Denton County switching to P25 today....

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DMBFireman

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Denton County is switching all of their radio traffic to P25 digital today. I believe the City of Denton may also be switching today as well but I have not confirmed that. They will not be simulcasting on the old system however a few FDs may still keep their old channels for a little while so departments like Lewisville FD can still communicate with them on mutual aid calls.

Lewisville and I believe both Flower Mound and Highland Village are not switching yet but will come on board sometime later this year possibly. Details are fuzzy....some of you here may know much more than I do because I just found out about the switch today.

I also operate the Denton County Fire/EMS Live Audio feed and due to this switch the Denton County FDs will no longer be heard on the feed. I don't have the funding at this time personally to replace the BCT-15 scanner providing the feed. I've had a donation link on the feed for over a year and have collected about $75. We all know that's not enough for a digital scanner. I don't like soliciting for donations so I will be updating the feed with this information and a donation link and leave it at that. If I don't get enough interest in replacing the scanner then I will take the feed down.

On another note my 436HP was stolen out of my truck last week when I accidentally left it unlocked....just in time for this digital switch. That's just great!!!! :(
 

cmdcomm

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Why don't you feed the VHF paging channels until you get going on digital? City of Denton will be 1-2yrs away, the others by the end of the year.
 

DMBFireman

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Well that is an idea however I didn't set up the feed just to hear tone-outs on VHF and nothing else. If that's all I can do with that scanner I can put it to better personal use on military air band or something like that. I don't really want to use a BCT-15 just for VHF paging channels.

Brandon
 

Lhayes3

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Denton P25

I am new to this. I have a uniden BCD396xt I bought two tears ago, anticipating the change. It said it could do P25. What do I need to change to pick up Denton County again? Did they change frequencies too?
 

BenScan

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Yes, some of the frequencies changed. With that scanner, you can program just the 4 control frequencies, which are listed in red and blue at the link below. You'll need to program your scanner using the info at the link.

Denton County Public Safety (P25) System Trunking System, Denton, Texas - Scanner Frequencies

I am new to this. I have a uniden BCD396xt I bought two tears ago, anticipating the change. It said it could do P25. What do I need to change to pick up Denton County again? Did they change frequencies too?
 

hiegtx

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I am new to this. I have a uniden BCD396xt I bought two tears ago, anticipating the change. It said it could do P25. What do I need to change to pick up Denton County again? Did they change frequencies too?

Yes, some of the frequencies changed. With that scanner, you can program just the 4 control frequencies, which are listed in red and blue at the link below. You'll need to program your scanner using the info at the link.

Denton County Public Safety (P25) System Trunking System, Denton, Texas - Scanner Frequencies
Note that the identified talkgroups in the database are noted with a "T" in the Mode column. That indicates that transmissions would be P25 Phase II, which the 396XT is not able to decode. However, if some are actually using P25 Phase I, then the 396XT could receive those. So far, I'm not getting much on the new system. I'm in Dallas County, southwest of downtown, so I may be out of range.
 

BenScan

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Good point. I forgot to mention that. However, I'm hearing some activity on a 996XT, and I believe there are probably quite a few Phase 1 radios still being used. Hopefully, that will keep things in Phase 1 mode for us with older scanners, for a while.

Note that the identified talkgroups in the database are noted with a "T" in the Mode column. That indicates that transmissions would be P25 Phase II, which the 396XT is not able to decode. However, if some are actually using P25 Phase I, then the 396XT could receive those. So far, I'm not getting much on the new system. I'm in Dallas County, southwest of downtown, so I may be out of range.
 

TNLTRPB

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Note that the identified talkgroups in the database are noted with a "T" in the Mode column. That indicates that transmissions would be P25 Phase II, which the 396XT is not able to decode. However, if some are actually using P25 Phase I, then the 396XT could receive those. So far, I'm not getting much on the new system. I'm in Dallas County, southwest of downtown, so I may be out of range.

The entire system is running dynamic mixed mode between P1 and P2. The common/shared channels will probably be mostly on P1 until the XTS/XTL series radios are phased out. I've already noticed some P2 activity on departmental fire channels like Aubrey (who are presumably all APX radios now).
 

ke4emq

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KE4EMQ pops

yes denton county changed almost all there traffic to the new system i have a home patrol 2 and it made the switch just fine. good luck hope it all goes as good as it did for me to all of you.
 

jason51

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I must be a victim of the simulcast distortion. I am 8 miles west of Justin and cant hear a thing on the new system. On a 436Hp or a 325P2
 

BenScan

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There's a good chance of that. Try driving around, and see if you have any better luck moving closer to one of the transmitter sites. If that's the case, you might be able to solve the problem with a yagi antenna at home. Unfortunately, there may be some dead spots you can't do much about in a mobile setting. I have that trouble with the Fort Worth system in most of the areas that I drive in NE Tarrant.

859.2875 is the control channel as I type this.

I must be a victim of the simulcast distortion. I am 8 miles west of Justin and cant hear a thing on the new system. On a 436Hp or a 325P2
 

ke4emq

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Does anyone know why patrol 3 and corinth pd that were just added to data base are not on the homepatrol or sent data base yet to download?
 

BenScan

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I think the database for Uniden is only updated Sunday or Monday, once a week.

Does anyone know why patrol 3 and corinth pd that were just added to data base are not on the homepatrol or sent data base yet to download?
 

hiegtx

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Does anyone know why patrol 3 and corinth pd that were just added to data base are not on the homepatrol or sent data base yet to download?

I think the database for Uniden is only updated Sunday or Monday, once a week.
Uniden pulls the data for the databases on Sundays (barring any technical problem), processes the changes, then generates updates for the two versions of Sentinel (for for the HP-1 & HP-2, the other version for the x36HP scanners, 436HP and 536HP). That's normally available by mid-day Mondays.

So, any database update made between the the last Sunday update, and the next Sunday, will not be shown until the next Monday.
 

dfbailey

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Denton County Law Enforcement Feed

Denton County has changed to a digital system. I am working on getting my equipment updated to restore the feed.

Thank you for your patience.
 

ke4emq

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on the new denton county p25 system little elm pd patrol 3 are no longer 100 numbers all numbers are now in the 600 series do to not enough numbers left in the 100 series because of many more new hires and more pd cars. hope this helps.
 

AggieCon

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Control channel

What control channel is this system using currently? How often does it change? If it rotates, which one is used the most (i.e. highest control channel hit count in UniTrunker)?
 

ke4emq

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denton county's main control is 773.65626 alt control is 772.60625, 858.38750, 859.28750 . i am with a denton county fd and and i believe they are staying on the main control channel. the fd side is having trouble with tone outs and have been working with depts one by one daily. hope this helps good luck.
 

AggieCon

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Thank you! I will be in town for awhile tomorrow and now I'll be set to listen.

Is the problem getting the tone outs to send, or is the problem getting the proper radios and station alerting equipment to respond to the tones? I don't know about your new radio system, but on others I listen to, tones sound completely different on analog VHF vs the P25 vocoder.
 
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