Centre County 9K20F1D emission

[SlipNutz15]

Ok, I seem to have run into something I can't find. There is a new paging channel for Centre County 460.6125 that has emissions of 11K0F3E, 9K20F1D. I know that 11K0F3E is NFM...but what is 9K20F1D is for???


I see it says Zentron based alpha-numeric paging. Does that mean this frequency is a regular "Minitor" paging channel AND a alpha pager channel?

 

[HM1529]

There are some counties that have done that...both voice and alpha paging over the same frequency. It's a pain in the butt for monitoring. I was curious about that myself when I first saw the new freq for Centre County.

 

[SlipNutz15]

I've used that one program that decodes the alpha numeric pagers. Does this or would this freq act the same way? Silent until a page is sent or would it have constant traffic like a control channel?

 

[HM1529]

It would be quiet unless voice dispatches or paging data were actively being sent.

 

[SlipNutz15]

Are scanners able to not listen to the data. Like block the data stream out but not the voice?

 

[GTR8000]

It's not really a "data stream", it's a relatively short burst of data at the end of the tone/voice transmission (or before I suppose, depending on how they set it up). It sounds almost like a prolonged MDC1200 burst. It's nothing at all like a control channel.

 

[SlipNutz15]

I've heard the beeper frequencies on the 150 band. I'm guessing the short burst like that is what starts/follows?

 

[GTR8000]

Short bursts of data packets, yes. It can be somewhat obnoxious, but it's not continuous. And no, there is no way for the scanner to "block" it. That being said, if they use a PL/DPL on the frequency while sending the tones and voice message, but the paging data is CSQ, you should be able to enable PL/DPL on the scanner so you won't hear the paging data. All depends on how they set it up, assuming of course that they are planning on sending alpha page data on that frequency in the first place.

 

[SlipNutz15]

Not sure. I find it odd that there's only 3 towers being used for paging of EMS for the entire county.

 

[HM1529]

Is this frequency only going to be used for alpha paging, perhaps, and they just licensed it for both voice and data?

 

[ocguard]

If you're lucky, they'll have the POCSAG paging on CSQ and the two-tone and voice paging with a CTCSS or DCS of some sort. This is not unheard-of. If your scanner has CTCSS/DCS capabilities, it would eliminate the need for hearing the POCSAG junk.

EDIT: Sorry, just realized that Chauffeur6 made the same remark.

 

[SlipNutz15]

Time will tell.