New Roseville P25 system

[bigRoN18]

Talkgroup tracking/identifying

I finally made the switch to Unitrunker V2 to try to follow the new P25 Roseville system. I am looking at all the different talkgroups with activity and trying to match each talkgroup ID with what they are.

I believe I have figured out a fairly direct ID to Talkgroup conversion. If you take the old decimal number for each talkgroup and divide it by 16, you get the new ID number. My guess is that they have all the same old talkgroups as they had with the previous system. I plugged in everything into Excel and divided the Decimal number by 16 and it makes sense to me.

This is all an assumption but so far it seems to match up. There are some talk groups I have yet to see any action, so I can't confirm everything is correct, but I think it is a pretty decent start to match channels.

 

[bigRoN18]

I've continued to listen to this system and I have been hearing a lot of radio service testing on Talkgroup ID 105. Using my conversion I just posted, that would be that it would be "Fire Command 3" but one of his testings, he clearly stated "Testing on Tac 2." Yesterday, I heard testing on Talkgroup ID 9, which according to my conversion table, is "Police Tactical 2". At this point, I don't know what to make of it, but maybe they re-arranged some of the fire tactical talkgroups.

 

[sacscan]

Hows the audio in Roseville on your BCD325P2 so far?

Audio sounds good. When I'm at home in Sacramento I listen to the Roseville feed which now has the digital talkgroups, since I cannot receive this system that far away. On the old analog system I sometimes heard some interference in the signal on the feed, which is now garbled on the digital system of course. I'm just glad there's a feed though!

Thanks to everyone who responded to my question

 

[Foley95661]

Roseville on P25

Roseville has moved to P25 and my reception is sounding a bit "Choppy".

BCD396XT
Using ARC_XT_Pro

Are there any settings I may have overlooked? System locks onto a Frequency 853.3500 i see LNK, DAT and only when I see P25, I have audio. I will hear the conversation but then it shortly cuts out.

Update #1 - When I HOLD on the frequency everything sounds great...but, I don't wan to be always holding on this frequency.

 

[crucialcolin]

Audio sounds good. When I'm at home in Sacramento I listen to the Roseville feed which now has the digital talkgroups, since I cannot receive this system that far away. On the old analog system I sometimes heard some interference in the signal on the feed, which is now garbled on the digital system of course. I'm just glad there's a feed though!

Yeah I'm kind of on the opposite end of that living in Roseville. The Sacramento system talkgroups on analog right now come in pretty scratchy with interference but its listenable. It's likely I will loose the ability to listen to those agencies once they complete their own digital transition.

I'm tempted to look into an outdoor type antenna but not sure if even that would work?

 

[gmclam]

Outdoor antenna is essential

I'm tempted to look into an outdoor type antenna but not sure if even that would work?

This story has been repeating itself for sometime now. For example, I was able to monitor Contra Costa county as clear as could be when they were VHF conventional. Now I am only able to get them when conditions are decent because I use an outdoor antenna. I am using a discone which is omni-directional. If I wanted to get them 24/7, I'd put up something directional which would give me some signal gain.

 

[scannerboy02]

Roseville has moved to P25 and my reception is sounding a bit "Choppy".

BCD396XT
Using ARC_XT_Pro

Are there any settings I may have overlooked? System locks onto a Frequency 853.3500 i see LNK, DAT and only when I see P25, I have audio. I will hear the conversation but then it shortly cuts out.

Update #1 - When I HOLD on the frequency everything sounds great...but, I don't wan to be always holding on this frequency.

If you are seeing LNK/DAT/P25 bouncing around a lot that is a good indication that you are getting P25 Linear Simulcast Modulation (LSM) interference.

I am originally from Citrus Heights and moved to Cincinnati, Ohio about 8 years ago and have been very interested (still have a lot of friends and family in Sacramento who listen to scanners) in how the new P25 systems would work in the greater Sacramento area. Here in Cincinnati they have been on P25 longer than I have lived here but recently upgraded to LSM and it has made monitoring with a scanner almost impossible depending on your location.

We have a VERY active scanner club here and have done a lot of testing with different equipment and setups to see what works best. We have found that the Uniden scanners (436/536 being the best so far, haven't done a lot of testing with the SDS-100 yet) work better than the Whistler scanners and with all scanners less signal is better than more signal. We have several members who are getting good results using a paperclip for an antenna. Also having your antenna in a horizontal position seems to work better than having it in a vertical position, this helps to attenuate the vertically polarized signal from the radio systems transmitting antennas.

I personally have moved my scanner antennas into my basement and that has made drastic improvements to my system reception. I also use Unication and Motorola equipment with very good results. When it comes to the best signal reception the Unication G4 is at the top of my list but comes with some drawbacks being that it is not actually meant to be a scanner but with some thoughtful programming it works well for me.

Hope this helps for those of you who are now experiencing the world of LSM. It can be a daunting challenge and being that it is a very location specific issue not one fix will work for everyone.

 

[ljcook8]

This is all an assumption but so far it seems to match up. There are some talk groups I have yet to see any action, so I can't confirm everything is correct, but I think it is a pretty decent start to match channels.

Sorry, these are not correct - I am trying to get the correct IDs from the source.

 

[crucialcolin]

This story has been repeating itself for sometime now. For example, I was able to monitor Contra Costa county as clear as could be when they were VHF conventional. Now I am only able to get them when conditions are decent because I use an outdoor antenna. I am using a discone which is omni-directional. If I wanted to get them 24/7, I'd put up something directional which would give me some signal gain.

Definitely and thats the big downside to these digital systems

My best wishes would be able to clearly monitor Roseville, the SRRCS, Placer County, and local CAL Fire systems/frequencies. Pretty much Vhf, Uhf, 800 MHz or tri-band type setup if I recall correctly.

If it was just Sacramento I was interested in I could probably get away with a directional antenna. Roseville itself is a non issue as I live about a block from the PD / Radio tower and I have discovered I didnt even need any kind of antenna attached to a scanner by accident once on the old system. The signal was that strong lol. It will be interesting to see about P25.

 

[KM6TRS]

Sorry, these are not correct - I am trying to get the correct IDs from the source.

Hey, Id appreciate them when you get them. <- Roseville resident and scanner guy/ham. Thanks

 

[crucialcolin]

Yeah seems like not all the Talgroup ID are right/found out yet.

Btw I noticed that they Don't have the beeps and tones that they were using on the Old System. Both on Police and Fire. It's kind of weird not hearing that stuff. Things like "priority traffic only" or even medic pre dispatches.

Not sure if they just don't have it setup yet or it's not needed with the new system?

 

[clanusb]

This is incorrect. Roseville Fire's intention is to stay on VHF indefinitely, due to interoperability issues with surrounding agencies. Not only are they NOT going to take down the VHF 'patch', they have in fact expanded their VHF channel capability by adding repeaters in the City area on XPL Command and Tactical frequencies. There has been significant discussion internally on whether they are going to abandon the trunked system altogether, or continue to run a dual-patched system...I haven't heard the resolution of THAT conversation, but they will not be ditching VHF.

Then I apologize. I was just passing along the information that was given to us from our comms division at work. That is much better news.

I also apologize..I meant Phase 1, not 2.

 

[crucialcolin]

Just heard a call last night for an Arson set vegetation fire near Riverside confirming the use of the VHF XPL tacs with an alternative Tactical of tac 29(which system this was on I'm unsure of but thought was odd) * edit tac 29 is probably under CAL FIRE.

 

[Duster]

Then I apologize. I was just passing along the information that was given to us from our comms division at work. That is much better news.

I also apologize..I meant Phase 1, not 2.

No apology necessary!! Just sharing what info I have received...

 

[Duster]

Just heard a call last night for an Arson set vegetation fire near Riverside confirming the use of the VHF XPL tacs with an alternative Tactical of tac 29(which system this was on I'm unsure of but thought was odd) * edit tac 29 is probably under CAL FIRE.

That's very odd...their secondary tac is one of the VFIRE's (I think 26). CDF Tac 29 is not used in our Unit, and RSV wouldn't assign it if it was.

Each agency in western Placer County has coordinated the use of the VFIRE's as secondary tac nets. I don't have the list with me, but CALFIRE/Placer County Fire has 22, Placer County-dispatched fire districts has another, and each of the cities have yet another (Lincoln and Rocklin share one). VFIRE 23 is not used, because it is used as a primary tac for some agencies in Nevada and Placer counties.

 

[325xia]

My SDS100 and 436 are Deaf with the new P25 Roseville System. Even with Full Database opened-up. Absolutely nothing.

 

[bigRoN18]

My SDS100 and 436 are Deaf with the new P25 Roseville System. Even with Full Database opened-up. Absolutely nothing.

I am curious if the issue is related to the fact that Roseville rotates their control channel. I'm not currently looking at my computer monitoring Roseville, but I believe the current control channel is 851.575 Mhz. If it is set to monitor 853.350, it probably won't pick up anything. I used to use Unitrunker V2 with RTL-SDR dongles to monitor Roseville. I set one dongle to listen to the four control channels simultaneously and then the other dongle to follow traffic. I found that I like SDRTrunk better *BUT* I have to manually change the "channel" when they rotate the control channel. I'm told that the people behind SDRTrunk are looking into following a rotating control channel. When a transmitter is no longer functioning as a control channel, it is often recruited as a traffic channel. I talked with one of the guys from Placer County Communications, who is working on Placer Countywide Interoperable Radio Network (CIRN) and he didn't know why Roseville rotates their control channel but stated that they did not rotate theirs. My only assumption is to give a transmitter a break every few days from 100% duty-cycle. I'd assume the radio was designed for 100% duty-cycle, but apparently, they want to give it a break periodically from that task. Again, these are only my assumptions.

 

[crucialcolin]

Interestingly I just came across reading about this the other night and difficulty people where having with unitrunker v2 with P25 traffic on systems that rotate. In a nutshell Harris based systems rotates to any freqency a system has while a Motorola based system can be setup to rotate constantly back and forth between two different paired frequencies for the control channel. Forget off hand what transmitter system Roseville is using off hand but sounds like it has a similar setup.

Best practice would be to program all available frequencies from the RR database for a site into the scanner.

 

[mcjones2013]

Unitrunker should identify the system manufacturer.

Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk

 

[325xia]

I hear nothing when the Database is Scanning on the SDS100 and 436. This includes all that RR has in its records. All channels are included. Still Deaf. Does anyone actually own one of these radios that is hearing anything. My 396XT I had to deal with all that Control Channel stuff. You don&#8217;t need that in the SDS100 and x36 radios.