Montgomery EDACS now P25 P1

[RadShackFan]

I monitor the VFDs for the entire area. I've noticed the digital sound on VHF today during all those tests doing long counts. I was monitoring the P25 system as well. I did not hear the test traffic on the P25 side. Who would buy the P25 radios for the VFDs?

Regarding your scanner question. Research all the digital scanners @ Police Scanners, Radios, Programming, Accessories | Scannermaster.com. Don't buy until you are absolutely sure of what you need. There are good forums here for those scanners, so read all you can.

I use 2 different units, GRE PSR-800 (no longer sold) and a Radio Shack 668. Both were made by the same company. Whistler now produces scanners that look and act just like them.

About monitoring the Montgomery P25. The only tower site that is P25 is the Red Level site (near Pine Level). Keep that in mind relative to where you live. I live near Vaughn & Taylor road. I can monitor that site without an outside antenna, but I do use a magnetic cell phone antenna sitting on top of a bookcase.

PS: MPD & MFD are encrypted. You will not be able to hear them.

 

[mhubert123]

As far as I can tell and from what I've heard within the dept, We are not going to be getting any 800 radios besides what the county has issued to the officers and chiefs of the 8 VFD's. Which does not make sense to me why they would need to be upgrading the dispatch console to P25 but still leaving 95% of us with standard UHF analog portables. Granted this past year it was in the works to get everyone an 800 radio except it was shot down at the association meeting late last year, one reason being because of how it paged out and something to do with the alerting not working correctly.

Thank you for the link. I am near the Blvd @ 85 and Atlanta Hwy. Simply with my issued Vertex portable I like to keep it open to scan all 8 depts but I know some places in my house I do have trouble sometimes with hearing Pike Road, but mainly can't hear Catoma, Snowdoun & S. Mont when I'm inside. My solution which has been working, pull the radio out and sit it up in the window sill. (I keep it on my night stand otherwise to charge if I'm in the house.) Amazing what moving it less than 5" difference makes on it!

 

[medic9351301]

Yup

 

[morganAL]

Sure they could. It is done every day. You just use transmit combiners and receiver multi-couplers. All of these trunking sites usually have one antenna for receive and one or two antennas for transmit. The number of transmit antennas is usually determined by frequency separation and the number of channels in a particular site. The more channels you have in a multicoupler, the more loss you have through it. I don't know much about the new multicouplers Motorola is using in their systems but with the older systems a 5-channel combiner would typically have about 2.5 to 3 dB of loss with channel spacing at least 250 kHz. Double that to 10 channels and now you are closer to 6 dB of loss, depending on channel spacing. So.... 100 watt transmitter--->combiner-->300 ft of feedline--->= about 12 watts at the antenna. That's why systems typically use antennas with 10-12 dB of gain.

With all of that said... They probably did install new antennas with the new system. Antennas do wear out. The top of a 300 ft tower is a pretty harsh place, even in Alabama. Would you buy a new Mustang and take tires off your 1986 Chrysler K Car and put on it? You could but you wouldn't. Same applies.

The other problem is that both systems can't use the same antennas. There would have to be new antennas installed for the P25 system.

 

[mel1718]

Would anyone be interested or willing to help me choose and setup a uniden scanner for listening to city FD/PD, ALEA and MCSO 800mhz please. If that's not allowed my apologies and disregard.

You can listen to MCSO and ALEA on the P25 system they are in the clear (for now). For Montgomery PD/FD you will have to use the EDACS system output to DSD+ running on a computer.

I have had a few different setups over the years and the best I have found is the Pro 668, the latest update allows it to follow provoice systems. In my office I output it to an old laptop and in my truck I use a cheap Windows 8 tablet.

No need to tap or mod the scanner as you can output through the headphone jack by setting IF output to “HP”.

 

[mel1718]

Well it appears MPD & MFD are no longer on the EDACS system they are only on the P25 system and fully encrypted, MCSO and a couple other TGs are is still on EDACS but I would expect that to change soon, oh well it was fun while it lasted.

 

[medic9351301]

very sad indeed . Some would should challenge the encryption part.But i do not know anyone with a spare million in their shoe.I am sure they will make a radio to break it but by the time they do it will be out dated.
Encryption is fine for swat, vice, uc, But lets keep dispatch channels for both pd and fire open.

 

[mel1718]

I couldn’t agree more, I consider my scanner part of my home security system, it has alerted me a number of times of suspicious activities around my home.

 

[RadShackFan]

Talked To A Ranking Deputy

I bumped into a ranking deputy yesterday. I asked him about their radio system. He first reminded me that the dispatch channel can be heard on their website. (Didn't know that.)

He then took the time to explain that they are having problems interfacing the new P25 system with the old UHF based volunteer FD dispatch repeaters. They want to be able to use the same dispatch consoles hoping the system will switch over to the UHF repeaters when they sound the fire tones, but it's giving them headaches. They will think it is fixed, it will work for a day or two then it goes down. (That explains why the MCSO dispatchers are on & off on the P25)

Once it is fixed they will change the MCSO over to the P25 system for good. According to this deputy the current sheriff does not want the dispatch channel encrypted. (Apparently he likes the public listening to his troops.) He could not tell me if some of their other talk groups would be encrypted.

I post this as an FYI. The deputy sounded sincere, but his description of the problem may just be a simplified version of what is going on.

 

[RadShackFan]

It appears that the MCSO has worked out the problems on the P25 system. I started hearing them on P25 on Saturday morning; they have been on that system now for 5 days without dropping out. All traffic on Talkgroup 290 is in the clear and is very good quality. Tower being used is the Red Level tower only.

FYI.

 

[mel1718]

Looks like the main system is up!

 

[mel1718]

Pine Level also up and running

 

[RadShackFan]

2 Questions

1. Has anyone isolated what frequencies the Ray Thorington Site uses? Or does it use all of them listed under "simulcast?"

2. Is the Red Level Site using all the assigned frequencies now? (I've noticed some partial conversations have just started happening in the last few days.)


Thanks for any info.

 

[mel1718]

The only other adjacent sites I see are Red and Pine Level

 

[codeplug]

MMCCD

From the Screen Shots provided by mel1718 (Thanks) it looks like the new System Information is indicated below.
The current RRDb listing for Montgomery Metro Communications Cooperative District needs updated to reflect the changes.
Shows three different Zones, Any Ideas why each Tower Site is in a different Zone?

System ID: 00A
WACN: 598DE

Towers:
RFSS --- Site ------- Name
11 (B) --- 011 (B) -- MMCCD Simulcast

<>

RFSS --- Site ------- Name
15 (F) --- 015 (F) --- Pine Level

<>

RFSS --- Site ------- Name
16 (10) -- 016 (10) - Red Level