VIPER Legacy 3600 Baud Analog/Digital Discussion

[FD5722]

Originally Posted by oft

I know this is an indirect link to VIPER but according to a Star News Article

DOT to pay for 2 assistance trucks to be used on Leland causeway | StarNewsOnline.com

The IMAP trucks are coming to SE North Carolina and I have seen the specific IMAP tgid's on the VIPER page. So I guess I can be looking for radio comms specific to this to appear mid to late summer

I know IMAP has their own TGID's in the Database here but make sure you monitor SHP stuff for your area as well because they are known to be dispatched on the SHP TG's as well. Well at least they are in Troop E anyway. Just a little helpful tidbit

[gr8rcall]

Originally Posted by FD5722

I know IMAP has their own TGID's in the Database here but make sure you monitor SHP stuff for your area as well because they are known to be dispatched on the SHP TG's as well. Well at least they are in Troop E anyway. Just a little helpful tidbit

I can confirm this for Troop D, also!

[GB1952]

I am hearing radio checks by fsu on tg#56848 which is a crown event#1 tg,

[moze229]

I have a general, basic, elementary question that will likely raise some brows and roll some eyes of the veterans here. I just can't find the answers that I'm looking for.

First off, please understand that I'm just now beginning to sort of understand how trunking systems work. I am in Lee County. When I enter the VIPER freq. for the Tramway location everything comes in clear and I pick up a moderate amount of traffic. Today I happened to try the Harnett VIPER located in Erwin just to see if I could pick it up and that also comes in crystal clear. But now I'm picking up heavy amounts of traffic, covering most of Wake county and beyond. Cool for me, right? Well, not for my confusion.

The reason I never even attempted entering Harnett's freq. before was because I figured that I would get the same hits. My brain wants to believe that because these two talkgroups are assigned to the same system ID, they will carry the same traffic. In this case at least, that's not true - at all. What's strange is, I'm getting people way up north in Greensboro on the Tramway system, but scanning the system located ~25 miles southeast of here in Harnett I'm getting most of Wake county. I don't pull ANY Wake county off of Tramway VIPER. What's up with that? What am I not understanding here?

So, I tried tying into several other locations with little luck, but the ones I could pick up were giving me traffic of system ID's that were repeats of the hits I was getting on Harnett freqs. which means that they are likely part of the same "system".

Does what I'm asking here even make any sense? LOL I want to get this figured out before I get a real antenna and start freaking out with traffic I have no idea what to do with. Thanks in advance for any suggestions or perhaps other threads that might explain this to me.

[gr8rcall]

Are you using a wildcard, or have you individually programmed TGID's? If you are using a wildcard, the more towers that you have, the more traffic you will get!

VIPER works in this way:
It is an affiliation system. For a person with a scanner to be able to monitor a TG, a REAL public safety radio has to be affiliated (monitoring) that TG, on the same tower that the scanner is on! If there is no affiliation to that TG, you won't hear it. Simple as that! So, it is entirely possible that more people are affiliated to the Harnett tower!

(I don't know much about the technicalities of the system myself! Maybe Marshall (KE4ZNR) can help you some more!)

Download Trunk88 here:
Main Page - Trunk88.com

Read the instructions, and it will help you tell what Talk-groups are currently affiliated, and thus, what you can monitor!

[KE4ZNR]

Originally Posted by gr8rcall

VIPER works in this way:
It is an affiliation system. For a person with a scanner to be able to monitor a TG, a REAL public safety radio has to be affiliated (monitoring) that TG, on the same tower that the scanner is on! If there is no affiliation to that TG, you won't hear it. Simple as that! So, it is entirely possible that more people are affiliated to the Harnett tower!

This is called the Smartzone part of VIPER.
For more info on how Smartzone systems operate stop by the RR Wiki as
there is a great write up there:
Motorola Type II SmartZone - The RadioReference Wiki

Monitoring a SmartZone system with a trunktracking scanner is the same process as monitoring any other Type II Smartnet system, except that you can only monitor one site at a time. For you to monitor a specific talkgroup on a SmartZone site, someone's radio must be affiliated to that specific site. Therefore, if you are monitoring talkgroup "POLICE-NORTH" on a site with no affiliated radios on that talkgroup, then you will not hear any communications on that talkgroup on that site.

The above basically echos what gr8rcall said in his post.
The majority of VIPER statewide operates in this Smartzone fashion. Meaning that, in some ways, monitoring your local VIPER tower is a roll of the dice as you never know who all is affiliated to the site.

HOWEVER: There is a part of VIPER that operates in a little different format: Simulcast. Wake County and Orange County are examples of the part of VIPER that operates in Simulcast format.

Simulcast refers to the process of transmitting the same signal from multiple sites on the same frequency at the same time.
For public safety communications, this typically means multiple towers configured to transmit the exact same communications, on the exact same frequencies, at precisely the same time, resulting in much better coverage of a wide area or area with dense population/buildings. Such systems must use some form of very precise timing to synchronize their multiple transmitters, or interference can result from mis-timed signals destructively mixing in a subscriber radio's receiver.

This means that anywhere in Wake County you will hear the same comms regardless of which site you are monitoring.

So VIPER is a mix of a large Smartzone system with some areas operating in Simulcast Format.
Feel free to read over this sticky thread as well as the other VIPER legacy threads to learn more about VIPER.
Hope this helps!
Marshall KE4ZNR

[FD5722]

Another example of how VIPER works using the SmartZone concept. I live in Rowan County (Salisbury) and we have 2 VIPER sites here. One site on Faith Mountain ( well it's not really a mountain but more like a hill ) and one site on the tower at NCSHP Troop E Headquarters. These 2 tower sites are roughly 7.5 to 8 miles apart and depending on where the user of a radio is will determine what site they are locked on to.

Example : I have both the Faith Mtn site and Salisbury Viper sites enabled on my 396. There are more times than not I will hear things active on the Salisbury (Troop E HQ site) that I don't hear on the Faith Mtn site just because of the affiliation of the radios to which site. Now here (and everywhere else in the VIPER system) if someone is affiliated to one site & the other user to the second site then I'll hear the traffic off both sites, but if the users are affiliated to the same site that is the only site you will hear it on UNLESS someone else affiliated with another site has their radio parked on the active talkgroup. I know, clear as mud lol.

[moze229]

Gr8call, KE4ZNR, and FD5722 - thank you. I suppose the concept sunk a little further in now that I've read your posts. I guess most of Wake county is tied into the Harnett system along with the Wake systems of course. The Tramway site is dead comparatively. And from what I can tell, there haven't been any duplicated talk group IDs among the two.

Are you using a wildcard, or have you individually programmed TGID's? If you are using a wildcard, the more towers that you have, the more traffic you will get!

What I've been doing is setting up a wildcard and allowing my radio to just pick up whatever I can pick up on any given trunking system. (I can pick up 3 of the VIPER systems after adding the RS 800 antenna to my psr500, two of them are in Harnett county.) rather than entering everything. I then go back in later afterwords and enter the alpha tags. This adds a little excitement for me. "Hey! I picked up something new today." Lol.

[FD5722]

Originally Posted by moze229

Gr8call, KE4ZNR, and FD5722 - thank you. I suppose the concept sunk a little further in now that I've read your posts. I guess most of Wake county is tied into the Harnett system along with the Wake systems of course. The Tramway site is dead comparatively. And from what I can tell, there haven't been any duplicated talk group IDs among the two.



What I've been doing is setting up a wildcard and allowing my radio to just pick up whatever I can pick up on any given trunking system. (I can pick up 3 of the VIPER systems after adding the RS 800 antenna to my psr500, two of them are in Harnett county.) rather than entering everything. I then go back in later afterwords and enter the alpha tags. This adds a little excitement for me. "Hey! I picked up something new today." Lol.

Just stay with it and it'll get easier. If you haven't already you may want to go ahead and invest in programming software and a cable to program the scanner with. It will make things a whole lot easier in the long run. Here in the North Carolina forum you'll find some of the most helpful folks involved here at RadioReference. Don't ever be afraid to ask questions in here but I'd get myself familiar with the articles in the Wiki as well. Remember, that the search function and Wiki articles are one of your best friends here And just in case no one else has said it, welcome aboard !!

[moze229]

Originally Posted by FD5722

Just stay with it and it'll get easier. If you haven't already you may want to go ahead and invest in programming software and a cable to program the scanner with. It will make things a whole lot easier in the long run. Here in the North Carolina forum you'll find some of the most helpful folks involved here at RadioReference. Don't ever be afraid to ask questions in here but I'd get myself familiar with the articles in the Wiki as well. Remember, that the search function and Wiki articles are one of your best friends here And just in case no one else has said it, welcome aboard !!

Thanks. I am currently using Win500 and I like it. I know that there are others out there and I may try them eventually, but I plan on registering this package once the free trial expires. :^) I am usually an exclusive Mac user, so I had to install it inside of a virtual machine to use it. Between configuring all of that and getting the cable to work through my Mac into the Windows OS it was fun. Virtual Box makes it easy though.

And thanks for the welcome.

[GB1952]

I have not monitored anything off the tramway in a long while either.

[moze229]

Originally Posted by GB1952

I have not monitored anything off the tramway in a long while either.

I pull random bits of SHP and scattered public safety from Wake county on the Tramway system. The only reason I'm still monitoring it now is because of Sanford PD. And they seem to be having problems. The transmissions begin and end with what sounds like garbage. I haven't heard anyone saying anything about it being malfunctioning, but I've heard them requesting repeated information because of it so I don't think it's my radio. They were only on conventional all last week - not one digital. I was hoping it would be fixed once it came back on but - nope.

[gr8rcall]

Originally Posted by FD5722

Here in the North Carolina forum you'll find some of the most helpful folks involved here at RadioReference. Don't ever be afraid to ask questions in here but I'd get myself familiar with the articles in the Wiki as well.

I'll second that!

[reconrider8]

idk why but to me the computer programming is almost harder then by hand i guess ive done more of the hand programming in the field and such

[GB1952]

I alway program by hand mostly uniden bcd996t/bcd996xt and some radio shacks,of course it take longer but is interesting to learn.

[GB1952]

Hearing tg# 9824 off hoke tower ????

[JDP75]

Hey guys... I'm a newbie to this but I'm trying to figure out how to be able to use my radio shack 20-163 trunking scanner to monitor Baptist Aircare on the VIPER system. I know they are using talkgroup ID 4528 but I'm not having luck with the scanner.

Anyone have this model scanner and care to share some programming tips for monitoring VIPER talkgroups?

THANKS!
Joe

[KE4ZNR]

Welcome to RR.com Joe!
Good to have you join us.
I have some bad news though.
The Pro 163 is an analog voice only scanner and the Baptist Aircare talkgroup on VIPER operates in a digital voice format which means the
Pro 163 can't decode the digital voice audio.
Monitoring VIPER these days requires a digital voice capable scanner such as those in the following list:
Categoryigital Scanners - The RadioReference Wiki
Sorry I could not be the bearer of better news.
Marshall KE4ZNR

Originally Posted by JDP75

Hey guys... I'm a newbie to this but I'm trying to figure out how to be able to use my radio shack 20-163 trunking scanner to monitor Baptist Aircare on the VIPER system. I know they are using talkgroup ID 4528 but I'm not having luck with the scanner.

Anyone have this model scanner and care to share some programming tips for monitoring VIPER talkgroups?

THANKS!
Joe

[GB1952]

Trying to figure out if we are going to have and change input freqs on local towers with this site licenses modified rebanding (viper towers)

[trumpetman]

What licenses are being modified?