Futronics UHF Connect Plus

mbstone99 · Oct 10, 2013

There was some nice skip coming into the Southern Ontario region last night and I was able to log a bunch of new unlisted sites for the Funtronics TRBO system (System 182)

451.9625 Site 12 Control Channel (Neigbours 1, 4, 6, 7, 17) I believe this is Berlin Heights as I just heard it ove the weekend when I was in Sandusky
454.1250 Site 3 Control Channel (Neighbours 1. 2. 8, 9, 10) Not sure where this is, anyone have any idea?
461.5875 Site 16 Control Channel (Neighbours 2, , 8, 9, 13) Not sure but there is a site in Woodville which would make sense considering where the skip was coming in from

Matt

quarterwave · Oct 10, 2013

They have only tried to license every possible VHF and UHF frequency in the spectrum for LTR & other systems in Northern Ohio...just spin the dial! I hope the FCC starts questioning their need, and loading. I don't know of too many places where you need 20+ channel LTR's, and multiples of them, in Ohio. Maybe Cleveland could use one...but with the proliferation of cellular...even small systems struggle to get users.

Then again, I question the Coordinators, and the FCC for not researching and being responsible and questioning some of these applications in the face all the stuff we heard about narrowbanding and such to create more usable room in the spectrum. Seems like they created lots more "channels" and now just hand them out like candy. I remember 20+ years ago you had to FIGHT coordinators and FCC to get a business channel in VHF, and it took 6 months and a letter from a congressman to get a fire channel in VHF. Now, I think I can apply and have 10 VHF's or 10 UHF pairs in a matter of weeks.

I watch grants in my area, and I saw where a small business near me was granted 10 VHF 50 watt base/mobile frequencies recently. They have about 6 employees. What do they need 10 freqs for? I think the answer is that because the coordinator can get them, they just do, then they let the customer figure out which one works. We used to get suggested freqs, and we monitored them with a timer and recording device to see what was the best one to use. I suppose some the freqs may get cancelled once they settle on what they actually need and use...but I think that is giving too much credit to the end user and coordinator to be responsible to do so.

I think frequency assignments in UHF and VHF for business are an absolute mess. I have even seen businesses getting FB2 repeater licenses, with no need or intention to install a repeater or a base!

I guess while it is this easy I better get licensed for a couple UHF pairs and maybe a couple VHFs too. I mean all you have to write on the app is "Applicant will use for business communications".

Wish it were that easy back in the day when we needed freqs and people were buying radios!

mtindor · Oct 10, 2013

mbstone99 said:
There was some nice skip coming into the Southern Ontario region last night and I was able to log a bunch of new unlisted sites for the Funtronics TRBO system (System 182)

451.9625 Site 12 Control Channel (Neigbours 1, 4, 6, 7, 17) I believe this is Berlin Heights as I just heard it ove the weekend when I was in Sandusky
454.1250 Site 3 Control Channel (Neighbours 1. 2. 8, 9, 10) Not sure where this is, anyone have any idea?
461.5875 Site 16 Control Channel (Neighbours 2, , 8, 9, 13) Not sure but there is a site in Woodville which would make sense considering where the skip was coming in from

Matt

THank you.

Mike

SCPD · Oct 10, 2013

quarterwave said:
They have only tried to license every possible VHF and UHF frequency in the spectrum for LTR & other systems in Northern Ohio...just spin the dial! I hope the FCC starts questioning their need, and loading. I don't know of too many places where you need 20+ channel LTR's, and multiples of them, in Ohio. Maybe Cleveland could use one...but with the proliferation of cellular...even small systems struggle to get users.

Then again, I question the Coordinators, and the FCC for not researching and being responsible and questioning some of these applications in the face all the stuff we heard about narrowbanding and such to create more usable room in the spectrum. Seems like they created lots more "channels" and now just hand them out like candy. I remember 20+ years ago you had to FIGHT coordinators and FCC to get a business channel in VHF, and it took 6 months and a letter from a congressman to get a fire channel in VHF. Now, I think I can apply and have 10 VHF's or 10 UHF pairs in a matter of weeks.

I watch grants in my area, and I saw where a small business near me was granted 10 VHF 50 watt base/mobile frequencies recently. They have about 6 employees. What do they need 10 freqs for? I think the answer is that because the coordinator can get them, they just do, then they let the customer figure out which one works. We used to get suggested freqs, and we monitored them with a timer and recording device to see what was the best one to use. I suppose some the freqs may get cancelled once they settle on what they actually need and use...but I think that is giving too much credit to the end user and coordinator to be responsible to do so.

I think frequency assignments in UHF and VHF for business are an absolute mess. I have even seen businesses getting FB2 repeater licenses, with no need or intention to install a repeater or a base!

I guess while it is this easy I better get licensed for a couple UHF pairs and maybe a couple VHFs too. I mean all you have to write on the app is "Applicant will use for business communications".

Wish it were that easy back in the day when we needed freqs and people were buying radios!

What?

mtindor · Oct 10, 2013

mbstone99 said:
There was some nice skip coming into the Southern Ontario region last night and I was able to log a bunch of new unlisted sites for the Funtronics TRBO system (System 182)

451.9625 Site 12 Control Channel (Neigbours 1, 4, 6, 7, 17) I believe this is Berlin Heights as I just heard it ove the weekend when I was in Sandusky
454.1250 Site 3 Control Channel (Neighbours 1. 2. 8, 9, 10) Not sure where this is, anyone have any idea?
461.5875 Site 16 Control Channel (Neighbours 2, , 8, 9, 13) Not sure but there is a site in Woodville which would make sense considering where the skip was coming in from

Matt

I can't comment on the whereabouts of any of them. Since there are multiple FCC licenses for 451.9625 and 461.5875, I'm not prepared at this time to update the DB to specify one or the other. Incidentally, last night I was monitoring Site 1-028 RCMP P25 from here in East Ohio pretty strong (with my yagi pointed East to Pittsburgh). I knew it would be another one of those "long nights" if I turned the beam up north and started picking off more Futronics stuff.

What is going to need to happen is that we'll need to eventually monitor sporadic traffic on a voice channel for those sites in order to actually pin them down accurately.

Site 3 is already in the DB of System 182. I monitored it a week ago. I just added the two other sites you've listed.

For anyone checking out Futronics TRBO, don't confuse these two systems:

Network 182: Futronics Connect Plus (Ohio) Trunking System, Various, Ohio - Scanner Frequencies

Unknown System: Futronics (MOTOTRBO) Trunking System, Varies, Multi-State - Scanner Frequencies
- this is NOT Network 182
- although a couple of the sites on there might belong to Network 182

mike

n8vur · Aug 28, 2016

Dragging up an old thread from the dead. Hearing a connect+ CC on 452.575 from SW Cuyahoga Count identifying as network 182.

It's giving a site of 27.
Current network: 182
Current site: 182-27
182-27 neighbors: 1, 4, 11, 22.

452.575 is included in:
KOI932 (Gibsonburg, Norwalk, 200 Public Sq Cleveland.)
WQTS515 (Lagrange, Wickliffe, Painesville, Thompson)
WQWU793 (Clyde)

Given my location, I suspect LaGrange but will need to drive over and validate.

mtindor · Aug 28, 2016

n8vur said:
Dragging up an old thread from the dead. Hearing a connect+ CC on 452.575 from SW Cuyahoga Count identifying as network 182.

It's giving a site of 27.
Current network: 182
Current site: 182-27
182-27 neighbors: 1, 4, 11, 22.

452.575 is included in:
KOI932 (Gibsonburg, Public Sq Cleveland.)
WQTS515 (Thompson)
WQWU793 (Clyde)

Given my location, I suspect LaGrange but will need to drive over and validate.

Have to be careful. Last night was a night of superb tropo enhancement (great band conditions). Sites that you'd suspect to be close under normal conditions may not be the ones you heard. You very well may have heard something significantly farther away that you normally wouldn't expect to hear.

Thompson is too far East and would not have neighbors of (1) Castalia [Erie], (4), (11) Fremont [Sandusky] and (22) New Riegel [Senca]. The same holds true for Public Square Cleveland.

I'm leaning towards it being Clyde Ohio (Sandusky Co). The Clyde license is only six months old (one of their newest if not the newest), and it would make sense that it would have a much higher site number than all the rest.

I'd call it Clyde.

It might pay for anybody who lives in the area to add ALL of the Clyde license frequencies as a CON+ site on a Uniden 436/536 and then run LCN finder on it for a day or two in order to see if you can determine further frequencies in use as well as their LCNs. Barring that, If you can sit on the control channel for Clyde and watch traffic (using something like DSDPlus) and then plug all the other frequencies into a conventional scan bank in any analog/digital scanner, then when you see DSDPlus showing traffic on a given LCN, the other scanner scanning conventionally will stop on a digital [TRBO] signal. You can then determine active frequencies and LCNs that way as well.

Clyde [Sandusky]
WQWU793
451.225
452.575
461.6125
464.0625

Mike

n8vur · Aug 28, 2016

mtindor said:
Have to be careful. Last night was a night of superb tropo enhancement (great band conditions). Sites that you'd suspect to be close under normal conditions may not be the ones you heard. You very well may have heard something significantly farther away that you normally wouldn't expect to hear.

Isn't that the truth... I had the Toledo city services capacity+ system booming in here. I didn't believe it at first and figured I had something mixing in until I went through and checked all the LCNs and that they were notifying of the same rest channel every 2 seconds. I haven't heard an opening like that in a while, especially on UHF.

Next time I'm out west I'll power up the laptop and check Clyde. Thanks, Mike,

-doug/AB8M

mtindor · Aug 28, 2016

I suspect the Futronics (Ohio) System 182 system looks something like this:

Castalia (Erie) WNMU690 WPUD454
Findlay (Hancock) WNDK593
Unknown (probably Oregon (Lucas)
Unknown
Unknown
Unknown
Wooster (Wayne) WQMH834 WQMH833 WPDZ978 WQKK222
Unknown (I suspect site in DB belongs to the Michigan Futronics 182)
Toledo - N Irwin (Lucas) WPDZ887 WQAD781 WPUD454
Toledo - Hill Ave (Lucas) WQKL654
Fremont (Sandusky) WQNS543 WNNC320
Berlin Heights (Erie) WPNQ372 WPVM622 WQAE268
Lima (Allen) WQGL875 WQAE268 WPUD454 WPNQ598
Mansfield (Richland) WQGL876 WQMH834 WQMH833
Bucyrus (Crawford) WZA613 WQMH834 WQMH833
Unknown
Greenwich (Huron) WQCK781 WQGG664 WQMH834 WQMH833
Deshler (Henry) WNGV768 WNNC320
Bowling Green (Wood) WNAB919
Unknown
Akron (Summit) WQQT306
New Riegel (Seneca) WPMT479
Unknown - likely Berlin (Holmes) or Canton (Stark) - I will confirm soon
Unknown
Woodsville (Sandusky) WQQP800
Unknown
Clyde (Sandusky) WQWU793
Crestline (Crawford) WQNE990 WQNC745
Unknown
Unknown

I've got comments, but I gotta go to lunch. I'll respond later.

Site 16 is Wauseon or Napoleon (likely Wauseon).

Site 3 is in the DB as Oregon, but based upon the limited information we have I have no how idea how anybody came to that conclusion.

On Site 8, 463.5875 is not licensed in Ohio but is licensed to Futronics in Michigan. And the Site 8 on the Ohio system has same neighbors as Site 8 on the michigan system. I suspect 463.5875 belongs to the MI system.

Site 23 is listed as Berlin but very well could be Canton. I will confirm this week.

Mike

jdolina · Aug 28, 2016

Although I did not have a chance last night I can confirm the following sites with strong signal in the eastern Lorain county area.

Site 182-30 CC 422.2375 NL 6 12 17 26 29
Site 182-6 CC 422.2625 NL 7 17 21 26 30

The following is a weaker signal

Site 182-26 CC 422.2125 NL 6 12 21 30

Unfortunately no voice traffic on the weekend or nights or not enough to figure anything out.

AtlasFBG2 · Aug 28, 2016

I have been running a limit search for the last couple weeks in the 453.0-467.0 range and picked up recordings on those clyde frequencies.

Unfortunately the ws1095 does not have a lcn finder. There is not enough traffic on the site when i get home form work to watch dsdplus.

Davey1 · Aug 28, 2016

Concerning Site #3: I have confidence that this is located at Oregon based on the WRJ939 license for two of the frequencies in use (462.075 and 461.475). The control frequency on 454.125 is not licensed to Futronics at Oregon however.

mtindor · Aug 28, 2016

Davey1 said:
Concerning Site #3: I have confidence that this is located at Oregon based on the WRJ939 license for two of the frequencies in use (462.075 and 461.475). The control frequency on 454.125 is not licensed to Futronics at Oregon however.

Dave,

I had forgotten that there were two more known frequencies on that site [which are now in the wiki until the LCNs can be confirmed]. I agree with you. I just forgot about those additional known frequencies.

Mike

mtindor · Aug 28, 2016

AtlasFBG2 said:
I have been running a limit search for the last couple weeks in the 453.0-467.0 range and picked up recordings on those clyde frequencies.

Unfortunately the ws1095 does not have a lcn finder. There is not enough traffic on the site when i get home form work to watch dsdplus.

There will be at least one frequency that is a 24/7 control channel though. All you have to do is run DSDPlus on the control channel for a while and you'll at least be able to determine how many LCNs are active in the system, what LCNs they are, what the control channel frequency is, and what the LCN is of the control channel.

Anything you can do to confirm, at the very least, an active control channel for Clyde would be nice.

You really need to run 451-466, and include 454-455 mhz. And on many scanners, there is a "broadcast screen" that if enabled would cause the scanner to not even scan 454 mhz. And if you aren't running 6.25 kilohertz steps on the scanner, you might miss DMR and NXDN frequencies that you might otherwise catch.

Mike

mtindor · Aug 28, 2016

jdolina said:
Although I did not have a chance last night I can confirm the following sites with strong signal in the eastern Lorain county area.

Site 182-30 CC 422.2375 NL 6 12 17 26 29
Site 182-6 CC 422.2625 NL 7 17 21 26 30

The following is a weaker signal

Site 182-26 CC 422.2125 NL 6 12 21 30

Unfortunately no voice traffic on the weekend or nights or not enough to figure anything out.

Interesting. We all need to be aware that there are two "sides" to 182. There is the leg that covers up into Michigan, which uses mostly 422 frequencies. Then there is the Ohio side (which we're dealing with here) that doesn't. The neighbor list on the sites will really be what helps to determine if the site is part of Futronics UHF Ohio or the "other" Futronics.

Obviously you got some of the Ohio side border sites though. Thanks for these. Thsi will help a lot.

Mike

mtindor · Aug 28, 2016

jdolina said:
Although I did not have a chance last night I can confirm the following sites with strong signal in the eastern Lorain county area.

Site 182-30 CC 422.2375 NL 6 12 17 26 29
Site 182-6 CC 422.2625 NL 7 17 21 26 30

The following is a weaker signal

Site 182-26 CC 422.2125 NL 6 12 21 30

Unfortunately no voice traffic on the weekend or nights or not enough to figure anything out.

Isn't it lovely -- The control channels for all three of those sites is on 4 different licenses (WQTS515 - Lagrange, Wickliffe, Painesville locations), KQI932 (Cleveland), WQT863 (Lorain) and WQML531 (Medina).

That means the only way anyone is ever going to absolutely pinpoint those three sites is to be right on top of them with a scanner and/or DSDPlus with no antenna in the reciever. I can't believe they have all of the same frequencies licensed for at least six locations on at least four licenses.

But, at least based upon site neighbors, those are Ohio sites that will be on the Futronics UHF Ohio trunked system.

Mike

mtindor · Aug 28, 2016

n8vur said:
Isn't that the truth... I had the Toledo city services capacity+ system booming in here. I didn't believe it at first and figured I had something mixing in until I went through and checked all the LCNs and that they were notifying of the same rest channel every 2 seconds. I haven't heard an opening like that in a while, especially on UHF.

Next time I'm out west I'll power up the laptop and check Clyde. Thanks, Mike,

-doug/AB8M

Thanks, Doug. Yeah, last night I didn't pick up anything new on UHF, but I picked up sites that I don't normally pick up. My antenna is currently a 700 Mhz yagi pointed south out of Carrollton. So if I pick up any 450 mhz outside the county at all, it's a good clue [to me] that there is some serious tropo enhancement going on. When I switched to looking around on 700 mhz, there did turn out to be great tropo. Wish i would have had the 450 yagi up though.

From your location you will want to check out the sites jdolina mentioned on 422 mhz. Unfortunately, unless somebody is right on top of those sites jdolina posted, we may never be able to figure out which site is which since the 422 mhz frequencies are licensed to so many locations.

For better or for worse, below is my Futronics trunked UHF license map and the sites we know about as well as ones I've personally speculated on.

https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit?hl=en&authuser=0&mid=1ZxQdAaFlpByvFf1mzAhzkSuU01A

And of course the Futronics UHF Ohio system:

http://www.radioreference.com/apps/db/?sid=7746

Mike

AtlasFBG2 · Aug 29, 2016

mtindor said:
There will be at least one frequency that is a 24/7 control channel though. All you have to do is run DSDPlus on the control channel for a while and you'll at least be able to determine how many LCNs are active in the system, what LCNs they are, what the control channel frequency is, and what the LCN is of the control channel.

Anything you can do to confirm, at the very least, an active control channel for Clyde would be nice.

You really need to run 451-466, and include 454-455 mhz. And on many scanners, there is a "broadcast screen" that if enabled would cause the scanner to not even scan 454 mhz. And if you aren't running 6.25 kilohertz steps on the scanner, you might miss DMR and NXDN frequencies that you might otherwise catch.

Mike

I got dsd+ running now. 452.575 is the control channel. I will let it run a few days and see what i get.

mtindor · Aug 29, 2016

n8vur said:
Dragging up an old thread from the dead. Hearing a connect+ CC on 452.575 from SW Cuyahoga Count identifying as network 182.

It's giving a site of 27.
Current network: 182
Current site: 182-27
182-27 neighbors: 1, 4, 11, 22.

452.575 is included in:
KOI932 (Gibsonburg, Norwalk, 200 Public Sq Cleveland.)
WQTS515 (Lagrange, Wickliffe, Painesville, Thompson)
WQWU793 (Clyde)

Given my location, I suspect LaGrange but will need to drive over and validate.

I know Lagrange seems to make more sense given your proximity to Lagrange, but the neighbor list only makes sense if this was Clyde. If the site were Lagrange, you'd bee seeing 12, 17 and others as neighbors. And the past few days there has been some very nice tropo enhancement here in Ohio, so it is very conceivable that you would have been picking things up this week at distances farther than you normally would expect.

I could be wrong about Clyde, but I believe Clyde is likely the correct site identity for 182-27.

Mike

mtindor · Aug 29, 2016

AtlasFBG2 said:
I got dsd+ running now. 452.575 is the control channel. I will let it run a few days and see what i get.

Sweet. I'd be interested, as/when you get time, if you might consider scanning 422-425 Mhz as well as 450-465 mhz (including 454 mhz) and stopping on any Connect Plus control channel that you see which says it is part of System 182. Then at that point get the site number, neighbor list, and make note of the frequency you are stopped on when you are monitoring it.

From your location you very well may pick up some undocumented sites for this system, and it sure would be useful if we could document some more. I know, we're all busy. I'm not suggesting that you bust your butt to do this. But if you find free time, try to see if you can find some more sites on this system that are currently uncommented [or that we do not have the identity for yet but are listed in the DB]. Knowing your general location may help us to figure out some of the sites with unconfirmed locations.

I'm sorry I didn't pay attention. Are you running a tapped scanner and DSD+ or are you running SDR software?

Thanks for your help.

Mike

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