LA - Dept. of Water and Power Discussion Thread

It appears LA City DWP has a new P25 system on the air. Since I don't know the owner/operator of this system for certain, I shall refrain from submitting it. This is to start discussion.

The specifics are:

System: 691
WACN: BEE00

I've been looking at site 4:
936.4500
936.4625 alt control
936.4750 alt control
936.5000 control

Alternate sites shown are:
1 - control channel of 935.5000
2 - control channel of 936.4125

DWP has a newish license for P25 trunking, issued last April - WQTU799. It appears this is going to be a phase 1 only system. The only activity is the ID'er every half hour.

Where are you located?
I don't pick up any P25 activity on your listed control/alt channels from the Mid City/West LA area.

Also for reference all those frequencies are still allegedly part of the current Smartnet system as well per its CC data.

I used the phrase "appears to be" because that's all it is at this stage in the game. More investigation is needed.

With that said, LA DWP is the only licensed user in Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino, and Riverside counties. My receive location is the eastern San Gabriel Valley.

Site 6 on the WQTU799 license is Mt. Washington, which is about 20 miles away and nearly line of site to me. The frequencies licensed on Mt. Washington are the four that are currently listed as site 4 on the trunker.

The license is showing a system that has a 3 site, 12 channel simulcast cell on Lukens, Oat, and Baldwin Hills. The rest are single sites:
4 channels at Rolling Hills
3 channels at Santa Ynez Reservoir in Pacific Palisades
The same 3 channels from the reservoir plus a fourth channel at Mt. Washington

The Pacific Palisades site is not going to be heard outside Pacific Palisades, so frequency reuse doesn't look like it should be an issue with Mt. Washington.

Based upon the licensing, I'm going to guess that the sites will be as follows:
1 - the 3 site simulcast
2 - Rolling Hills
3 - Santa Ynez Reservoir
4 - Mt. Washington

But then again, I could be wrong.

New 900 MHz licenses have been issued in Mono and Inyo Counties in California and Mineral County Nevada (to cover all of the Mono Basin). Years ago when the DWP started installing the 900 MHz system in the L.A. Basin they licensed 900 MHz for the eastern Sierra as well. They never put it in and stated "we have a good 400 MHz system that is working just fine so why should we replace it?"

I guess they want to standardize all their systems now for whatever reasons they have. I'm wondering if the existing 400 MHz sites will provide the coverage they need. They licensed June Mountain for the first time and an existing electronic site over in Nevada for the first time as well. They used to cover the Mono Basin using one site on a relatively low mountain, really a hill by western standards, located 12 miles north of Mammoth. They are adding these two other sites to cover the basin, but haven't added additional sites in the Owens Valley area.

A system that probably won't change is the low band one covering the Pacific Intertie DC powerline. There is a lot of linear coverage needed over a long stretch of country from Adel, Oregon to Sylmar. A 900 MHz system in the hilly country this powerline passes through would require a lot more sites than are in place now. The DC line takes Columbia River hydroelectric power and sends it south and at Adel, Oregon ownership of the line south to Sylmar consists of 5 southern California power companies, one being LADWP who maintains that portion of the line. DWP employees live and work from a number of locations along the line. I'm not sure how these remote locations and electronic sites are tied together so that the LADWP control station can hear them, possibly via a few microwave linked remote bases. I don't monitor the DC line comm system regularly, but I've never picked up anything on the line after 33 years in Mono County.

(1930)* - Teletype machine and operator - G. C. Farmer operating New Page Teletype acquired by the Department for use between Los Angeles and Owens Valley. (60 wpm - not too shabby!)

SysID 691 P25 Trunked System - Los Angeles Department of Water and Power - LADWP

Searching the FCC database.
It might be Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) new P25 system?

WNIT326 - http://wireless2.fcc.gov/UlsApp/UlsSearch/license.jsp?licKey=1926717
WQTU799 - http://wireless2.fcc.gov/UlsApp/UlsSearch/license.jsp?licKey=3584602

FileVersion:8
-TowerInfo
System ID: 691
System Name:
WACN: BEE00
Tower Number (Decimal): 1-2
Tower Number (Hex): T0102
Tower Description:
Control Capabilities: Data,Voice,Registration
Flavor: Phase 1
Call Sign(s):
Timestamp: Thu Mar 26 12:29:53 2015

Site NAC: 692

-Frequencies
#Format: Channel,Usage,Frequency(/Slot)
"00-0034","a",935.43750
"00-0112","c",936.41250
"00-0118","a",936.48750

-Neighbors
#Format: TowerID,TowerIDHex,System ID,Channel,Frequency
101,"T0101",691,"00-0039",935.50000
103,"T0103",691,"00-0117",936.47500
104,"T0104",691,"00-0119",936.50000

Existing discussion thread on topic

http://forums.radioreference.com/gr...ion/306511-new-p25-system-appears-la-dwp.html

Thanks! somehow it didn't show up on the forum search

Site 1-1 Pro96com Info, logged from San Diego County.

FileVersion:8
-TowerInfo
System ID : 691
WACN : BEE00
Tower Number (Decimal): 1-1
Tower Number (Hex) : T0101
Control Capabilities : Data,Voice,Registration
Flavor : Phase 1
Timestamp : Sat Apr 11 17:01:50 2015

SiteNAC:691

-Frequencies
#Format: Channel,Usage,Frequency(/Slot),Input Channel,Input Frequency(/Slot),Input Explicit(1/0)
"00-0032","d", 935.41250
"00-0037","a", 935.47500
"00-0038","a", 935.48750
"00-0039","c", 935.50000
"00-0110","a", 936.38750

-Neighbors
#Format: TowerID,TowerIDHex,System ID,Channel,Frequency
102,"T0102",691,"00-0112", 936.41250
103,"T0103",691,"00-0117", 936.47500
104,"T0104",691,"00-0119", 936.50000

_______________________________________________________________

Extra log notes for 1-2

Call Sign(s): WQTU799
4/11/2015 16:48 CWID 00-0033 935.425 WQTU799

-Frequencies
"00-0033","i",935.42500
"00-0034","a",935.43750
"00-0112","c",936.41250
"00-0118","a",936.48750

I did some research on this, and found the following video clip explaining the old system, the new system, and other interesting tidbits.

I believe you need Silverlight and Internet Explorer to view the video.

Board of Commissioners Special Meeting - Oct 16th, 2013

Hello all,

We built this system in the DB.

Los Angeles City Department of Water and Power (P25) Trunking System, Los Angeles, California - Scanner Frequencies

So far we have:

Site 01 - Basin Simulcast
935.4000
935.4125
935.4500
935.4750a
935.4875a
935.5000c
936.3875a
936.4250
936.4375

Site 2
935.4250
935.4375a
936.4125c
936.4875a

Site 3
936.4750c

Site 4
936.5000c

Based on some documents I received, I believe Site 2 is stand alone site in San Pedro, Site 3 Mt. Washington and Site 4 Santa Ynez in Ventura/Santa Barbara counties.

Any further confirmations including talkgroup info would be great.

I made this a sticky so it will remain at the top for further discussion for the build out.

Out of interest I let my P25 trunk tracker run for a couple hours on the system.

No voice traffic noted, though quite frequent telemetry/data traffic was noted. Nearly all on TG 500, but also a times or two on 100, 125, 400, 401, 402, 405, 501, and 503.

I sat on the system today and picked up some voice traffic on TGs 500 and 503, so it does appear to be in use to a limited degree.

Besides several radio checks, both TGs seem to be possibly security related, with comments about frequent door alarms at the "RPC". Googling RPC and DWP I came up with Remittance Processing Center.

Looks like we have IDs on a few TGs.

400 - Telecom Group - LA Radio
500 - Security Services Group - Central Monitoring Station
503 - Security Services Group - Tac

Pretty sporadic usage so far.

Is this a Type I or Type II system?

Phase-I so far.

LAflyer said:

Phase-I so far.

Click to expand...

Thanks, "phase" is what I meant to say, but I'm an old fire dog and everything is grouped into "types."

Sounds like system is slowly coming alive.

Talk-groups so far appear to be as follows:
2xx water
4xx telecom
5xx security

1xx possibly might be power but I have not been able to match ongoing testing with existing Smartnet system usage.

I stumbled across some more LADWP P25 sites driving back down the Owen's Valley last weekend.

1-010: Bishop
1-009: Independence
1-008: Cottonwood Radio Site (Lone Pine)

I also fixed sites 2 through 4, which erroneously had increasing RFSS numbers (2-001, 3-001, 4-001) instead of site numbers like they should have (1-002, 1-003, 1-004).

I believe sites 5 through 7 are in the Mojave/Ridgecrest area, with one likely on Government Peak (according to the FCC license).