La Crosse City PD & Fire TRS

[sjgostovich]

Greetings and Salutations-

I'll be vacationing with my trophy wife (she's not 1st place, but I digress) in the La Crosse/Onalaska area in the first part of November. I plan on loading up the City of La Crosse PD/Fire TRS into my Pro 106. I'm assuming it is just a "load and go" with WIN 500, but I want to make sure that there is nothing special I need to do. I requested a 3rd floor room so reception should be good. If anyone knows of anything needing to be done or anything that would enhance my listening experience, please advise! Thanks in advance!

 

[jpjohn]

Last time I was in La Crosse the information from the database was correct and the system worked fine on my BCD996XT.

 

[sjgostovich]

Sounds good.

I look forward to monitoring!

 

[sjgostovich]

Question

Jpjohn or anyone else, is the VHF/800mhz patch (155.67000- La Crosse PD Sheriff - La Crosse City Police 800 MHz Patch) constant LCPD dispatch? Or is this justed used during an event? Thanks again for any and all info!

 

[Pat]

It's a constant patch

 

[sjgostovich]

Copy that, thanks!

 

[putterizer]

Just an FYI...La Crosse County is converting from wideband to narrowband this week and some changes have been made that are not in the frequency grid. The biggest is that 154.130 is no longer County Fire and the page out channel for all EMS/FD except for City of La Crosse.

All county EMS/Fire that were on the 154.130 frequency have now changed to 154.205 which was previously labeled as Fireground. The new LCFIRE of 154.205 is now repeated whereas the old frequency was not. Now both sides of the transmission can be heard over and open pager/scanner. At this time, the only tower that repeats is the Bluff tower, but all towers in the county will be repeated in Simulcast early 2012 when the new year takes effect and they can get the equipment that had been budgeted for can be purchased.

154.130 had to be evacuated as it is becoming part of some statewide channel.

 

[sjgostovich]

Thank you!

I will adjust my scan list accordingly on my end.

 

[sjgostovich]

??

I'm on the 3rd floor of a hotel in Onalaska with a RS Pro 106, loaded up with the La Crosse TRS info and i'm not getting anything? There is no way i'm outta range?! I checked all the settings I could access and it looks ok? The info was loaded from RR via WIN500. All the local VHF is working fine. Signal stalker in 800mhz is picking up sporadic bits of P25 stuff (i'm assuming ARMER because it's not matching any of the LC control channels). Did I miss something? Thanks in advance for any/all assistance!

 

[putterizer]

What hotel in Onalaska are you in? It is quite possible you are out of range as Onalaska has very weak to almost no coverage of the La Crosse 800mhz trunked system.

Check out the attachment. That shows the signal levels of the City's 800mhz system.

Also, as long as you can get the 155.670 trunked patch to come in, you will hear all of the La Crosse City police activity. That is their main channel and it is patched to VHF so you should be able to receive that where you are at with no problem.

There are only 3 heavily used frequencies in the area, they are:
155.430 - La Crosse County Sheriff and all local county departments. It is all police in county except for city of LaCrosse.
154.205 - All county fire dept, and 1st responders except for City of LaCrosse.
155.670 - LaCrosse City Police VHF Patch

All that really leaves out is the City of LaCrosse Fire Dept.

Hope that helps.

 

[sjgostovich]

Microtel Inn

I'm at the Microtel Inn offa I90. It appears that I would be in the 2nd ring of portable coverage but I dunno if the WiFi or something else is interfering. I pre-loaded the VHF patch so we will just not even bother with the TRS until we get into the city and I can give it a listen. Thanks for getting back to me so fast and thanks for the coverage map!

 

[putterizer]

Yup, exactly what i thought. You are out of range. Signal drops really bad once you get north of the Valley View Mall.

 

[putterizer]

And actually, according to this map you should be in the red. The bluff line is cutting off the signal from reaching you there. Once you get a mile SW of where you are at you should be OK.

 

[sjgostovich]

Valley View mall..

was very much the cut off! I got about 100 feet north east of their and lost all signal on the TRS. Thanks again for the info!