465.3000 Digital Audio Nac 2A4
Mobile F 8 465.3250 Digital Audio Nac 2A4
Mobile F 9 465.3750 Digital Audio Nac 2A4
Mobile F 10 465.5500 Digital Audio Nac 2A4

[KC2CNY]

A big thanks to "theicomman" for all his information he can provide us. What a great help to us!!

For listeners around CNY..... Simulcast digital distortion. Simulcast digital distortion - The RadioReference Wiki

If you are not within (roughly) 2-5 miles of a tower, your chances of monitoring any of the systems decreases. Reading the above article about digital distortion explains it. Its written very well. CQPSK modulation is not handled as well as C4FM, even on the newest scanners on the market.

Try an outdoor yagi antenna pointed towards your closet tower. You may get the best coverage. I am about 2 miles from a tower to the south, and a tower to the north/north east.

I use the stock antenna and have 99% signal strength on a RS PRO-197.

** Another tip I can recommend is moving your scanner around in different places and move the back of set antenna around while monitoring the signal strength of the control channel. I can move my scanner over 5 inches and point the antenna in the complete opposite direction and go from 99% on my signal strength to 56%. So you have to play around where your scanner is sitting and where your antenna is pointing, espcially if you are not close enough to a tower.

460.1125 was sending out calls/tones and testing today. 153.995 is still active as well. Nice to hear SAR will use the frequency later down the road.

[KA1RBI]

Originally Posted by KC2CNY

A big thanks to "theicomman" for all his information he can provide us. What a great help to us!!

For listeners around CNY..... Simulcast digital distortion. Simulcast digital distortion - The RadioReference Wiki

If you are not within (roughly) 2-5 miles of a tower, your chances of monitoring any of the systems decreases. Reading the above article about digital distortion explains it. Its written very well. CQPSK modulation is not handled as well as C4FM, even on the newest scanners on the market.

Sigh.

The wiki page about simulcast distortion completely fails to cut to the heart of the issue. I tried (once) to edit the page to add a correction but was not allowed.

The fundamental problem is that "CQPSK" must be demodulated *as QPSK*, not as FM. That is, if simulcast distortion is present when you pass the signal through an FM demodulator, the signal is irrevocably mangled. Irreversibly garbled. Detecting the signal as QPSK in DSP (say) requires that you have access to a copy of the signal before it has been passed through the receiver's FM demodulation function. The FM demod method works well for conventional C4FM which is what scanners were/are designed originally to accept.

It's cheap and easy to add a "fourth IF stage" (typically in the low tens of KHz) to bring the signal frequency down to the range where it be be processed in conventional DSP (including of course, sound cards).

In my own work I've found an IF (intermediate freq.) of 24 KHz to be optimum. Once the signal has been digitized it's passed to GNU Radio (see the op25-dev project for software details and source code).

A number of commercial amateur offerings are now starting to appear that have a low KHz IF. It's really past time that scanner users start demanding that manufacturers keep up (that is, DSP at IF not merely at AF). Simply has to be experienced, the difference is akin to removing perhaps a 20 dB attenuator from your receiver.

It's just that one tires after a while of the stories of Yagi antennas and towers, the constant heartbreak of folks with scanners dealing with CQPSK breakups, loss of sync, mouthfuls-o-marbles and all the rest...

If someone from RR is reading, could we _please_ update the misinfo in the aforementioned page?

Thx

73 & Best

[KA1RBI]

Originally Posted by KA1RBI

, the difference is akin to removing perhaps a 20 dB attenuator from your receiver.

And indeed, scanners can be really plagued by intermod (internally generated distortion typically in the RF front end). Adding an outside antenna in an attempt to workaround the simulcast distortion can make this _even worse_. Eliminating the intermod can easily contribute another 10 or 20 dB or more of improvement. In the old analog days, its was often not difficult to tell just by listening that intermod was happening, but with digital it just conspires to worsen the BER.

A few dB here and a few dB there, eventually it adds up.

Max

[c0untyb0y]

thanks KA1RBI for that insight in to the demod issue. like I say at work, "analog is easy, digital is difficult" and perhaps that's true of our consumer/commercial scanner receiver equipment manufacturers!

so... speaking of digital being difficult... anyone else noticing Madison County MRD alive on VHF again?

[c0untyb0y]

Originally Posted by c0untyb0y

anyone else noticing Madison County MRD alive on VHF again?

I did find out today that Madison County had to revert back to their VHF MRD channel, and have been since Thursday last week. the culprit? a cut fiber cable between the Onondaga and Madison centers. this had nothing to do with the Onondaga 9-1-1 center going down due to an electrical problem, which is now believed not to be lightning related.

[c0untyb0y]

Originally Posted by c0untyb0y

at home i am stuck in a little valley (not Little Valley, NY that is) where i barely decode the P25 signal from Madison at all. last night around the 6 o'clock hour seemed to be the best but silent for most the night.
anyone have a good recommendation on an external antenna used with success on the CNYICC systems? i presently use a RS discone that works wonders on analog. thanks!

albeit with some digital "fuzz", the Mad Co system is coming in quite good tonight. Presently listening to TG 12 with units on Oneida Lake looking for what they believed to be an explosion/fire which really might have been a meteor per Hancock ANG. pretty cool!!!

[rfking123]

Originally Posted by Chauffeur6

For those in the know, I'm looking for verification that 460.1125 will be replacing 153.995 as the Fire/EMS Dispatch frequency at some point?

So far 460.1125 has been active. Not a lot but going. I get it in Syracuse and I have not heard 153.995 much at all.

[k2hz]

I am still hearing Madison Co MRD units back on 159.240 since they had the reported F/O cable cut few months ago. Is something back on the Madison system now?

Isn't TG12 an Onondaga Co TG? I thought Madison TGs were 7xxx series.

Are you possibly hearing Onondaga and not Madison?

Concerning Oswego 153.995 - I was still hearing earlier this week.

[c0untyb0y]

this is an odd situation in Mad Co.

Law used the trunk system for thee whole days before some electrical anomaly (be it lightning, cut fiber, space ghosts) occurred and they haven't been back since.

Fire is starting to use it a lot more, and that's why I was probably able to hear whatever it was they were looking for on Oneida Lake last night. Fire low band and EMS VHF channels are also still in use at this time.

I have a list (promise, I do!) that I will share with RR but I've moved my home office around last month and have misplaced my paperwork on the matter. though as I recall TG 12 is a shared common talk group amongst the consortium counties, for Fire most likely. Law will also have common shared TGs as well. ya know, that whole interoperability thing everyone's been talking about.