Rowan County APCO-25

[KK4HNT]

Good afternoon!

I have tried unsuccessfully to monitor the Rowan County trunked system with my scanner and it is completely quiet. I am in the next county over and using a BCD-436HP and a Pro-197. The uniden will recieve simulcast for this county but not trunked. I am thinking distance and phase II may be my issues. Thanks in advance

 

[georgew0819]

try 859.21250 for the control channel instead of 858.21250 or 857.21250 which seem to be alternate control channels. System is still phase 1 as far as I know. Have yet to see TDMA phase 2 pop up in the logs for the RTL-SDR and the BCD325P2. How far from the 2 tower sites are you?

 

[Tech21]

Rowan is not phase 2. Do you have the 436hp set to trunk discovery?

 

[Tech21]

try 859.21250 for the control channel instead of 858.21250 or 857.21250 which seem to be alternate control channels. System is still phase 1 as far as I know. Have yet to see TDMA phase 2 pop up in the logs for the RTL-SDR and the BCD325P2. How far from the 2 tower sites are you?

Phase 2 probably won't happen until VIPER goes TDMA.

 

[akalynchs]

Rowan County is simulcast and depending upon where you are a BCD436 or Pro197 doesn’t receive simulcast very well…

 

[CFP387]

I have tried unsuccessfully to monitor the Rowan County trunked system with my scanner and it is completely quiet. I am in the next county over and using a BCD-436HP and a Pro-197. The uniden will recieve simulcast for this county but not trunked. I am thinking distance and phase II may be my issues.

If you are in the next county over, distance isn't an issue. I have received the system as far north as Brown Summit, NC, as far east as the Asheboro Zoo, as far west as Lenoir, NC and as far south as Sugar Creek Rd in Charlotte both on a G-Series pager and a Motorola 800 portable radio. We will not fully switch to Phase II until VIPER does but Phase II compliant radios have been ordered and will start to be put into service around the first of the year. The consoles in the comm center are already Phase II compliant so the switchover will be seamless when the time comes.

Currently, we use these four frequencies for P25 comms.

857.2125 Primary
854.7375 Alternate
858.2125 Alternate
859.2125 Alternate

How far from the 2 tower sites are you?

There are three VIPER sites in Rowan. Salisbury (78), Salisbury (37) and High Rock (45). Even though the High Rock site is in Zone 1, it is technically in Rowan County but less than an air mile from the Davidson County line. Salisbury site 37 is one of the original VIPER "interstate" sites that was built when VIPER was originally put into service and was primarily used for the SHP Troop E communications center just south of Salisbury.

There are four simulcast sites for the county's radio system: China Grove (China Grove), Al's Knob (Granite Quarry), Young Mountain (Cleveland), High Rock (Pooletown). The main tower site where the controller is located is at Al's Knob, and it's the second highest point in the county behind Young Mountain. If the controller fails, the system will go into site trunking mode and this feature is purposely tested every six months. The radio technicians take our system from full simulcast to site trunking to fail soft. During the time the system is in failsoft, we then switch over to utilize the 8TAC national mutual aid frequencies.

 

[KK4HNT]

try 859.21250 for the control channel instead of 858.21250 or 857.21250 which seem to be alternate control channels. System is still phase 1 as far as I know. Have yet to see TDMA phase 2 pop up in the logs for the RTL-SDR and the BCD325P2. How far from the 2 tower sites are you?

I am right at mm54 off I85.

 

[KK4HNT]

I am 19 miles from the Viper repeater located in Salisbury and my antenna is located in the attic. The BCD436 is new out of the box and appears to scan Rowan through a patched (154 mhz) frequency. Since I just got the BCD, I am not familiar it's functions yet. The Pro-197 is set to auto detect the trunked system and I moved the control channels around. When I analyze them it does show the hex ID but no signal strength. I just may take a ride to Salisbury with both scanners to rule out something blocking my signal.

 

[CFP387]

I am 19 miles from the Viper repeater located in Salisbury and my antenna is located in the attic. The BCD436 is new out of the box and appears to scan Rowan through a patched (154 mhz) frequency.

There are no VHF frequencies patched through VIPER but we do have our county fire dispatch (154.25) patched from our county's P25 system. Be careful not to get our county's system and VIPER confused; as I stated earlier in Rowan we have two VIPER sites and four county sites so it's possible you may be receiving our county's radio traffic.

 

[RobKB1FJR]

When I first moved to Rowan County, NC, I tried my PRO-2096, missed transmissions, I tried the Home Patrol 2 I had, still missed transmissions.
Its very difficult to monitor without a Unication G5 or a SDS-100. I enjoy listening to the Rowan County system. Dispatching is much more organized then most Massachusetts towns. Rowan Sherriff 2 AKA Law 2 is patched to Salisbury Police 2. I lock out these channels since it is mostly license plates being ran, units signing off and on and non emergency traffic. Its imporant also to monitor the TAC channels.

I hope this system never goes encrypted.

 

[CFP387]

I tried the Home Patrol 2 I had, still missed transmissions.
Its very difficult to monitor without a Unication G5 or a SDS-100. Rowan Sherriff 2 AKA Law 2 is patched to Salisbury Police 2. I lock out these channels since it is mostly license plates being ran, units signing off and on and non emergency traffic. Its important also to monitor the TAC channels. I hope this system never goes encrypted.

You may miss transmissions because the system is simulcast and without an 800 radio or Unication pager, it can be tough trying to follow conversations. LAW DIS 2 and PD DIS 2 are not patched together and are rarely requested to be. There may be times you'll hear a deputy on PD DIS 2 simply because they selected the wrong talk group in their radio. The practice of patching talk groups together only occurs if multiple agencies are working together on a large incident. Even then agencies will switch to a "common" EVENTS or mutual aid channel before talk groups are patched. However it used to be common practice but, as of a few months ago, the brass had made the decision not to do this any longer. There are encrypted talk groups on our system labeled "SEC" for secure. After the Phase II rollout, there may be more encryption on our system but most likely dispatch will remain in the clear. Sensitive information such as call history or key locations are sent over the terminals anyway.

 

[RobKB1FJR]

You may miss transmissions because the system is simulcast and without an 800 radio or Unication pager, it can be tough trying to follow conversations. LAW DIS 2 and PD DIS 2 are not patched together and are rarely requested to be. There may be times you'll hear a deputy on PD DIS 2 simply because they selected the wrong talk group in their radio. The practice of patching talk groups together only occurs if multiple agencies are working together on a large incident. Even then agencies will switch to a "common" EVENTS or mutual aid channel before talk groups are patched. However it used to be common practice but, as of a few months ago, the brass had made the decision not to do this any longer. There are encrypted talk groups on our system labeled "SEC" for secure. After the Phase II rollout, there may be more encryption on our system but most likely dispatch will remain in the clear. Sensitive information such as call history or key locations are sent over the terminals anyway.

Most "High priority calls" seem to hang out on the main dispatch channel. I have two Unications and they work awesome.