Buncombe VIPER question

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jack3726

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Couple of questions that I didn't see any old posts about and or might of missed.

A) Are there any interop freqs or simulucast between these two in the county, doesn't appear to be many talkgroups on the viper side.
B) If your going to program to listen to this, do you select the tower that is associated to the county you live in, I only see 2 sites for VIPER in Buncombe county.
C) Can you hear other areas within the western zone based on the tower that you select.
D) I did find where VIPER was based on Motorola, are there any scanners better than others or just make sure you have one that supports 700 phase II.
E) How much is this used by the other counties in the area to Buncombe
 

n4yek

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Even though they have access to Viper, Buncombe County primarily use their own P25 system and if there are talkgroups to patch or do interop between the two, no one has posted them yet:
Buncombe County Public Safety System P25 Trunking System

Asheville is still using their old system for now: Asheville Public Safety

You will hear other Viper areas if their radio affiliates with the tower you are monitoring, but it is my understanding that radios used in a particular county are programmed to affiliate with towers that cover that county only.
There are a few radios that will affiliate with any tower, but those are few in numbers.

The State Highway Patrol is on the Viper, so if you want to monitor them while in Buncombe county you will need to monitor Troop G talkgroups, District 4 to be exact. Other districts are in surrounding counties.

As for a radio to monitor with, if one is looking to purchase a radio then definitely look for one that is phase II capable. But, any late model scanner that can receive 700 MHz freqs will do you fine for now.
I believe there was a thread on here not long ago that stated the move to phase II was not in the near future.
 
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KE4ZNR

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But, any late model scanner that can receive 700 MHz freqs will do you fine for now.
I believe there was a thread on here not long ago that stated the move to phase II was not in the near future.

This is correct. I don't know why there is still confusion about this.
VIPER is P25 Phase 1 FDMA. A P25 Phase II TDMA scanner is NOT required to monitor VIPER. It will not hurt you to have P25 Phase II TDMA capability but it is not a requirement to monitor VIPER.
VIPER will stay Phase 1 FDMA for the foreseeable future.
Marshall KE4ZNR
 

INDY72

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And for the other part of the questions.... All the surrounding Counties with the exception of Henderson do have a lot of operations on the VIPER. Henderson is going DMR for operations. (Costs etc...)

Asheville, and Buncombe County have assigned TG's for VIPER, but patch into those extremely rarely if at all. There are 3 VIPER sites for Buncombe County, but currently only 2 are online. The third is being rebuilt after damage a few years back. (Yes, that's years. Priority is building new sites and making sure gaps are filled in apparently, and apparently that huge gap in coverage isn't an issue LOL.)

Also, all users in each County, can use the surrounding sites. A few agencies at the County/Municipality level have statewide access on their primary TG's, but all have access to Statewide Events, and Interop TG's. The main exception to this rule at the local level, would be EMS, which have the VMED system.
 
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trumpetman

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milf,

I'm not sure who your source is for all of this information but this is about the most misinformed post I've read on here in a while...
 
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