Rowan County Fire Disp Narrowbanding

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KM4WLV

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Just FYI to anyone who monitors Rowan County Fire Dispatch (154.2500 PL 146.2), it will switch over to narrowband officially as of July 10th. I'm not 100% sure on the status of EMS/Rescue VHF paging. Just wanted to give those of you who may monitor or have this channel programmed in your VHF radios a heads up of the upcoming changes.
 

kb4mdz

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Hmmmm, 188 days past the FCC deadline. Wonder what the 'county fathers' and taxpayers would have thought if Rowan had been busted for non-compliance for that long?
 

trumpetman

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Should be everyone switching to narrowband on the 10th from what I've heard; they also had a waiver so I'm pretty sure non-compliance wasn't an issue...
 

reconrider8

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Hmmmm, 188 days past the FCC deadline. Wonder what the 'county fathers' and taxpayers would have thought if Rowan had been busted for non-compliance for that long?

my thoughts exactly how in the world did they not already go through narrowbanding
 

RonnieUSA

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Just FYI to anyone who monitors Rowan County Fire Dispatch (154.2500 PL 146.2), it will switch over to narrowband officially as of July 10th. I'm not 100% sure on the status of EMS/Rescue VHF paging. Just wanted to give those of you who may monitor or have this channel programmed in your VHF radios a heads up of the upcoming changes.

You might want to say Rowan County, NC.
Because I live in Rowan County, KY.
 

kb4mdz

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my thoughts exactly how in the world did they not already go through narrowbanding

My thoughts exactly. City of Raleigh had all its narrowbanding done way before the December 31, 2012 deadline. Better than 90 or 95% by Febr. 2012, and the last small stuff by early July.

Just sayin'.
 

KM4WLV

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You might want to say Rowan County, NC.
Because I live in Rowan County, KY.

I've never put Rowan County, NC on anything I've posted about our county here on RR simply because I'm posting it in the NC sub-forum so I've never seen the need to. This is the first time that's been brought up in the 7 years I've been a member of the forums here.
 

CFP387

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Just wanted to give those of you who may monitor or have this channel programmed in your VHF radios a heads up of the upcoming changes.

I don't know why, but the narrowbanding has caused my Minitor V to become louder. I know that it's a narrowband pager versus the old Minitor II pagers that are wideband, but this was entirely unexpected. The only good thing I like about this change is that they now have one A-B tone for all call paging both on VHF county fire and VHF EMS dispatch.

RonnieUSA said:
...I live in Rowan County, KY.

I sincerely hope that your Rowan County is a lot better in planning, building out and paying for a radio system. I can't imagine any other county with this much mass confusion and conflict when it comes to making an executive decision. What we have here is not only failure to communicate but way too many cheifs and not nearly enough Indians.

FD5722 said:
I'm not 100% sure on the status of EMS/Rescue VHF paging...

I don't know either but I can tell you that they are doing away with the all-call long B tone and are using the same A-B tone (the old FMO tone) to set their pagers off too. Since that tone is narrowbanded, I'd venture to say that EMS and Rescue's pagers have already been done or are in the process of being done.
 

trumpetman

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CFP,

If your pager was already programmed to narrow, it would have been a lower audio when hearing a wideband signal; once your ears adjusted, it seems louder now that it's a proper deviation and programmed to receive the narrow channel properly.
 

CFP387

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Well, here's another question: In monitoring VHF county fire with the PL on with a Uniden base scanner at home, the transmission has intermittent static now. I check Cabarrus and it sounds the same way. Should I try to monitor with the PL off to eliminate this problem?

I can tell you that on the top line of the display it shows 12.5khz instead of 6.25khz so that may be part of the problem. So because I'm monitoring it in wide band instead of narrow band I could be getting the static interference, correct?
 

Quantar22

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Well, here's another question: In monitoring VHF county fire with the PL on with a Uniden base scanner at home, the transmission has intermittent static now. I check Cabarrus and it sounds the same way. Should I try to monitor with the PL off to eliminate this problem?

I can tell you that on the top line of the display it shows 12.5khz instead of 6.25khz so that may be part of the problem. So because I'm monitoring it in wide band instead of narrow band I could be getting the static interference, correct?

Wide is 25 KHz. Narrow Band is 12.5 KHz. Ultra-Narrow is 6.25 KHz. 6.25 KHz operations are not analog at all. They are digital and the only thing that anyone is using now that is 6.25 capable are systems like NexEdge or MotoTRBO. P25 Phase II is 6.25 compliant also but no one in your area are using those systems. TRBO repeaters transmit in 12.5 KHz but they carry two individual 6.25 time slots on one RF carrier.
 

CFP387

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Thanks KI4M, I appreciate that. I can tell you that I did not experience any "static" in the transmissions until after the narrow banding and the static isn't present on lowband SHP or DOT making me think it's not in my receiver. On the 800 side the tx's are fine but on the VHF side in both Rowan and Cabarrus fire dispatch is where I'm experiencing the problem. Surely I'm not the only one with this problem.
 

trumpetman

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When narrowbanding, you must account for a slight degradation of coverage; a transmitter should also be tuned and aligned after reprogramming as well (as should any transmitter on a good PM schedule). This might account for your weaker signal reception since narrowbanding has taken place. More detailed discussions can be found at the batboard links below:

Batboard • View topic - Narrowband - why does Motorola specs imply deafer radio?

Batboard • View topic - Wide band vs narrow band
 

KM4WLV

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Shannon,

Have you noticed while monitoring County Fire on your 396 a high pitch whine in the back ground while the tones are going off but once the encoder stops and communications keys up then it goes away? Just a slight nuisance.

***EDIT - Forgot Something***

On my Baofeng Dual Bander I reprogrammed county fire for 12.5 to coincide with the recent changes. I was thinking it was going to be finally retire the Systems Saber 3 to desk duty but even with it still programmed for 25 I've not noticed any difference in audio....... Thoughts on that one anybody?
 
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CFP387

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Have you noticed while monitoring County Fire on your 396 a high pitch whine in the back ground while the tones are going off but once the encoder stops and communications keys up then it goes away? Just a slight nuisance.

Yes I have. It kind of reminds me of the same noise I hear in the background from RRMC when EMS units are calling in.

On my Baofeng Dual Bander I reprogrammed county fire for 12.5 to coincide with the recent changes.

So the real frequency now is 154.25125 or is it 154.2575? I was under the impression they went with a 7.5 step instead of 12.5 step. I had read somewhere that 7.5 would be the VHF "standard".
 
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