Aransas County Trunking System

[bbedsole]

Aransas County is moving to an EDACS trunking system. I'm told most of the Rockport PD and ACSO channels are still being broadcast on conventional frequencies through a patch (P25) for now, but I don't know for how long.

I think we've found the new frequencies for the trunking system, but we're not sure which order they go in yet.

If anyone is in the area and is able to play around with them, here is a link to the FCC filing page that lists them all.

ULS License - PubSafty/SpecEmer/PubSaftyNtlPlan,806-817/851-862MHz,Trunked License - WQNW312 - ARANSAS, COUNTY OF

Any assistance would be much appreciated. I'm in Corpus Christi, so it's a little tough to pick them up where I am.

Thanks,
Bart

 

[bbedsole]

Aransas County Update

Ok, so I ran Unitrunker last night and it looks like Emmitt was right. There appears to be only four frequencies being used off the main tower, although it actually logged a random LCN 15. ???

855.712500
858.462500cc
859.462500
859.962500

The second one is the control channel.

Looks like Unitrunker found four talkgroup ID's in about two hours. I programmed them afterward and tried to catch them.

1745 - ???
1746 - Rockport PD (pretty sure)
1758 - ???
1759 - ???
2047 - ???

I'm sure that some of those belong to ACSO and probably Aransas Pass PD, but if anybody finds out more for sure, let us know.

 

[nueces162]

May as well get this one added to the data base - was listening to it at work last week and the order you have the freqs in is the correct LCN, the only groups I heard active were 1745 which was Aransas County Sheriff and 1746 was Rockport PD, the other 2 are probably fire and ems but never heard any traffic on them to confirm that - the site number is 5 which is also the same number for the Port Aransas site so one of them will probably have to change eventually if it all ever gets linked through the Corpus controler as wide-area

 

[texasemt13]

Good work guys.

bbedsole, when you're running UniTrunker on this system did you happen to see how many "channels" were shown active on the System page? (I believe I used the correct UT terms for those). The channels correspond to the number of LCNs that appear active (that the CC identifies in its course of assigning voice channels to LIDs). It should correspond to the number of LCNs including the CC. Even if LCN 15 popped up for a split second the count would show there. That is one way to confirm that you have the correct number of LCNs, but it sounds like you do, it just seems like such a small site build for an area that can get pretty busy.

 

[bbedsole]

Sadly, no one took of the good scanners to that huge fire today on Key Allegro (?!?!?!), so I don't have any good field tests to report, but I'll try to run Unitrunker tonight to follow up on the abovementioned issues. Can't do it at the office here in downtown CC. Reception is too poor.

 

[nueces162]

In a couple of hours of watching it on a Homepatrol with the upgrade it only showed 4 active channels. I progged it into my LPE the next night and it showed the site was working in failsoft mode under local control. When I was using UniTrunker on the Sinton sites that were also in local control a a"phantom" LCN 15 and sometimes 23 used to show up but never showed any use. Not sure what the program is seeing but maybe it has something to do with the failsoft mode.

 

[bbedsole]

Unitrunker

In case it helps, I pasted a screen capture of the Unitrunker window after about 3 hours of data collection on the control channel. Definitely Site 7 as Nueces162 stated, and as you can see, there's the LCN 15 also.

 

[bbedsole]

One more...

And here's one more... a screen capture of the info tab, which mentions the "failsoft" mode also.

 

[texasemt13]

Ok, that all looks like good work nueces and bbed.

In the future you might be able to see the activity that occurred on it when you click on LCN 15, or the frequency. I believe you can click on those and see a history of the activity (similar to clicking on a LID), but I may be mistaken.