I am sitting behind Barnes West Hospital and have no signal (zero, nada, zilch) for sites 101, 102, 103. The county EOC is a mile or two down the street with a SLATER tower. Must be a dead spot. Though every five or ten seconds or so I get five bars showing on my screen for a split second. FYI
I'm pretty certain the licenses for the Slater sites located at the old EOC location were all cancelled back around 2013 sometime.
Some of the county precincts are still broadcast from that site location but nothing SLATER related is coming off the towers out there.
I live within shouting distance of the towers at the old EOC and the only strong 800 MHz signal I get from the towers is one of the simplex channels they use for storm siren control. And of course 155.565 is coming off the towers there but most else is coming from one of the other listed sites for SLATER or from Clayton in the case of analog FM.
155.565 pegs my R9000 S-meter which is a true S-Meter and the one storm siren channels but nothing else comes close in signal strength from the old EOC towers. The only time I see other strong signals from the old EOC location is when something happens in Clayton (or the other county ran locations) and they transfer control to the old EOC towers.
There was also a license that was cancelled that was to carry one of the St Charles county SLATER sites but that one also never went live.
Lookup Call WQPR304 at the FCC site. That was the call that would have had a site at the old EOC but you will see that it was cancelled back in 2013.
As far as I know, there is nothing really SLATER related at the old EOC.
Those towers that the county has there are mostly for analog VHF backup for Clayton and possibly remote receive sites for the analog VHF sites.
They have a complete dispatcher setup at the old EOC that mimics the Clayton dispatch location. They can transfer all control of the entire county to the old EOC but SLATER will now go to the new ECC which is at Big Bend and Hanna roads roughly. There is a SLATER site there.
For me to pickup both North and South Slater sites 101 and 102, I must aim almost due south. If I aim towards the old EOC, I lose Slater for STL County but of course I then get a good signal from site 103 which is St Charles county. Site 103 also has a tower north of me that gives me great reception without simulcast issues.
For St Louis counties Slater sites 101 and 102, lookup call signs WQTI897 for the North site and WQTI498 and WQTQ895 for the South Site.
Those should give you all the active site locations and all are active and not cancelled or expired.
In the early days, Slater had a lot more active licenses but some were temp licenses that are now expired while several others were cancelled sometime around 2013.
I too thought one of the Slater sites was at the old EOC location until I did a field strength test and found no signals from the old EOC towers related to Slater. That is when I started doing license checks and learned that almost all licenses related to Slater and the old EOC had been cancelled.
At one time, the DB here for Slater did indeed indicate the old licenses but also showed that they had been cancelled. Before that, the DB here showed them as 'future' sites.
Almost all the licenses listed a location at the old EOC at one time.
I then asked someone with the county and asked if they planned on getting rid of the old EOC and was told NO, they would keep it for some purposes like the storm warning system and possibly some VHF stuff.
I do not know if entire the storm warning transmitter will stay at the old EOC or be moved to the new ECC. The old EOC does have a great location for getting a signal across this county as well as those west and north of STL County but it lacks coverage to the South although it still does a good job to the south. I think Modot may still have an active transmitter at the old EOC location plus there are other users on the towers there that the county owns. I'm not sure who all has transmitters at the old EOC still.
Of course there are several cellular companies there as well but most are on their own towers.
They also have a very nice bomb shelter below the old EOC towers but I do not know if they will maintain that or transfer that to the new ECC location or keep both.
I also heard that a part of the STARRS system could have a transmitter located at the old EOC. If true, I'd think that would stay due to its physical location from St Charles and Franklin Counties.
Oh, one of the fire districts also used the towers at the EOC but most of that has moved to Slater now. I think the tone outs are still simulcast from one of the EOC antennas though but that will go away once they figure out how they are going to do station alerting over Slater. The fire tone outs I hear from the old EOC are now the tones only and no voice. They still run the same signal strength they did for years. I guess that is now Central Counties control if it was not when they actually dispatched from those towers.
When I was at the old EOC, nobody actually was at the location as everything was done remotely buy they had dispatch consoles setup just as they were in Clayton. Everything was well underground.
They did have the building staffed mostly for security reasons and the skywarn staff used the bunker as long as they could safely make it there during severe weather.
They also had a complete civil defense system tied into the antennas above as well as landline comms in case of RF failure.
As far as I know, the civil defense functions will remain intact but perhaps as a backup location with the new ECC up and running.
Chesterfield (Muni-West) used to be broadcast from the EOC towers but due to interference from or too a town in Illinois, they switched frequencies for Chesterfield from 155.130 to 154.875 which comes from Clayton. I don't know where the current 155.130 signal comes from but it is nothing compared to the poor signal Chesterfield has now on 154.875. And 155.130 is also much weaker than it used to be when it came from the EOC. I assume 155.130 is from a county tower nearer to the precinct it dispatches.
I'm in Chesterfield and cannot hear 154.875 unless I use an outdoor antenna. And that's even with a Motorola portable.
Most PD units that respond here cannot hear their dispatcher nor get a signal back to them unless they go outside if on the upper floors or use their car radio. Sometimes the car radios are not even heard by dispatch.
They went from great to horrible with the flick of a switch!
I don't know which Slater tower site has the best signal into the Chesterfield area but I do know their primary Slater site is site 102 or the South site. You will see Muni-West pop up on Slater North & South though when they test but at some point, they could prohibit Muni-West from associating with the North site 101. Much in the same way that St Charles and Jeffco units are not allowed to associate with either STL County Slater site. I doubt that will happen though with Chesterfield sitting on the North and South dividing line.
Crestwood on the other hand could be restricted to just the South Slater site although they are seen and heard on both sites now. Really no reason for towns like Crestwood to use up a repeater channel well out of their city.
I expect some of that to change and some users no longer allowed to associate with sites out of their primary area and at the same time, those that are denied may become allowed to associate with the other sites.
Heck, Jeffco has its own TG for point to point traffic that is not the same as the one used for STL County. St Charles does as well.
I see both Jeffco and ST Charles units try and associate with the others sites so the signal is there, they are just denied.
What good is Interop if you cannot interop between the counties?
Anyway, that is the reason you could not get a signal from Barnes West but could from the Walgreens across the street! Walgreens actually sits a bit higher so you get coverage from all the sites with the exception of Jeffco. Jeffco needs a good beam if using a scanner but does come in okay if using a real Motorola radio from the Walgreens lot you mentioned.
Had the old EOC location had a Slater transmitter on it, you would have had no problem from either location you mentioned unless multipath got you.
I think those "split second" signals you saw are the signals that test the storm sirens and some of those signals do come from the old EOC. They do have another frequency for the storm sirens also but it has a much weaker signal.
That shows you right there how susceptible a broadband radio is to off frequency signals.
If anything, the storm warning signal could also desense your scanners front end causing total loss of reception in the 800 band.
A good test if you get back there would be to program Ameren's Creve Coeur site and sit on the CC for that site and watch for signal drops that correspond to the timing of the storm warning signal blips you saw. Ameren's signal is not that much further east than the old EOC is to the west from Barnes West parking lot. If you hear bursts of white noise every 5 or 10 seconds from Ameren's site 6, chances are that the EOC storm warning signals are strong enough to desense your receiver.
I think they send test data out to the storm sirens and await an instant ACK reply acknowledging receipt of the test signal.
If a siren location does not send an ACK back, they probably get some type of alarm indication.
Being a 2-way storm warning system, they probably don't even need to do the monthly tests but I guess that does confirm the speaker drivers are actually functioning as they do put people near the locations to make sure they actually hear them.
Of course being at Barnes West, you could also be picking up some type of telemetry bursts from the hospital itself and that could be the short 5 or 10 second spaced blips your radio is showing you even though the frequency is wrong.
It's just the nature of the beast and how well a broadband scanner can work in an RF saturated environment.
Had you had small yagi or even an omni on your car roof while at Barnes, I bet you would have picked up Slater without issue.
Cars make horrible faraday cages for RF signals but they do an amazingly good job at killing an otherwise good signal.
Just curious but did you get out of your car at all and check for Slater reception while sitting at Barnes West?
I know the signal makes it there just fine but I am using an 800 MHz rooftop mounted antenna. Same test in the car with the factory antenna also gave me no signal.
This would have been with a 436HP and possibly a 396XT.
I did not notice the odd 5 to 10 second spaced blips you saw but I honestly can't say if I was watching the signal meter or not.
I actually work just down Mason road to the south about a mile or so, so I'm in that area fairly often and both Slater North & South sites both come in fairly well although the 436HP handles any simulcast issues way better than the 396XT does. And there is a side of Barnes West where the Slater signal does drop off fairly sharp but that is also when the 396 picks up the signal the best. The building must be blocking one or more of the Slater sites.
At Walgreens, the 396 is horrible due to simulcast on one of the systems but I don't recall if it is the north or south. I rarely use the 396 these days unless I'm monitoring Moswin which is not simulcast like Slater is.
At home which is just west maybe 2 miles, I can use almost anything Uniden made but I must use a yagi so I can narrow down which site the radio is hearing.
GRE's barely work from all the paging signals at all the hospitals in the area.
The GRE's do a great job when I get away from the RF congestion of the county though!
