Heading to Oregon next week

LIScanner101 · Oct 9, 2013

I'm traveling for business next week to Portland and will be there for a couple of days. I will be staying right near PDX but I'll be driving back and forth to Lake Oswego. I would like to listen to PF/FD activity on my BCT15X. I created a FreeSCAN file for my scanner but there seems to be a LOT of digital and ENCR stuff there now. Is it even worth bringing this analog trunker along with me? Thanks for any help.

DickH · Oct 9, 2013

LIScanner101 said:
I'm traveling for business next week to Portland and will be there for a couple of days. I will be staying right near PDX but I'll be driving back and forth to Lake Oswego. I would like to listen to PF/FD activity on my BCT15X. I created a FreeSCAN file for my scanner but there seems to be a LOT of digital and ENCR stuff there now. Is it even worth bringing this analog trunker along with me? Thanks for any help.

In Portland and Lake O. there is no digital and no encryption. You will hear everything.
For Lake O., they are on the Clackamas county sytem that has two freqs. that can not be tracked witrhout putting in the rebanding tables. Also, that system is strange, so you need to reverse the two tables. In other words, put in the first one second and the second one first.
The Portland system is not affected by rebanding.

DickH · Oct 9, 2013

For Portland Fire you need only the 4 control channels.
The Talk Groups you want are:
28944 FIRE DISPATCH - All Multnomah county.
4528 OPS-1 All routine traffic. Minor fires, accidents, medical. (I leave mine off)
4560 OPS-2 Second fire in Portland.
4592 OPS-3 Portland box alarms. (you can leave this on all night)
4624 OPS-4 Gresham box alarms.
4656 OPS-5 Fires in Corbett (volunteer dept., very active on I-84accidents, Sandy and Columbia river incidents and mountain rescues in the Columbia R. gorge.
4688 OPS-6 Pin-in accidents and some other incidents.

If you have time and want to see the FD, send me a PM.

cinsu · Oct 9, 2013

For Portland fire you should pick up all activity on the "Simulcast Backbone" site from PDX to Lake Oswego. Nothing PFB does is encrypted that I have found. All calls are broadcast on TG 28944 and assigned an Ops channel, they use an in station zetron system so you won't hear any tones. For medicals they use a 2 letter code followed by a number, a list of what is what can be found here.

I really don't know much about Lake Oswego other than you can view most of their Fire/EMS calls in their CAD here. Depending how far down the hill you are you may be able to hear the "Clackamas County" simulcast site. I think Lake Oswego may be dispatched by WCCCA in Washington County in which case it may be hit and miss to hear their calls on the Clackamas site.

Edit: Dick beat me to it with a good list of the Ops channels. Dick, I have a friend who is a small town volunteer FF in Kansas that may come visit some day, he always talks about wanting to go see some big city apparatus. I might have to send him your way too for the hook up if you don't mind.

joescanner · Oct 10, 2013

cinsu said:
I think Lake Oswego may be dispatched by WCCCA in Washington County in which case it may be hit and miss to hear their calls on the Clackamas site.

Lake Oswego dispatches their own police and fire out of LOCOM on the WCCCA/CCOM trunked system on their own talkgroups.

(For what it's worth, LOCOM also dispatches West Linn police and Milwaukie Police).

cinsu · Oct 10, 2013

joescanner said:
Lake Oswego dispatches their own police and fire out of LOCOM on the WCCCA/CCOM trunked system on their own talkgroups.

(For what it's worth, LOCOM also dispatches West Linn police and Milwaukie Police).

Ohhh, they have their own. So is it just the 3 PSAPs on that trunk system? Do they share the CAD system with WCCCA and CCOM?

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LIScanner101 · Oct 10, 2013

Wow, you guys have been GREAT! THANK YOU ALL!

I just downloaded the MOT II Portland System and highlighted the 7 talkgroups that DickH recommended. Are you saying that these are ALL I need? There seems to be hundreds of TGs on this system….will I miss any of the “good stuff” (LOL) if I just program these in…???

What about all the conventional frequencies? Are these all non-active because they are now on the TRS?

DickH, looks now like I’m only going to be there for the full day next Thursday, landing at PDX at 11:20AM from San Francisco. I’ll shoot you a PM anyway.

Thanks all.

LIScanner101 · Oct 10, 2013

DickH said:
For Lake O., they are on the Clackamas county sytem that has two freqs. that can not be tracked without putting in the rebanding tables. Also, that system is strange, so you need to reverse the two tables. In other words, put in the first one second and the second one first.
The Portland system is not affected by rebanding.

I used FreeSCAN to import the system and frequencies. Do I still need to do anything, or can I just leave what got imported alone? Also, my "Trunk Frequencies" list contains 24 channels (frequencies)...which one are the control channels? Should I just go directly to the RR database and find them & delete the non-controls from my file?

cinsu · Oct 10, 2013

If all you want is fire that is all you need, all Multnomah County districts are dispatched right there. I don't scan any conventional for Multnomah County but they have a couple talkaround channels that are very rarely used when trunk system coverage is bad.

If you really want more you could add airport fire to your list but even those calls usually require a city apparatus or medic unit. If you hear a call dispatched and they say "respond on AB fire" that is the airport fire channel.

If you are traveling the freeways often there is an ODOT COMET region 1 channel, they respond to any incident on the freeways. If something is slowing down traffic they will be talking about it.

When I first moved back here a couple months ago I had a hard time believing that was it but they really don't have s high call load and they are smart about how many of who they send to what so they cut down on unnecessary apparatus going on commercial fire alarms which cuts down on radio traffic.

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cinsu · Oct 10, 2013

LIScanner101 said:
I used FreeSCAN to import the system and frequencies. Do I still need to do anything, or can I just leave what got imported alone? Also, my "Trunk Frequencies" list contains 24 channels (frequencies)...which one are the control channels? Should I just go directly to the RR database and find them & delete the non-controls from my file?

I'm not really familiar with FREEscan but as long as your control channels and talkgroups are there with the right system type you should be set. Having all 24 frequencies doesn't really make a difference on the BCT15X since it will do control channel only scanning, if you want to you can go delete the frequencies that aren't used as control channels but it is going to work fine either way.

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LIScanner101 · Oct 10, 2013

cinsu said:
I'm not really familiar with FREEscan but as long as your control channels and talkgroups are there with the right system type you should be set. Having all 24 frequencies doesn't really make a difference on the BCT15X since it will do control channel only scanning, if you want to you can go delete the frequencies that aren't used as control channels but it is going to work fine either way.

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I was about to delete them but on second thought I'll just leave them the way they got imported. Thanks.

LIScanner101 · Oct 17, 2013

Well, I want to THANK EVERYONE for all of your help!! As of this second I am happily scanning away on my BCT15X on all the 800MHz trunked systems you recommended.

I also programmed-in many VHF and UHF frequencies, from what I found on a RR download via FreeSCAN. However, there is barely any traffic on these frequencies - I think I heard TWO comms in the past 3-4 hours of listening. Should I just dump all these channels and stick to the 800MHz TRS's???

pdx911 · Oct 29, 2013

cinsu said:
If you hear a call dispatched and they say "respond on AB fire" that is the airport fire channel. ]

It's actually "AV Fire"

cinsu · Oct 29, 2013

pdx911 said:
It's actually "AV Fire"

Ahhh, thanks. I have a hard time understanding them sometimes for some reason. Any idea what it stands for?

pdx911 · Oct 29, 2013

cinsu said:
Ahhh, thanks. I have a hard time understanding them sometimes for some reason. Any idea what it stands for?

I was just trying to think because I've said "respond on AV fire" probably a hundred times on tap out but I also don't have a clue. I'll look and see if it says in an SOP or something next time I'm at work.

LIScanner101 · Oct 29, 2013

Oh, about "tapout" - is that a synthesized female voice coming from a PC? We only have "live" fire dispatch in New York (Long Island).

pdx911 · Oct 29, 2013

Not in Portland, we use humans for tapout. I think most of the surrounding agencies do the automated voice though.

cinsu · Oct 29, 2013

Clark county, WA uses an automated female voice. Clackamas and Washington counties are real people.

DickH · Oct 29, 2013

pdx911 said:
I was just trying to think because I've said "respond on AV fire" probably a hundred times on tap out but I also don't have a clue. I'll look and see if it says in an SOP or something next time I'm at work.

How about AViation ?

ORE007 · Oct 30, 2013

cinsu said:
Ohhh, they have their own. So is it just the 3 PSAPs on that trunk system? Do they share the CAD system with WCCCA and CCOM?

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CCOM and WCCCA have a connected CAD but LOCOM has it's own but can send messages between the centers. LOCOM is not on the incident website either, just the other two.

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