Ocracoke Island Monitoring

fcfd988 · #1 (**permalink**) 10-23-2009, 10:44 PM

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 · #2 (**permalink**) 10-27-2009, 04:36 PM

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 · #3 (**permalink**) 10-27-2009, 05:37 PM

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 · #4 (**permalink**) 11-01-2009, 09:05 PM

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 · #5 (**permalink**) 11-02-2009, 01:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 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!

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 · #6 (**permalink**) 11-06-2009, 12:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by fcfd988

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 · #7 (**permalink**) 11-06-2009, 02:01 PM

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.