OKC Metro Radio Infrastructure

How are the systems in south OKC faring, besides busy?

There was a loud squeal under all transmissions on OKWIN for a little over an hour, it seems to have gone away. The signals are sometimes weak.


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Squeal is back on OKWIN. The crews are not letting it hamper their efforts.


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Just a listener on the north side of town, but the trunking systems seem to be doing fine so far.

OKC's system is solid, though (of course) insanely busy, hard to follow much with so many tac channels going.

OKWIN is sounding better on my scanner now, for a while I was getting a LOT of loud noise over the audio, I assume like the "Nextel noise" so just my scanner being overloaded but it sounded different from what I'm used to, and I never got the Nextel interference at home in the past. Mostly a high-pitched hash, and occasionally a phaser type sound. It seems to be clearing up now now.

Edit: Okay, perhaps that squeal isn't just me! Though it's been pretty clear the past little while.

MCFD complained about radio problems when they were responding to Moore so they are hearing it too.


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On the National Weather Service chat web page, State Emergency Management was complaining about being bonked off of SEMA-3.

Techs working on system using SMA 1-B (31792)

Taking Norman channel 10 offline due to noise.

What is this Norman site for?
WQCQ850 (OKLAHOMA, STATE OF) FCC Callsign Details
The frequencies aren't in the db for Norman but they are licensed at some other locations.

nd5y said:

What is this Norman site for?
WQCQ850 (OKLAHOMA, STATE OF) FCC Callsign Details
The frequencies aren't in the db for Norman but they are licensed at some other locations.

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Before Norman merged with OKWIN Norman was on a separate system from OHP. This license was for the OHP system that was located at the same site as Norman's. Those frequencies have been removed from Norman and have been used at another site around the state. The license is just still in the database.

Been listening to the RMA channels, and they're asking for 8 Tac and 7 Tac radios. Are those the shared/common frequencies in the database?

Probably these Interoperability Scanner Frequencies and Radio Frequency Reference

If they plan to take traffic over to the interop channels, I'd rate that as a smart move. Taking traffic off the trunked system, even the mutual aid channels, will be a better use of the resource, IMO. The Creek County fires last year really stretched the system with the increased use of the NE RMA talkgroups.

Don't they still have a mobile tower/radio that they can use?
Were responding on State Fire Net. as we have no 800 mhz radios to use.

City of Tulsa has this statewide temporary trunked repeater license.
WQDN672 (City of Tulsa) FCC Callsign Details
The OKWIN web site says the state has two SOWs. I assume that is what that license is for.
Somebody should check and see if any of those frequencies are in use.
There may be other command vehicles with temporary repeaters brought in by other agencies.

The USAR teams might be using the federal common channels
Federal Government Itinerant - The RadioReference Wiki
or the federal interop channels on the national interop db page that I posted earlier.

If they're using the interop channels, do you need to be closer to the transmissions to be able to hear them on a scanner?

Loud squeal on OK-WIN system during tornado

Was there, heard it, dealt with it, - got the T-shirt.

The Moore site of the OK-WIN network went smooth *** down during and immediately after the tornado. All of the units we had using 800 HT's lost all coverage, had to move all our units back to our own UHF radio system. (We have coverage problems of our own down there, that area is not really in my normal service area - that may change after this deal!).

The site seemed to go up/down a couple of times which was good - no, it was actually BAD!. When the Moore site came up, it was out of GPS lock. The GPS lock ensures all the transmitters on the simulcast system are synchronized. When they are not, you will hear heterodynes generated between the different transmitters. Depending on exactly where you are standing, the squeal from the heterodyne will be better or worse. If you are standing in just the perfect spot, you will hear two transmitters completely out of phase with each other - which means you hear NOTHING at all. That happened a LOT. Because of all that, we completely avoided using the OK-WIN network to ensure out guys could (sort of) talk to each other (again, see note above about not our normal service area).

After several hours of dealing with the squealing transmitters and the up/down Moore site, the Motorola bunch finally arrived to "save the day". I heard they had arrived, didn't really hear anything get better for hours (and hours). Finally, in the early morning hours the simulcast seemed to improve somewhat. Must have gotten the GPS lock working again. Was still hearing minor heterodynes early yesterday morning. Only problem left was busy signals. Needless to say, when you have a thousand rescue workers trying to use sixteen channels you will have those. One Norman transmitter was apparently down due to a hardware problem. Not sure the Norman radio tech was even aware of it. When one TX is down in a simulcast system, none of the sites can use that channel. To get that channel running again (see note about busy signals) the Tulsa guys apparently dropped that channel off the system from the Norman sites.

I can tell you, had the Norman system not been up and running (and working) there would have been several long stretches where the OK-WIN network would have been completely unusable in the damage area. We are looking at our UHF infrastructure and reviving plans to add sites down south that were shelved due to financial concerns.

As somebody said once, never led a good crisis go to waste. Might get some more money for comms this year!

radiobison said:

Because of all that, we completely avoided using the OK-WIN network to ensure out guys could (sort of) talk to each other (again, see note above about not our normal service area).

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Just heard something about using OKWIN on State EM 3. Would that mean things are better now on that network?

OK-WIN network

Things are better now. The Moore site is (I think) stable, with the one channel dropped from the Norman site the busies are down to a couple thousand an hour (er, is that minute?). A lot of the traffic is now running on OK-WIN, mostly because that is what the City of Moore uses as their primary radio system.

There are a couple of big conflicts. Yesterday afternoon we started having units from several surrounding counties show up to assist. Many were not CN units so the only common TG's available were the SMA's. The tech I had down there tried for three hours to get somebody (ANYBODY) from IC to respond and tell him what TG to use.

He finally said to hell with it and picked SMA-1E. Late last night (nearly 21:00) I FINALLY receive the ICS form from the COM-L. He assigned SMA-1E as a fire tactical, said "he didn't know that OCSO was even working down there" (are you kidding????) He seemed upset that WE were conflicting with HIS template. I told him we had tried for hours to get a TG assignment with ZERO success. If he wanted them moved, he would have to deal with it.

I went to bed right after that. Haven't been down there yet this morning, don't know what is up at the moment.

I know I'm hearing a lot of traffic spread across more channels than I did yesterday. That's the SMA, RMA, State EM and State Health Channels I'm talking about.

Late edit: Oh, and thank you radiobison for all the "inside" info.