Trying to Understand GATRS (Austin) System Freq.

[rvacs]

Hello All
Trying to listen to GATRS - Austin PD in Round Rock.

If I put in the Travis County Simulcast 1 and Simulcast 2 frequencies then it works but some reception not very good....

So I figure I should just use the Williamson County Simulcast frequencies so I could get better reception....but put those in and its quiet.

Can someone explain this to me?

 

[samson512]

I may not be using proper terms when I explain this, but I do understand how it works in my head...
The Williamson County Simulcast system/towers will mostly carry only local traffic. For example, all the different sites that are linked will not carry all traffic unless there is a specific reason to do so. If an APD unit is in the Williamson county area of coverage, and he tries to call on an "APD dispatch channel" you will hear that, but not all traffic on that channel because those users are not affiliated with the Williamson county towers, just the local Austin area ones. Hope this doesnt confuse you more. I will try to find a link that explains it better.

 

[mass-man]

Take what samson512 says as why the Austin PD channels are quiet on the Williamson towers...but you have to understand a simulcasting system. The radio traffic is being broadcast on more than one tower at a time, and your scanner is having a hard time decoding because it is receiving two signals at once. You could program in only the freq for the tower nearest you...use a beam to null out signals from the weaker tower or adjust the sqelch a bit higher so the strongest signal makes it thru. There is a myriad of discussions on simulcasting systems here on RR

 

[samson512]

I too have problems with the Austin/Travis county simulcast system. Depending on my location I can receive and decode perfectly, or not much at all with very garbled speech. This is due to what mass-man pointed out about the signals arriving from several towers with slightly off timing. These scanners just weren't designed to be that robust I suppose. I have tried a small paper clip, a stubby antenna and a bunch of other antennas short of a yagi pointed to the tower I wish to receive < --which is my next experiment and at my home location hearing much of anything clearly is out of the question. On the other hand, at a buddies house just a few miles from where I live I can hear near perfect speech out of this system with no problems.

Take what samson512 says as why the Austin PD channels are quiet on the Williamson towers...but you have to understand a simulcasting system. The radio traffic is being broadcast on more than one tower at a time, and your scanner is having a hard time decoding because it is receiving two signals at once. You could program in only the freq for the tower nearest you...use a beam to null out signals from the weaker tower or adjust the sqelch a bit higher so the strongest signal makes it thru. There is a myriad of discussions on simulcasting systems here on RR

 

[rvacs]

Thanks Samson512 and Mass-man - that makes sense about the traffic. Simulcast is new to me. I guess I just need to figure out what towers I need to Add.

Great Scanning around here - just a bunch of it... Need to weed through it all and ORGANIZE / ORGANIZE the scanner.

Thanks for the Help!!

 

[W5TWX]

As far as Round Rock goes - Williamson Co. Sheriff, GTPD, GTFD, RRPD, CPPD are all encrypted and have been for about a year. You can still hear RRFD, Taylor FD, EMS to area hospitals, DPS, road and street repair crews, city and county utilities and that's about all you will hear.

 

[Michael-SATX]

A few Questions just for folks that have first hand expirience and live in the Austin, Texas area.

I have a friend who lives in Travis Co and he lives in Creedmoor (Is that a city or just a site name?)
Under the GATRRS system what is meant by "IR " ? (examples: Creedmoor IR & Marble Falls IR)

I am programming up his Pro-197 and wanted to ask some Austinites about the GATRRS system.
Concerning the Site #1 Simulcast and the Site #2 Simulcast systems, what are the differences
in the types of traffic or agencies that appear on each of these systems. For example, in San Antonio,
we have our 1st Blue Simulcast TRS with just SAPD and our 2nd Gold Simulcast TRS with BCSO,
the SAFD, Public Works, area incorporated cities public safety and several of our ISD PD Depts.

So bottom line, does the Travis Co GATRRS Simulcast 1 and Simulcast 2 sites have divisions like SA?

Now considering this Pro-197 will sit stationary in the Creedmoor area, from reading the posts above
the Creedmoor tower probably does not carry all the APD,AFD or TCSO traffic - what say all of you all?
I am thinking to program in the Simulcast 1 & 2 and Creedmoor systems all as 3 separate systems.
Next, under each system divide out all the different agencies under separate custom Scanlists, etc.
I am thinking to have the wildcard but lock it out so my friend does not get everybody and their mother
showing up everywhere. I am striving to keep law and order in my programming ways

Thanks in advance for the forthcoming multitudes of advice I am hoping to receive from our Austonians !!!

 

[Russell]

IRs are "IntelliRepeaters" or fill in sites. They are placed specifically to fill in radio holes (bad coverage areas). The "intelligent" parts comes in as they only broadcast when units are in the area to hear them. If no radios are in the area to "affiliate" with the IR site then the site does not transmit. It's kind of like a mini-zone. If a radio affiliates then the tower will broadcast only on the talkgroup(s) the radio is using. If no radio is in the area then all you'll hear is the control channel.

The two simulcast layers do transmit different kinds of traffic. Simulcast 1 is the County-wide layer; it covers the entire county and carries SO traffic, Fire traffic and a lot of public works, Austin Electric, etc. Simulcast 2 is the City layer and carries mostly Austin PD, Austin Fire, etc. A lot of PD and SO traffic goes back and forth across the two layers. Also, when one gets exceptionally busy, such as the UT gunman incident a few years back, the admin can push traffic from one layer to the other to accommodate the heavy traffic.

 

[rbarker]

Simulcast 1 is mainly all public safety including Law, EMS, fire, even the prison which is right next to Creedmoor community
Simulcast 2 is mainly everything else including convention center, dog catchers, trash, street and bridge, water/wastewater but you will find some talkgroups appear on both.

 

[Russell]

Rob knows more about which layer carries what. It's been awhile since I monitored GATRRS.

Russell

 

[Michael-SATX]

Thanks Rob, would you still think I should program in the Creedmoor IR site just in case and under it
include the more popular Talkgroups of Public Safety ? Would you enable or disable it's wildcard TG ?

 

[rbarker]

yes put in Creedmoor and you can enable a wildcard talkgroup if you can lock it out if you needed to.

 

[Michael-SATX]

Rob, off hand do you know which Travis Co SO division responds to calls in Creedmoor ? (small pop of 200 folks)
So on one hand the TCSO Disp is divided into 4 sectors and the TCSO Tac is just East or West sectors ?
Lastly, for a Creedmoor community 911 Fire Call ... who shows up to cover that and what is their TG or freq ?

2405 965 D TCSO ADA NW TCSO Adam Law Dispatch
2403 963 D TCSO BKR NE TCSO Baker Law Dispatch
2404 964 D TCSO CHA SE TCSO Charlie Law Dispatch
2406 966 D TCSO DVD SW TCSO David Law Dispatch
2407 967 D TCSO TAC E TCSO East Tac Law Tac
2408 968 D TCSO TAC W TCSO West Tac

 

[rbarker]

Travis County Sheriff's Dept only uses 2 of the 4 dispatch channels: Adam and Baker. Baker is for East so that includes Creedmoor. I am not sure what the districts are for Mustang Ridge but they are also dispatched by TCSO on this talkgroup. You will prob hear them making traffic stops. They also have their own "tac" talkgroup(s) but that's really just for them to talk to each other. (Mustang Ridge uses 3456). The tac channels like West Tac and East Tac are just for the mobiles to talk to each other. West Tac seems to be the most common but that's West of town. East Tac is not that common, but I hear the east side units talk more on either TCSO Charlie or David since both of those talkgroups are not being used for dispatch. As for Fire, I think that's mostly the old SETCO or ESD 11 that works that area. They would be dispatched by AFD. Tone out can be heard on 154.205 or 154.175 or 154.965
They will be told to respond on Firecom South (1123) or Firecom East (1122) If it's a large fire they will be assigned a regular Firecom 1 or Firecom 2, etc. I have always been asked what Firecom is for what and it's up to the guys at dispatch. Once upon a time, there was a list of different Firecoms for north, south, east and west but they never follow the list. If they don't need a dispatcher and are just doing training or just want to talk truck to truck they can use their own tac channels (3282, 3283) but you could go weeks before hearing any traffic on those talkgroups.

Map of Fire Districts: http://www.co.travis.tx.us/maps/misc/ESD_map.pdf
ESD 11 Travis Co Fire Rescue District Map: TRAVIS COUNTY FIRE RESCUE
Travis Co Fire Depts: Travis County Fire Departments

 

[807swr]

AFD has four ops talk groups (TGs): Firecom N, Firecom S, Firecom E and Firecom W. Firecom N. All Emergency Services Districts West of IH-35 are assigned to Firecom W and all ESDs East of the freeway are assigned FCOM E. AFD uses FCOM N and FCOM S which are simulcast city-wide. The boundary for FCOM N and FCOM S is Lake Ladybird. The reason having two FCOMs citywide is the simulcast is disconnected when AFD goes to storm deployment. This allows one dispatcher to handle all South Austin and the other to handle North Austin companies.

Fire Tactical TGs (termed FTAC) have three dedicated frequencies to FTAC. AFD has FTAC 201, FTAC 204, FTAC 207, FTAC 210, FTAC 213, and FTAC 216. Within each FTAC are three dedicated TGs: Operations, Command and Emergency Traffic. So if you hear an incident dispatched on FTAC 201, you may also hear traffic on FTAC 202 such as between command officers or staging. If you ever hear traffic in FTAC 203 a mayday has been declared on the fireground.

FTAC 300 series talk groups are for ARFF, FTAC 400 TGs are for Training, and FTAC 500 TGs are for Special Ops and Fire Prevention. FT600 TG are encrypted command channels and unencrypted interop frequencies.

Regardless if it is an AFD or ESD incident, a FTAC 200 series TG will be assigned on a 1st dispatched incident basis based on the nature of the incident and number of companies assigned. Generally speaking an assignment requiring 3 or more companies is assigned a FTAC.

 

[Ensnared]

GATTRS-Mind Blower

Simulcast 1 is mainly all public safety including Law, EMS, fire, even the prison which is right next to Creedmoor community
Simulcast 2 is mainly everything else including convention center, dog catchers, trash, street and bridge, water/wastewater but you will find some talkgroups appear on both.

I'm assuming your name is Rob since Russell made reference to your knowledge about the GATRRS system. So, I'm going to attempt to program and/or understand this system one more time.

I own a PSR 500. Hence, I've experienced periods where the scanner will go completely dead downtown. It seems like it goes down in the evening hours.

I've read your post which is quoted above, but it is still a bit confusing to me.

I've re-programmed this system several different ways over the years & I'm still not satisfied. So, I am going to program this system with all of the system frequencies for the various sites, if possible. I don't know if the aforementioned silence is related to other system frequencies being used which are outside of the identified CC"s and AC's.

Here is what I want to program: a) All APD channels under several sites; b) all county LE under the county wide; b) Williamson in their own simulcast and TG's; c) all outside Austin TSYS specific to their areas and towers.

But, the most important is APD. Initially, I was going to program APD with the following sites, 002 (2) Simulcast 2 & 010 (A) Central Austin. When I looked at the RR Locations, these two sites were grouped closest to the center of Austin. I was also assuming I would catch the more interesting talk groups such as APD Street level TG's, etc.

However, I am starting to wonder if I should program Simulcast 1 001 (1) for APD and TCSO.

I wonder how many APD talk groups are contained in the city layer?

Please, assist me in setting up APD only for right now. I will work outward once APD is programmed.

If anyone else wants to chime in as well, I will welcome all feedback.

 

[rbarker]

It's best to program each site into a different bank. For anything City or Law, use Simulcast 1 site.
you can always lock out talkgorups that you dont want to hear. It is almost impossible to monitor all of the APD dispatch talkgroups since they are so busy. The Central Austin Site you can disregard. since that's mainly just State of Texas talkgroups like Capitol Police. Every Dispatch channel for Austin PD, Travis Co SO, and any other law enforcmeents will be on Simulcast 1 site.

 

[Ensnared]

Site Per Scan List

I will then program Simulcast 1 to cover all of APD & Travis County LE, EMS, etc. I will also program a separate scan list for the Simulcast 2 since I'm wanting to hear some Capitol things, Emergency Management, etc. I suppose Park Police would be on the Simulcast 1. I suppose I will also include DPS on Simulcast 1.

Since I'm wanting to cover Travis, county-wide, would I take the remaining sites within Travis County into one site together or separate.

I can understand having a separate site and talk groups for areas like Bastrop, but, there are several in Travis County. Part of me thinks I could put the smaller sites such as Creedmore together in one scan list.

Since I don't know which talk groups would be affiliating with Creedmore, I would be a bit lost.

Finally, I am going to ask about WIn500 settings: a) Roam; b) threshold set for 85 high and 55 lo. Do you have a better suggestion for these threshold settings specific to GATTRS?

I'm starting to understand this a bit better. Thanks.

I was reading two different things from you & Russell regarding the what is on Simulcasts 1 & 2, I think.

 

[rbarker]

I'm not at all familiar with your scanner (PSR 500) but in most scanners, you cannot combine different sites into one bank. That's because the scanner does "control channel" scanning and you can't have more than one control channel per bank.

Forget about all the little sites for now. Concentrate on getting just one site first. Simulcast 1 is the one to program. By trying to fit others in there, you may be messing things up. In my scanners, I only have to program one frequency, the control channel (the one that buzzes) and set the radio on control channel scanning, and it's works fine.

The smaller sites are only really for dead spots so you will not hear all of the traffic on them and in fact very little traffic. Park Police is no more, they really just work off the APD dispatch channels. You will never hear anything on any Emergency Management talkgroups. I prob have only hear them active 2x in 10 years. I don't know anything about the Win 500 either, sorry.

Simulcast 1 is all police, all fire, all EMS, all sheriff, any law enforcement, even the jail
Simulcast 2 is water, streets, trash, convention center, building inspectors, animal control, Austin Energy and there may be some spillover of public safety but only when the Simulcast 1 all being used. Also you may here some of these on Simulcast 1 but very little

Robert

 

[Ensnared]

Clear As Day

I'm not at all familiar with your scanner (PSR 500) but in most scanners, you cannot combine different sites into one bank. That's because the scanner does "control channel" scanning and you can't have more than one control channel per bank.

Forget about all the little sites for now. Concentrate on getting just one site first. Simulcast 1 is the one to program. By trying to fit others in there, you may be messing things up. In my scanners, I only have to program one frequency, the control channel (the one that buzzes) and set the radio on control channel scanning, and it's works fine.

The smaller sites are only really for dead spots so you will not hear all of the traffic on them and in fact very little traffic. Park Police is no more, they really just work off the APD dispatch channels. You will never hear anything on any Emergency Management talkgroups. I prob have only hear them active 2x in 10 years. I don't know anything about the Win 500 either, sorry.

Simulcast 1 is all police, all fire, all EMS, all sheriff, any law enforcement, even the jail
Simulcast 2 is water, streets, trash, convention center, building inspectors, animal control, Austin Energy and there may be some spillover of public safety but only when the Simulcast 1 all being used. Also you may here some of these on Simulcast 1 but very little

Robert

Man, you know the system very well. I'm quite impressed. I am going to forward you a PM concerning a very detailed PDF about said system. I received it from a person in Risk Management from one of the local hospitals. I don't share it with many people.

Again, thanks.