Hillsborough County P25 On The Horizon?

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CanesFan95

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Well, that's odd. Can't explain why the signal would be weak. How well can you receive the control channel conventionally on a scanner?
 

CanesFan95

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Is it a high signal strength on the scanner? The occasional static might be due to simulcasting. But the dongles are supposed to handle simulcasting properly.

One problem I had with the dongles was a cold solder joint. Maybe try using the other dongle for the control channel decode and / or open em both up and see if the soldering looks okay.

Another option is if you have a discriminator tapped scanner, try running DSD+ / Unitrunker off of that instead of the dongles and see what happens. Also, try reducing the antenna (use a smaller antenna with worse receive) or try adding some kind of attenuation.
 

zlandmedia

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Is it a high signal strength on the scanner? The occasional static might be due to simulcasting. But the dongles are supposed to handle simulcasting properly.

One problem I had with the dongles was a cold solder joint. Maybe try using the other dongle for the control channel decode and / or open em both up and see if the soldering looks okay.

Another option is if you have a discriminator tapped scanner, try running DSD+ / Unitrunker off of that instead of the dongles and see what happens. Also, try reducing the antenna (use a smaller antenna with worse receive) or try adding some kind of attenuation.
Yep it's a high signal. Unfortunately all I have in terms of physical scanners is a Radioshack Pro-164, so scanning/listening to P25 without SDR is out of the picture for now.

I have two of these dongles so I'm not sure where I'd go to look to fix it up if it is indeed a loose connection. I don't think it'd be a loose connection because the EDACS systems (both East and West) come in clearly and ProVoice transmissions are fine.

I'm using the minimum antennas that came with the dongle as well.
 

ngel

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Hillsborough system

I can not pick up the P25 system at all from Pasco, However i can pick up the EDACS system. I am assuming like others have said the P25 system is not at full power yet?
 

tampabaynews

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zlandmedia,

Although the EDACS system may be coming in fine, keep in mind that the P25 system may not necessarily be operating at all of the same tower sites at the moment. The system is not fully built out yet.

However, I'm fairly certain Temple Terrace has their own tower site. It's not very far from Thonotosassa at all. Overall, I have found coverage to be great though Tampa, west Hillsborough, and throughout Pinellas. I am currently receiving from inside a building in Pinellas Park.

I would suggest using something other than the stock antenna for your dongles. The one that came with mine was a joke. I have an antenna sitting on top of my hutch, to a multicoupler, and then feeds to all of my dongles and scanners.
 

mitbr

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zlandmedia,

Although the EDACS system may be coming in fine, keep in mind that the P25 system may not necessarily be operating at all of the same tower sites at the moment. The system is not fully built out yet.

However, I'm fairly certain Temple Terrace has their own tower site. It's not very far from Thonotosassa at all. Overall, I have found coverage to be great though Tampa, west Hillsborough, and throughout Pinellas. I am currently receiving from inside a building in Pinellas Park.

I would suggest using something other than the stock antenna for your dongles. The one that came with mine was a joke. I have an antenna sitting on top of my hutch, to a multicoupler, and then feeds to all of my dongles and scanners.

I have a 24 element yagi pointed at Tampa and cant hear it here.
The edacs system comes in full strength on the same antenna.
 

tampabaynews

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I have a 24 element yagi pointed at Tampa and cant hear it here.
The edacs system comes in full strength on the same antenna.

You'll probably find better results when the P25 system is in full deployment. It's not even close.
 

tampabaynews

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Ryan, thank you so much for the information. If I may ask, what antenna are you using?

Zach

I live in a HOA condo so I had to get creative.

I use Laird B7603R 700/800mhz antenna on a mag mount. It is stuck on a metal sheet on top of my desk hutch which is next to a north-facing window on the second story.

The antenna goes to Stridsberg MCA208 wide-band Multicoupler. Currently splits to (3) scanners and (3) dongles. Although the antenna is 700/800mhz tuned, it has decent performance on VHF/UHF.
 

CanesFan95

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I've had nothing but trouble decoding Hillsborough P25 from north Tampa cos of the simulcasting. Is anyone else able to receive it cleanly?
 

CanesFan95

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Well, I've had some good luck now finding a good "sweet" spot here in the apartment for decoding. Found a $20 700 MHz Yagi on eBay and mounted it on a camera tripod. It took some experimenting and moving around to get it working, but I found a spot where it is getting good decode on a PSR-800 without garbling or missing transmissions. A side-by-side comparison with DSD+ and the PSR-800 and no transmissions are being missed now. I also got a bag of TV attenuators with different dB values to experiment with. The results have been promising.
 

CanesFan95

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They had Tampa Fire Dispatch as 1477 in the database. It should be 1457. I have submitted a correction. This talk group (1457) is active right now as Phase I.
 

zlandmedia

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They had Tampa Fire Dispatch as 1477 in the database. It should be 1457. I have submitted a correction. This talk group (1457) is active right now as Phase I.
I had actually just started my dongles today for the first time in a couple of weeks and I saw some hefty activity with 1457. Still garbled audio though, as my situation above... lol.

Is 1457 still being sent out over EDACS as well?

EDIT: Yep, still is.
 

CanesFan95

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Yes, it's being multicast with 11-061 at the same time. My DSD+ setup with 2 dongles gets not really the best decode (it's always been that way on all P25 or DMR stuff). But my scanner with a yagi in just the right spot is actually doing pretty damn good now.
 

Bote

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I'm asking if Plant City uses VHF conventional at all any more?

When driving through there I vaguely remember hearing those channels active, but I might be conflating that with another bunch around there.
 
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