Stillwater Site Up

[K5MAR]

I got off work tonight and found a control channel active on the new Stillwater site. CC is 867.5875 MHz. I've got it programmed into my 780 and logging set up with ScanControl.

Mark S.

 

[peterjmag]

Great news! Keep us advised on what you are hearing Mark! You are the only reliable and know Stillwater active user. Thanks...

P.J.

 

[K5MAR]

No pressure here, huh? :wink:

Mark S.

 

[xerb1962]

Us Guthrie people can check that one out.
Very good news and thanks for the heads up K5MAR!

 

[K5MAR]

All help gratefully appreciated! So far all I've seen are a couple of radio tech TGs, 36688 and 12336. I did have a couple of brief appearances of TG 37584, which shows to be Secure Conference G out of Tulsa, but no audio.

Anybody in range that can run Trunker?

Mark S.

 

[fast2okc]

Site ID number?

--fast2okc

 

[K5MAR]

Sorry, as far as I know there is no way of getting that using the 780 with ScanControl. I do have the channel lineup, courtesy of the radio techs (on TG 39568)

1. 867.5875 Control Channel
2. 867.0875
3. 868.7750
4. 868.2625
5. 866.4500

If there is a free program that accesses the 780 through the DB9 connector that will give me the information, let me know what it is and where I can download it . Up until now, there hasn't been any reason for me to need those types of programs.

Mark S.

 

[KK5FM]

The Stillwater site is Site 12, and at the time of this writing, does not have any site neighbors. (or is not reporting them) Trunker reports that 867.0875 is an alternate control channel, and reports the tone as 97.3 hz

 

[K5MAR]

Thanks John! I trust you submitted this information. BTW, I'm not showing any PL tone on the output.
Not having much experience with trunked systems, what does it mean that the site does not have any site neighbors?

Mark

 

[KK5FM]

You know, that's a great question. All I do know is that, for example, the OKC site of the DPS reports that it is "affiliated" with Carney, Crescent, Norman, and Geary. I used to think this meant that you could guarantee that if a trooper was on the Geary site on A Rural 1, that you would hear that conversation on any of the above listed sites. However, it is now obvious that any site in the state can have any traffic on it through some witchcraftery that we're hoping someone smart will explain to us some day (Voice over IP? Phone Lines? Microwave? Carrier Pigeons?) For example, a friend of mine went to Lawton and heard -several- Tulsa talkgroups being broadcast there. Before I left the house this morning, I noticed that there were hits on 41776, Troop A Rural 1, on the Stillwater site, even though it is not at presently "Affiliated" with any other site. Obviously, the trooper roamed onto that site, but where and how did his audio get to wherever it went?

BTW Mark, there appears to be activity on several of the SMA and RMA channels on your site, have you been able to identify who is using them?

I'm like a chain store that used to sell electronics. You had questions. I had even more questions

 

[K5MAR]

No, I haven't. I keep losing the connection to the radio. Get a runtime error on ScanControl and it shuts down, so I lose the logging. May have something to do with having to use a USB to serial convertor to connect the radio to the computer. So I've only got what I visually see when in front of the radio. I've seen 43376, 31760 and 41776 crop up, but I haven't been able to identify the users, exceot the dispatch on 41776 does sound like troop A. Pretty quiet most of the time.

Mark

 

[xerb1962]

FYI:

I haven't dropped the ball on this deal, It's just that I have got some antenna issues!
I can normaly recieve the Carney site and the Tecumseh site here.

Man it is windy and I am not going "UP THERE" to see what the problem is!

 

[mam1081]

The Stillwater site is Site 12, and at the time of this writing, does not have any site neighbors. (or is not reporting them) Trunker reports that 867.0875 is an alternate control channel, and reports the tone as 97.3 hz

Similar to conventional systems, Motorola trunked systems require a "Connect Tone". This is not useful unless you are programming authorized radios on the system. Your scanner will not decode the CT without the help of any software.

As I understand it, only certain talkgroups can have users roam. Just because Stillwater is a "site neighbor" or not, doesn't mean much about what talkgroups will be linked. I'm fairly certain the links between sites are via T1 connection for most of the system. Microwave can also be used. This allows talkgroups to "skip" around and not actually have to tie up the sites between destinations (like Tulsa to Lawton). Talkgroups are only active on a site if there is a radio in the area that has affilated with it (I'm not sure when the link goes down - the radios are supposed to "unaffiliate", or change sites. The site controller might unlink it then, or perhaps after a certain amount of time of no activity on that local site will unlink it also).

Each site broadcasts "site neighbors" so the subscriber radios (the ones in the trooper/PD/FD cars) can decode that and listen for those other sites (and automatically change to those sites when they hear it stronger than the site they are on). It is very similar to a cell phone system, except it's group calls and the sites don't "hand off" the call to another - they both carry traffic if there is a radio "in range" or affiliated with each site. Smartzone systems are very neat and require very little end-user intervention while in use. The radios do not use GPS (usually), so they can't determine what site to use because of that. I think it's more efficient to use signal strength to decide which site to be on anyhow (since that's what you actually want - you might not want the closest site, just the strongest). Depending on how the radios are programmed, they can actually do a "spectrum search" for control channels. They scan, just like our scanners untill they come across a data channel. They sit on that data channel just long enough to get the system ID (most high-end scanners will display this too), and move on if that's not the system they were looking for, or sit on that site if that's what they were looking for. Then they can decode the site neighbors again, and try to see if there is a stronger site for them to affiliate with.

Is all that too much? Hopefully I didn't muddy it up too much with too many words....


Mark, most of the talkgroups you listed are in the RR database. Since this is a linked trunked system, you might want to check there to see which of those talkgroups have been ID'd. If you find new ones, listen up and ID them for us!!

 

[nd5y]

Thanks John! I trust you submitted this information. BTW, I'm not showing any PL tone on the output.
Not having much experience with trunked systems, what does it mean that the site does not have any site neighbors?

Mark

I don't know much about smartzone, so all I can tell you is there is no PL on the output. It has a subaudible data stream. The connect tone is used on the input only.

I suspect that site neighbors is probably something similar to what is done in TDMA 136 and GSM cellular networks called neighbor cells.

Each cell site broadcasts its neighbor cells as part of its control channel data stream. The neighbor cells list is the channel numbers of adjacent cell sites' control channels. When your phone loses the signal of the current control channel, it checks the neighbor cells list for a stronger signal.

 

[freqscout]

Do I hear an echo?
You guys are saying the same thing.

 

[nd5y]

Well thats what happens when you start a reply, get distracted, and don't see that somebody else beat you to it until you hit the post button.

 

[K5MAR]

That's quite alright. I need educating on trunked systems, now that there is one near me. If a few more people repeat it from time to time, it may start soaking in!

Thanks,
Mark S.

 

[K5MAR]

About 10:15 this morning the Stillwater site started carrying Troop A - 41776 and 41680 are all I've seen so far.

BTW: An article in the local paper the first of the week said Troop K will be moving from Pawnee to Perry sometime this spring.

Mark S.

 

[freqscout]

The OHP Times they are a changing!

 

[KK5FM]

BTW: An article in the local paper the first of the week said Troop K will be moving from Pawnee to Perry sometime this spring.

Mark S.

And you would think they would take that opportunity to upgrade their radio communications. Last I knew, they still had a radio console that was built around 1950.