Sumter County digital?

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evan

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We received a submission that Sumter County has switched to digital but didn't get any details. Any locals have any info on this?
 

ws4p

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I received a call yesterday from a fellow ham that scans the Sumter County public safety system on a regular basis. He said he stopped receiving the system around 9:00 AM in the morning. Throughout the morning he only heard occasional calls on the old system, and on most of them the dispatcher would come on and remind the caller to switch over to the new system. I confirmed this on my trunk tracker, it would only show it was listening to one of the control channels and no activity from any of the talk groups. On an old non trunking scanner, I heard this old active control channel and another one that sounds similar to the Palmetto 800 control channels. I'm assuming the new system is compatible with the Palmetto 800 in some way. We knew this was coming, but haven't been able to get any details in the last year. Today, there was no old style control channel on the air, and the new one was still on the same frequency as yesterday: 859.4625. No signals of any kind are heard on the other old system channels.

I've been involved in some other projects this week, so haven't really been able to delve into this yet. Hopefully, I'll find some time over the weekend to search the FCC database, find some frequencies, and start relearning how to program my BCD396XT from scratch! Anyone else have any ideas or resources for the new Sumter County digital trunking system?
 

mnewmanstc

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An acquaintance of mine in SLED made reference to the switch to digital back at the start of the year, looks like it's finally happened.
I'm following it via Unitrunker and DSD+. There are several encrypted groups now.

Here's a sample of Unitrunker's scan of it.
 

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brian

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It would be interesting to know if the Richland Co site for 1D9, whose control channel has been active for a while but no voice activity that I'm aware of, now carries any of the Sumter talkgroups. My assumption would be no, that the Sumter "system" is separate, much like Florence, Anderson, Beaufort and Charleston are all separate from each other.

I expect we'll see the same thing in Horry County sometime this year, and then all of Palmetto 800 converting to 1D9 early 2017. Let's hope for minimal encryption.
 

ws4p

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On the front page of today's Sumter Item: "County's first responders upgrade to digital" "New radio system should improve communication". The article states that the new system is a "three tower system" instead of the old "two tower system" and would improve communications in areas that previously were dead spots. They quoted the police chief as stating this was through a partnership with Palmetto 800 Radio System, with Palmetto 800 managing and upgrading the system. He also stated other counties already had similar arrangements with Palmetto 800.

I only know of two towers, the one in Wedgefield and the WRJA tower, where they were installing new antennas and feedlines back in the spring. Not sure where the other tower is. I noticed in the Unitracker print out a couple of new (to me) frequencies. I also noticed 859.4625 high lighted in red. I was still running on a non-trunking scanner today. Does this one channel stay up all the time and not rotate like the one on the old system did? Lot's of new stuff to learn all of a sudden!
 

ws4p

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It's working!

Downloaded today's updated RR info to FreeSCAN, looked it over and uploaded it to my BCD396XT about an hour ago. It's working well with Sumter PD, SD, EMS being heard. No FD so far, but that's a good thing! So far the only complete info is for site 1 at WRJA. Am wondering if any of the other sites are on the air. Will have to search the frequencies in the FCC info for the other sites and see if I find any additional active control channels. They may just be running one site as a "shake down cruise" or may be waiting to bring them up when they move into the new dispatch facility and install a new main control console.

I appreciate everyone's help and advice so far. Now I'll have to help some friends get their radios reprogrammed!
 

brian

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It's a 5-site simulcast site. Simulcast means all 5 sites use the same set of frequencies and transmit the exact same audio simultaneously on all 5 sites. The link to callsign WPPU514 in Evan's message shows the location of each site and the same set of frequencies on each site.

Please submit additional talkgroups as you ID them.
 

mnewmanstc

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So far today I've only seen FD and EMS.. No PD or SD. I don't think I've changed anything in Unitrunker that would affect reception like that.. Anyone have any ideas?
 
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