NJ State P25 system

[W2PSK]

Did something change in the NJ P25 system in the last week or so? I don't use my scanner every day but I noticed last night and today that I'm receiving very little, if anything, on the NJICS system. No state police, no EMS, etc. Using a BCD996P2.

 

[trentbob]

There is a lengthy thread on NJICS.

I use a 100 and 200, I'm in the Levittown Bristol area on the river close to the Burlington-Bristol Bridge. I only listen to one site, Bordentown site. I only listen to 2 talk groups on Troop C, 10 Comm, Marine police dispatch and 01 Comm that is the Helo dispatch also called division call.

The system has always worked well for me, the big update for the SDS 100 and 200 that improved reception really did help, I use wide normal filter on the Bordentown site, all other sites are avoided.

I use a rooftop ground plane for my 200 at home and a Larson tri-band for my 100 mounted in the car.

This past week I have noticed a remarkable increase in performance, it was good but now I have a much better error rate and RSSI. Much improved performance on the NJICS. As I say it's always been good but now it's much better. Technically with the leaves filling in the trees, we shouldn't see an improvement.

Don't know the details of your issue like what troop you listen to, what your location is, what kind of antenna are you using but there is a chance that they have made some kind of tweaking and maybe simulcast distortion is affecting your reception secondary to whatever they did, if they did anything.

 

[GM]

Is there a new cell tower in the area that was installed, or maybe more antennas installed on the cell tower? This happened to a friend of mine in his apartment complex. He used a BCD996P2 for a while until a cell tower was improved upon in the area (about a 1/4 mile from him). After that, he has overload in his scanner, and was eventually forced to upgrade to an SDS200 to improve reception (due to the way the internal circuitry is in the newer models such as the SDS line of scanners).

 

[W2PSK]

I've been listening to this group without any issues. If I remember correctly, I listen to the New Brunswick site. Never had any issues with receiving it. Now I hear nothing at all. I might program in all of the towers and just see if I get anything on any of them.

 

[tvengr]

Do you have all 4 of the control channel capable frequencies programmed? They may have switched to an alternate.

1 (1)

008 (8)

New Brunswick Simulcast

Middlesex, NJ

769.46875

770.68125

773.06875c

773.56875c

774.56875c

774.79375c

 

[W2PSK]

I'm thinking the control channels might have changed. I use the built in feature of ProScan to import control channels, talkgroups, etc and I've confirmed that what is in ProScan matches the radioreference database, but I'm not hearing anything. For example, right now I have the scanner set to the HMH Piscataway channel and it keeps displaying Finding CtrlChan. I'm well within range as I've been listening to this repeater for a long time.

 

[W2PSK]

I added the Monmouth County system and even though I'm outside of the projected range of that one, I am now receiving on that one. I am much closer to the New Brunswick system though.

 

[tvengr]

I added the Monmouth County system and even though I'm outside of the projected range of that one, I am now receiving on that one. I am much closer to the New Brunswick system though.

That is normal behavior when dealing with simulcast systems on a scanner not designed to receive simulcast sites. Being in Middlesex County, you are probably surrounded by subsites when using the New Brunswick site. The signals arrive at your scanner at slightly different times which degrades the scanner's ability to properly decode the control channel. When receiving on the fringe of a system, you will receive fewer subsites which will improve control channel decoding. Simulcast distortion results in missing transmissions, garbled audio, and sometimes not detecting the control channel at all. Please attach your ProScan programming file so we can take a look at it to check for problems. What antenna are you using? If using an outdoor antenna, disconnect it and use a back of scanner antenna. Try turning on the attenuator. Try sticking a paperclip into the antenna connector. Anything you do to attenuate the signal will reduce the number of subsites received and improve control channel decoding. When dealing with simulcast, less signal is more.

 

[W2PSK]

That's weird because this is brand new behavior. I've used the New Brunswick site for years. It's only since last week that the signal degraded from that site.

 

[tvengr]

There may be another subsite added or the timing on the system has changed. Please reread my previous post which had additional comments added before you read it. I have a 996P2 which sometimes works and sometimes doesn't on the same simulcast system.

 

[W2PSK]

I'm receiving the Monmouth site fine as I said, so I'm not worried about trouble shooting why there's a change with the reception of the New Brunswick site.

 

[ff026]

I'm receiving the Monmouth site fine as I said, so I'm not worried about trouble shooting why there's a change with the reception of the New Brunswick site.

The leaves are on the tree’s.

 

[bunangst]

Like others have said, something changed...much more likely environmental than system side...and if there was a system problem or outage, they'd know...for sure.

If there was another subsite added, I'm sure someone would have picked up on it already.

The simulcast distortion issue is well documented...whether you believe it is happening to you or not...

 

[8000XE]

No new subsites were added and nothing has changed in the system - for what its worth

 

[kb2ear]

I'm experiencing an issue with the Martinsville site. Not sending out Band info so trunk-recorder or SDRtrunk wont work. is anyone else seeing this?
getting this for everything:
[2024-05-25 01:42:11.354061] (error) [Martinsville] 63C TG: 1541 ( Park PD Disp) Freq: 0.000000 MHz Not Recording: no source covering Freq

 

[kb2ear]

Here is the info I'm getting from the CC via SDRtrunk. Something is not right.
Activity Summary - Decoder25 Phase 1 Normal (C4FM)

Network
WACN:BEE00[781824] SYSTEM:39A[922] NAC:390[912] LRA:00[0]

Current Site
SYSTEM:39A[922] NAC:390[912] RFSS:01[1] SITE:1C[28] LRA:00[0] STATUS:ACTIVE RFSS NETWORK CONNECTION
PRI CONTROL CHANNEL:1-1394 DOWNLINK:0 UPLINK:0
SEC CONTROL CHANNEL:1-1314 DOWNLINK:0 UPLINK:0
SEC CONTROL CHANNEL:1-1808 DOWNLINK:0 UPLINK:0
SEC CONTROL CHANNEL:1-1926 DOWNLINK:0 UPLINK:0
CURRENT DATA CHANNEL:15-4095 DOWNLINK:0 UPLINK:0
STATION ID/LICENSE:

Neighbor Sites
SYSTEM:39A[922] NAC:390[912] RFSS:01[1] SITE:07[7] LRA:00[0] CHANNEL:1-2028 DOWNLINK:0 UPLINK:0 STATUS:[VALID INFORMATION, ACTIVE RFSS CONNECTION]
SYSTEM:39A[922] NAC:390[912] RFSS:01[1] SITE:08[8] LRA:00[0] CHANNEL:1-2046 DOWNLINK:0 UPLINK:0 STATUS:[ACTIVE RFSS CONNECTION]
SYSTEM:39A[922] NAC:390[912] RFSS:01[1] SITE:20[32] LRA:00[0] CHANNEL:1-2048 DOWNLINK:0 UPLINK:0 STATUS:[ACTIVE RFSS CONNECTION]
SYSTEM:39A[922] NAC:390[912] RFSS:01[1] SITE:36[54] LRA:00[0] CHANNEL:1-1892 DOWNLINK:0 UPLINK:0 STATUS:[VALID INFORMATION, ACTIVE RFSS CONNECTION]
SYSTEM:39A[922] NAC:390[912] RFSS:01[1] SITE:3A[58] LRA:00[0] CHANNEL:1-1932 DOWNLINK:0 UPLINK:0 STATUS:[ACTIVE RFSS CONNECTION]
SYSTEM:39A[922] NAC:390[912] RFSS:01[1] SITE:3C[60] LRA:00[0] CHANNEL:0-1274 DOWNLINK:0 UPLINK:0 STATUS:[ACTIVE RFSS CONNECTION]

Frequency Bands
UNKNOWN

 

[rr60]

Site 28 Martinsville is not working on the G5’s. UT seems fine. I believe
that Unication requires bandplan in the CC.

 

[rr60]

@kb2ear I deleted the band plan from UT and it did not re-populate. Other sites if I delete UT refills the fields from the CC. My Uniden X36 is also not passing any traffic from Site 28. Something seems amiss indeed.

 

[GTR8000]

Capture and post some of the raw control channel log from Unitrunker and we'll see if Site 28 is broadcasting the IDEN_UP messages or not. The post from SDRTrunk shows that it's not, would be good to compare it to something else to rule out a software error.

 

[kb2ear]

Hope this is useful.

https://ref020.nj2dg.org/ubr_uploads/DecodeVcoA-20240528.log