Ontario County now using 700 MHz

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eng5

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I'm hearing Sheriff dispatch on TG 64574 and Canandaigua PD on TG 7501. Technicians testing earlier today referred to TG 7505 as the Geneva PD channel.

Edit: I'm hearing Geneva PD on TG 64576.
 
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k2hz

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I think I just heard Fire Dispatch on TG 8001. Reception is terrible at my location in Monroe County so I can't make out much of the audio. I am also hearing the TG 64574 and TG 7501 you reported. I see 64574 active whenever 154.815 is active but I can't make out any audio on the 700 system. What I could make out on TG7501 sounded like the Sheriff (Ontario to 128) but did not match any activity on 154.815

Based on what I heard during the Monroe County cutover, 5 digit TGIDs like 64574 are probably temporary cross-band patches and the permanent TGID will be 4 digit when the system is in full operation.

I also see a TG8076 occasionally but I don't get any audio. I am also hearing what may be testing on 7505 but it is badly garbled here.

I can get a full "4 bar" signal strength on my PSR-500 on both the North and South systems but the CC quality is 50% or less and cuts in and out due to the out of phase simulcast reception here.
 
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eng5

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8001 just ID'ed as EMS and Fishers just went back in quarters. (You'd think they'd put Fishers back on the fire channel now...)

Reception here in NE Ontario County is awful with 4 bars on the BCD396XT. Signal strength fluctuates a lot so it's probably due to the simulcast. I'll have a lot of antenna experimenting to do. There was an announcement earlier acknowledging the garbled Sheriff dispatcher audio. I notice it still compared to the cars.

The 8070 series TG's seem to be ops or department channels. I heard Farmington fire responding on 8030 earlier today and what might be Victor fire car to car on 8076. This is all pure speculation at this point.

They seem to be in a mode where certain depts are running on 700 but they haven't cut over full time yet.
 
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k2hz

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I tired to monitor from several locations in southern Monroe County and still can not get useable reception. I guess I will have to go to Ontario County when I get a chance and see if I can find a spot with decent reception.

The Sheriff patch to 154.815 has been TG64577 the last few days. The Fire/EMS dispatcher seems to show up on various 645xx TGs and the mobile replys on various 80xx TGs

Canandaigua PD may be TG7001 and Geneva TG7005 but I can only hear an occasional word or two and it is not simul with their VHF frequencies like the Sheriff TG is.

Based on what I observed in the early days of Monroe County, these 645xx TGIDs may change at times until the system is completely cutover at which time it will be a 4-digit TGIDs. I am afarid this system is going to be difficult to monitor.
 

ThePagerGeek

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The 6xxxx are the "patch groups."

Are you using Pro96Com? You can see all the patches.

The 7/800 group has an ID (4 digit)
The Conventional connection point has an ID (4 digit, usually starts with 9xxx)
Then they tie them together with a Patch ID (6xxxx)

tpg
 

ThePagerGeek

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As of this post:
Using Pro96Com looking at Monroe County East system:

Talkgroup 1098 is patched to patch group 50519 which is patched to conventional channel 9705
Talkgroup 7001 is patched to patch group 64577 which is patched to conventional channel 9809
Talkgroup 7018 is patched to patch group 64503 which is patched to conventional channel 9818
Talkgroup 7505 is patched to patch group 64502 which is patched to conventional channel 9808

tpg
 

k2hz

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The 6xxxx are the "patch groups."

Are you using Pro96Com? You can see all the patches.

The 7/800 group has an ID (4 digit)
The Conventional connection point has an ID (4 digit, usually starts with 9xxx)
Then they tie them together with a Patch ID (6xxxx)

tpg

That is what I was seeing with Unitrunker when Monroe had the patch groups up to the legacy Public Works UHF systems. Units would log into a normal TG but my PSR-500 and UT would show all voice activity with the Patch ID instead of the TGID.

In the past, before Ontario got all their sites on the air, I could get pretty good decode with UT. Now that the system has all sites up the phasing interference is so bad UT does not even recognize it.

The Ontario Sheriff is a patch with both dispatcher and mobile audio from 154.815 but the Patch ID has changed a few times since it went on the air. Ontario Fire and EMS are simplex so the Patch is dispatcher audio only from what bits and pieces of transmissions I can make out and sync with their VHF systems. The mobile replys are on various 80xx TGIDs. On Friday night I was monitoring 46.42, 155.355 and the trunked system. At first I was seeing the dispatcher audio on TG64500 when the dispatcher was keying both Low and High Band together but later I was seeing TG64513, 64515 and 64522 when the dispatcher was active on one band or the other.

I assume the Harris mobiles map the Patch ID to the appropriate TGs so it is transparent to the users but scanners seem to respond only to the Patch ID and not the actual TGID. It also seems that the Patch ID can change for unknown reasons.

Since I can't analyze Ontario with UT like I can with Monroe and I can't get more that an occasional word of clear audio, I am in the dark on determining what is going on.

I have not heard Canandaigua PD on VHF since 700 went live. I still hear Geneva PD VHF occasionally but it does not seem to be simulcast on the 700 system.

Since your follow up message I am monitoring Monroe East with both UT on a receiver on the CC and my PSR-500. I am seeing the "645xx Adds 70xx" messages as you described but no voice traffic on the system except from the normal Monroe County TGs.
 

ThePagerGeek

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That is what I was seeing with Unitrunker when Monroe had the patch groups up to the legacy Public Works UHF systems. Units would log into a normal TG but my PSR-500 and UT would show all voice activity with the Patch ID instead of the TGID.

Yup, that's how P25 works.

The radio looks to the control channel stream for any patches. If it sees a patch, it will look to the patch group for its traffic and its original TGID.

tpg
 

k2hz

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Yup, that's how P25 works.

The radio looks to the control channel stream for any patches. If it sees a patch, it will look to the patch group for its traffic and its original TGID.

tpg

That is what I suspected which is another major problem for monitoring P25 trunked systems with a scanner once you can even get a usable signal to decode.
 

k2hz

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I am now hearing the Ontario Sheriff on the Monroe South system. Patch ID 64577 with an apparent actual TGID 7001.
 
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DaveNF2G

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Welcome to the wonderful world of simulcast, which we have been dealing with in Saratoga County for quite a while now. Scanner-wise, there is no perfect solution. If you must have perfectly clear reception, then you must obtain a commercial radio that is set up to monitor the system.
 

KA1RBI

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Welcome to the wonderful world of simulcast, which we have been dealing with in Saratoga County for quite a while now. Scanner-wise, there is no perfect solution. If you must have perfectly clear reception, then you must obtain a commercial radio that is set up to monitor the system.

Bah. I'm currently in Cortland county, receiving the Ontario control channel right now on 769.55625 perfectly. The antenna is a RS 800 MHz rubber duck. The location of the receiver wasn't hand picked beforehand; it was just randomly put on top of a stack of other stuff...

Spend big $ on a "commercial radio" if you wish, or
SignalScopePage

73

Max
 

Thunderknight

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Bah. I'm currently in Cortland county, receiving the Ontario control channel right now on 769.55625 perfectly. The antenna is a RS 800 MHz rubber duck. The location of the receiver wasn't hand picked beforehand; it was just randomly put on top of a stack of other stuff...


Max

You might be so far away that you are only hearing 1 site, and therefore outside of any simulcast issues.
 

AuntEnvy

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That seems crazy to me, seeing as I can't even get any surrounding counties trunked systems using an ST2 or any other setup for that matter.

I can get the former Ontario sheriff ok but I can't imagine I'd be able to get the new one.
 

KA1RBI

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You might be so far away that you are only hearing 1 site, and therefore outside of any simulcast issues.

The program I'm using SignalScopePage has a GUI option to choose which demodulator is to be used; this allows the user to switch back and forth between "FSK4" and "PSK" in real time. When the FSK4 option is selected, the "4 bars" break up into the characteristic simulcast mish mash, but when PSK is selected all is perfectly clean. The presence of simulcast distortion on this signal has also been confirmed on the eye pattern diagram.

The FSK4 option in the program is directly equivalent to hardware FM discrimination. When a P25 signal with simulcast distortion is passed through an FM demodulator/discriminator (as in all current generation scanners) the signal is irrevocably mangled. The solution is to demod the signal as PSK, which requires direct access to the RF signal pre-demodulation.

I admit it does help to be > 2000' in elevation, and there aren't a lot of trees between here and the horizon, but I can confirm perfect reception of the Ontario 700 MHz CC signal here in Cortland county on a rubber duck with zero BER... I've pasted the data for the CC below... [crc:0 is a known bug, there were definitely CRC and/or trellis errors during the reception during the periods when FSK4 was selected]

Max
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
rf: syid 228 rfid 1 stid 1 frequency 769.556250 uplink 799.556250
net: syid 228 wacn 458ad frequency 769.556250
secondary control channel(s): 769.281250,769.856250,770.106250
stats: tsbks 4386 crc 0

voice frequencies found: 769.28125,769.85625,770.10625

tbl-id: 0 frequency: 769.006250 step 0.012500 offset 30.000000
tbl-id: 1 frequency: 851.012500 step 0.012500 offset -45.000000
adjacent 854.562500: rfid: 41 stid:1 uplink:809.562500 tbl:1
adjacent 770.306250: rfid: 1 stid:1 uplink:800.306250 tbl:0
adjacent 769.256250: rfid: 21 stid:1 uplink:799.256250 tbl:0
adjacent 852.487500: rfid: 21 stid:1 uplink:807.487500 tbl:1
adjacent 769.806250: rfid: 41 stid:1 uplink:799.806250 tbl:0
 

k2hz

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And not one submission to update the database :-(

Mike

Chauffeur 6 is working on my submissions, including UT logs. One of many problems is how to list these Patch IDs for Fire/EDMS that are continually changing. The other problem is that decent reception to verify the regular TGIDs is elusive.

At this time the status is:

Sheriff patch to 154.815 is 64577 which is associated with 7001
Sheriff Admin is 7002
7051 appears to be Canandaigua PD
7055 may be testing related to Geneva PD but Geneva is still on their VHF with no apparent patch.
8001 is a few but not all Fire or EMS mobiles
The Fire/EMS Dispatcher has been observed on 645xx Patch IDs that seem to change every time the dispatcher reselects channels.

Updating the database is of little value and could be counterproductive if people will be downloading info that is probably already no longer valid.

Stay tuned and the DB will be updated as soon info can be verified and with some expectation it is not changing day to day or minute to minute.
 

GTR8000

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And not one submission to update the database :-(

Mike

Two, actually, and they are being taken care of per k2hz's post. There's a bit more to this than meets the eye, it's not a straightforward case of dumping a few talkgroups into a system and forgetting about them. :wink:
 

k2hz

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Ontario Sheriff is 64571 today. We are shooting at a moving target with attempting to document this system in the RRDB while patches are in effect.

Real trunked radios will translate the variable patch IDs to their actual TGID so this is not a problem for the system users.
 

GTR8000

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I recommend that anyone monitoring this system make sure to either scan in ID Search mode (Uniden), or program a talkgroup wildcard (GRE/RS) so you don't miss any activity.

Until the dust settles, the database listings might be inaccurate, as it's impractical for us to keep making changes on a daily or hourly basis.
 
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