Hamilton Street Railway (HSR)

[EJB]

Hullo. I take the HSR daily to and from work and I'm stumped with their radio system. I have the system in my scanners and at times I hear radio activity while I'm on the bus but nothing on either my 436 and SDS.

It's not a signal issue, I have in all the talkgroups, I run each scanner in Search Mode for the system as well.

I do have DSD+ and can get it running, but I'm using that laptop these days for my baseball league for spreadsheets.

If anyone can answer me before I get off my ass and search it out myself I'd be grateful. Maybe it's I-calls but most of the time dispatch talks to bus #1805, that is usually also the radio ID.

 

[ATCTech]

Watching it now Eric. I'll update what I see later today, normal or otherwise. I haven't run that system since last summer.

 

[EJB]

Ty my friend. If I sense that a bus driver is nice
(50/50) maybe I should ask.

If it's any help I have heard a few times what sounds like dispatch giving general information. But not a call to a particular bus. (ie: I was on the Burlington St bus and there was a call for a bus route on the Mountain where there was an accident.)

436 was on but nothing on the scanner.

 

[ATCTech]

Less than stellar coverage from up here on the HSR system, but that aside there were only a handful of events logged in 8 continuous hours of monitoring.
The audio is all but unintelligible on most of these very brief voice calls. It's either become a very low use system or I've lost some range through local RFI and line of sight obstructions.
I suspect the T/G 88 event is a bad decode as it's right amongst the 12:26 group of calls. This was all done in DSD+ with a single Airspy R2 rather than a pair of cheap dongles.
The Airspy tends to dig stuff out of the noise better than the RTL sticks so that was my choice this morning. I can try the RTL configuration tomorrow just for comparison sake. The CC signal has been a solid 10dB above the noise floor all day so the S+N/N value should be perfectly acceptable for good decodes.

 

[mbstone99]

Less than stellar coverage from up here on the HSR system, but that aside there were only a handful of events logged in 8 continuous hours of monitoring.
The audio is all but unintelligible on most of these very brief voice calls. It's either become a very low use system or I've lost some range through local RFI and line of sight obstructions.
I suspect the T/G 88 event is a bad decode as it's right amongst the 12:26 group of calls. This was all done in DSD+ with a single Airspy R2 rather than a pair of cheap dongles.
The Airspy tends to dig stuff out of the noise better than the RTL sticks so that was my choice this morning. I can try the RTL configuration tomorrow just for comparison sake. The CC signal has been a solid 10dB above the noise floor all day so the S+N/N value should be perfectly acceptable for good decodes.

View attachment 120804

I haven't listened to this system in a while but I have in the past heard TG 101-110 with 107 & 108 being unknowns.

Matt

 

[EJB]

Thanks guys. I'm gonna run my programs and maybe leave the SDS 100 at home and record.

 

[ATCTech]

A little bit more voice activity today using 2 RTL dongles but nothing out of the ordinary or by any means 'busy'. Sadly a pretty lame system to watch like many others these days.

 

[ATCTech]

FWIW there was considerably more two-way voice traffic captured around 9PM last night, almost all perfectly distinguishable. My RF noise floor may have improved into the later evening. Not being here watching it I can't say for sure but the system appeared more active.

 

[Gymbag]

Hey EJB, why don’t you cause some “****e” on your morning commute? If you hear your driver calling for HPS then you’ll know your scanner is working for you 😜

 

[mapleradio]

A little bit more voice activity today using 2 RTL dongles but nothing out of the ordinary or by any means 'busy'. Sadly a pretty lame system to watch like many others these days.

Dispatch seems to be more fun when the Gent is in control... during rush times. Lots of chaos and uninformed drivers of detours, traffic issues, etc.

Other than that, it's good for benchmarking one's system since it only has two tower sites. (W5th and Ben Lomond).

 

[EJB]

Hey EJB, why don’t you cause some “****e” on your morning commute? If you hear your driver calling for HPS then you’ll know your scanner is working for you 😜

Jim. I gotta be able to take the bus so no hanky-panky .

I did see what appeared to be an I-Call on Monday though......