Ocracoke Island Monitoring

[fcfd988]

I'll be on Ocracoke all next week. I am still looking for the paging tones for Ocracoke EMS and Ocracoke VFD. If anyone can help, please send me what you have.

I'll be monitoring All Hyde County and Ocracoke Island conventional freqs, Hyde County VIPER talkgroups and NC Ferry Ops.

Does anyone else have any interesting freqs I might need?

What about the U.S. Park service, any body have any freqs for them?

Thanks for everyone's help!!

Wes

 

[fcfd988]

Update From Ocracoke with new Freqs and Tones

I have been here less than 24 hours and so far have managed to gather some valuable info as far as the Hyde County/Ocracoke Situation.

First off the PL's in the database are incorrect for the Hyde County Fire/Rescue and Englehard Fire Repeaters. Both are using a DPL of 025. Thanks to another member of the forum who provided this information and I am just confirming it now. Also the PL Listed for Ocracoke Fire and Rescue Repeater is incorrect, it uses a 225.7 PL and not 107.2

In addition, Hyde County Fire/Rescue Disp, Englehard Fire and Ocracoke Fire and Rescue repeaters all seem to be multi-casting and are patched to the Hyde Co FD Disp VIPER TG.

Second, Ocracoke EMS is on 154.385 Rx, 155.130 Tx with PL of 107.2 Their Paging Tones are 313.0 and 953.7. This frequency is obviously patched into the Hyde EMS VIPER TG, but I am unable to confirm if this is the correct VHF frequency pair for the EMS on the mainland.

Also, Paging Tones for Hyde County Fire Departments Station 4 and Station 9 are as follows:
STA 4, 510.5 and 457.9
STA 9, 368.5 and 433.7

Thanks to the BCD396XT Tone-Out Search!!!

As I am typing this, I have suddenly lost all Hyde EMS Comms on Viper. For some reason, there has been no Viper traffic at all for the last several minutes even though I have a excellent signal from the Ocracoke VIPER site and have been picking up traffic before now.

More to come!!!!

Wes

 

[KE4ZNR]

Wes,
Please submit your found info through the submission engine so it can be corrected/updated.
Thanks for all the good info and enjoy your trip!
Happy Monitoring
Marshall KE4ZNR

 

[ocguard]

The reason that VIPER may temporarily stop carrying patch traffic from the VHF systems is because no one is affiliated to that talk group using that site. VIPER uses Smartzone principles to manage system capacity. If no radio is affiliated to a site for a certain talk, that site may not carry traffic for that talk group.

Otherwise, EXCELLENT information. This would explain why I NEVER get and Hyde/Ocracoke traffic while scanning from the OBX. Thanks for the input!

 

[fcfd988]

The reason that VIPER may temporarily stop carrying patch traffic from the VHF systems is because no one is affiliated to that talk group using that site. VIPER uses Smartzone principles to manage system capacity. If no radio is affiliated to a site for a certain talk, that site may not carry traffic for that talk group.

Otherwise, EXCELLENT information. This would explain why I NEVER get and Hyde/Ocracoke traffic while scanning from the OBX. Thanks for the input!

oc guard,

Thanks for the info. I am fimiliar with how the system works and how the radios must affiliate with the sites for the sites to carry traffic. I do not believe this to have been the problem. There were radios on and operating from the Ocracoke site, but I was not getting anything on the scanner. My wife was on duty with Ocracoke EMS and her and every other XTS1500 radio was recieving plenty of traffic on the fire, EMS and TAC talkgroups, but the scanner was DEAD. I was recieving the control channel, full strength, but no voice traffic at all. I was there through Sunday morning and never heard another peep on the Ocracoke site.

When I got back in range of the Belhaven site on the drive home it was active and other VIPER sites were active with traffic all the way back home. I can't figure it out.

I am going to post a link to this thread over in the VIPER forum to see if anyone can offer a suggestion.

 

[ocguard]

oc guard,

Thanks for the info. I am fimiliar with how the system works and how the radios must affiliate with the sites for the sites to carry traffic. I do not believe this to have been the problem. There were radios on and operating from the Ocracoke site, but I was not getting anything on the scanner. My wife was on duty with Ocracoke EMS and her and every other XTS1500 radio was recieving plenty of traffic on the fire, EMS and TAC talkgroups, but the scanner was DEAD. I was recieving the control channel, full strength, but no voice traffic at all. I was there through Sunday morning and never heard another peep on the Ocracoke site.

When I got back in range of the Belhaven site on the drive home it was active and other VIPER sites were active with traffic all the way back home. I can't figure it out.

I am going to post a link to this thread over in the VIPER forum to see if anyone can offer a suggestion.

Just curious, were you in search or scan mode? It's possible, if you were in scan mode, that the status bits changed due to a patch or a multi-select and your scanner didn't adjust for whatever reason.

If it persists next time you're down, try entering the site frequencies in as a conventional system and see if you get any voice that way. Maybe the portables were affiliating with another site (not likely based on the distance to the next closest site -- Hatteras Village or Hyde mainland). Definitely an interesting mystery.

 

[fcfd988]

Originally it was set for scan mode. After realizing there was a problem, I programmed another duplicate Ocracoke system into the scanner and placed it into search mode to see if something had went corrupt in the data in the scanner. That did not make any difference. Also the radios were affiliating with the Ocracoke site. You can press a button on the viper radios and it will show you what site it is affiliating with. I cheked her radio to verify.

The only other control channels I was able to get on the south side of the island was an occasional hit on Dare County, Bodie Island and Carteret County, Stacy. On one occasion, I was able to hear NCSHP on the Stacy site while I was still on Ocracoke.

 

[fcfd988]

I am headed to Ocracoke Monday for 5 days and wanted to check with everyone on the forum to see if anyone has been on Ocracoke in the last 5 months and if so were you able to receive any VIPER traffic on a scanner while there. This weird problem that I had back in October has me worried that I wont be able to hear anything while I am there.......Also if anyone has any new/updated info on Hyde County or Ocracoke concerning VIPER Comms that I might need to add to the scanner before heading down. I have all the VHF stuff down and feel good about it since I was able to confirm all of the VHF freqs when I was there in October.

Anyone..............

Wes

 

[CCHLLM]

Ocracoke VIPER

I'll be disembarking the ferry at Silver Lake about 6 PM Thursday for a long weekend stay. I plan to check with my Frisco FD contact on that subject 'cause I need to know also, so I'll post what I find out later this date. I plan to eat somewhere in the village right after the disembarking if you and yours are interested in breaking bread. Look for the silver Ranger FX4 with Leer topper and too many antennas. The NCBBA 1751 tag on front will be a giveaway, too.

 

[fcfd988]

B,

I'll keep you in mind. I would love to, but when you are dealing with a 2 year old and 5 year old, plans can change quickly. I tend to monitor 151.625 w/ 85.4 when mobile. You may try that when you arrive to see whats going on. Thanks for checking into the VIPER stuff for us.

 

[CCHLLM]

some info.....

Word is pretty unanimous among the Dare crew that Hyde County as a whole is on VIPER. The Dare folks hear the Ocracoke traffic on VIPER and pretty much don't use the VHF side for interops with Ocracoke anymore. There may be some activity on the VHF channels from time to time, and it could be that the VHF is used for paging and island only traffic, but it looks like the focus is on VIPER ops because the various departments are carrying XTS2500 portables and the main fire radio use is on VIPER. Don't know yet if VIPER is rebroadcast on VHF and vice-versa. Guess we'll see as we monitor. I really need to break down and get myself a trunking scanner.

I'll put that 151 freq in my mobile and we'll see what happens.

 

[fcfd988]

When I was there last October, all Fire and EMS Traffic was on VIPER. Everything was also being re-broadcast on VHF on the respective freqs. Hyde FD VIPER comms were coming across the Hyde County Fire and Ocracoke FD VHF freqs and Hyde EMS VIPER comms were coming across the Hyde EMS and Ocracoke EMS VHF freqs. The problem I was having is after being there a few days and monitoring both VHF and VIPER, all of a sudden my scanner went completely silent on the VIPER traffic. VHF was still loud and clear. My wife was working EMS on the island and her XTS1500 was loud and clear on VIPER, but the scanner was DEAD. I was receiving the control channel fine, full strength as always, but absolutely NO voice traffic. I know there were VIPER radios turned on and affiliated with the Ocracoke site, that was not the issue. I had her radio in my hand and it was working. It was a very strange problem and it never resolved itself the remainder of my time there. Thinking that maybe my scanner had hiccuped and somehow had corrupt data, I re-programmed the scanner multiple times re-configuring the system and trying different settings, but it never worked. Once we got to Hatteras on the way home VIPER traffic was back and I had no problems monitoring all the way home. It was definitely something screwy going on with the Ocracoke site and my scanner. I use a BCD396XT. You can skim back through the other posts in this thread to see my original posts about this problem.

 

[CCHLLM]

Yeah, I remember the 800/VHF multicasting back then, and there was a problem with the multicast back about that time, but don't know if the VHF is still carrying the re-cast at this time. I would suspect that it's still in use for alerting and response purposes. Word is that most of the VHF is going completely away in a couple of years. From the ULS, it looks like Dare is going to use the 155.925 freq for narrowband simulcast fire paging countywide and drop the rest of the VHF. Can't say what the remaining VHF time period will be. The word is also that all LE UHF will be gone as soon as the changeover is fully made to 800 MHz.

 

[fcfd988]

I'm here and same problem as before. VHF is working fine and VIPER traffic on the Ocracoke site is NONE on my BCD396T. I have picked up limited traffic from the Hyde Co. Bellhaven site but it is way to spotty from the island on a rubber duck. EMS's VIPER portables are working fine. This really stinks.

 

[CCHLLM]

The ULS listing dated effective Dec 2009 shows 866.4625 / 867.0625 / 867.6500 / 867.9750 / 868.5125 as the FB2C, and that fits the matrix and it's recent, so that's probably current. Could it be a setting in your scanner? Man, it's gotta be something simple if it's hearing the CC and the MotherMotos are working.

 

[fcfd988]

I agree its got to be something simple. The strange part is it happened suddenly out of no where. One second it was working fine and the next it wasn't. After it quit working, I re-programmed the system in the scanner 3 different ways and none of them work.

 

[KE4ZNR]

The ULS listing dated effective Dec 2009 shows 866.4625 / 867.0625 / 867.6500 / 867.9750 / 868.5125 as the FB2C, and that fits the matrix and it's recent, so that's probably current. Could it be a setting in your scanner? Man, it's gotta be something simple if it's hearing the CC and the MotherMotos are working.

Good to see cbh around and doing well.
You need to let me know the next time you are in Raleigh so
we can get dinner stranger
Wes,
I wish I had time to drive down there cause I could bring my Trunk88 & Unitrunker
setups which would help us figure out the problem in no time flat.
Just a few things off the top of my head:
--You are hopefully in ID search
--You have double checked antenna connection.
I know you have probably checked the above but never hurts to throw them
out there brother.
Please keep us informed so we can continue to try to work this out.
Marshall KE4ZNR

 

[fcfd988]

Marshall,

Thanks for checking in. I wish you could drop in and analyze the situation too. Thanks for the tips but I have already covered the basics. I am currently scanning 3 different variations of the Ocracoke VIPER site and one is in ID Search mode. Antenna connection is not an issue as I have full signal showing on the control channel (868.5125) each time the scanner passes by.

 

[trumpetman]

Not sure if this has already been suggested or not, but try programming all freqs but the CC in a conventional system and see if you hear any traffic on those. Of course it won't have your TG info, but it'll confirm your scanner can infact get audio from that specific site.

 

[CCHLLM]

Thanks, Marshall, and I'll be in touch. You can blame tekshogun and working on his car for my presence.

Wes, I'm gonna ask a stoopid question here 'cause I probably missed something in the thread, but have you confirmed the radio is actually hearing the other channels on the Ocracoke site? That was probably part of Marshall's question about ID search. If the radio is actually hearing those other freqs when the site is active, then it's gotta be some setting(s) that is/are keeping it from tracking. And why does it work for other sites elsewhere as far as you know and not Ocracoke? That last one is a thinking-out-loud rhetorical question.