Umatilla County

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willstuder

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Mar 18, 2012
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Hermiston, OR
So, I just moved to Hermiston. I am hosting a feed with local public safety agencies and trying to familiarize myself. Does anyone know much about the area they can fill me in on? Ie. Unit designations, 10 codes, 12 codes, really anything. I will be joining a HAM group soon I hope and make some contacts that way, but I love emergency management and prepping and as a former 911 dispatcher and police officer myself I just like to be aware of what is going on around me.
 

Fielder3

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Welcome to Oregon! Good to hear that you want to start a feed for that area. Umatilla and Morrow Counties could use a good radio/scanner feed. (Especially during the brush fire season!) I will PM you some fire info I have for both counties.
 

BlueDevil

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WA
Not real familiar with any specific lingo or 10-code or the like that Umatilla County uses. I am still learning more about their UHF Trunked Radio System. I recently established a scanner feed that covers some of the Umatilla County Fire Agencies. I am in Southeast WA and we use all conventional analog VHF.
 

willstuder

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Welcome to Oregon! Good to hear that you want to start a feed for that area. Umatilla and Morrow Counties could use a good radio/scanner feed. (Especially during the brush fire season!) I will PM you some fire info I have for both counties.

Thanks for the welcome, I am quickly figuring out some of the info up here. I love it here so far. Nevada wasn't my cup of tea, but the Pacific Northwest is so beautiful and the people so far have been so incredibly friendly. People seem laid back and yet care about the things in life that actually matter.
 

Fielder3

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You probably have figured out the fire district numbering for Umatilla County, but if not, here goes; 2 Digit numbering.

10 Pendleton FD
20 Umatilla County Fire Dist #1 (Hermiston, Stanfield)
30 Echo
40 Umatilla BIA
50 Pilot Rock
60 East Umatilla County Fire (Weston, Athena, Adams)
70 Helix

?Umatilla FD (West, and Power City Sta.)
?Ukiah
?Meacham QRT
?Milton-Freewater City FD
?Milton-Freewater Rural (Eastside, Umapina)
 

willstuder

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Hermiston, OR
Thanks

Thanks for that. I hadn't had time to sit and figure too much out yet. We literally just finished unpacking after 3 weeks. I got my scanned up and going about a week and a half ago and have listened a little. I am going tomorrow to a breakfast with our local HAM club so I am hoping to meet some folks there.

I just noticed that there isn't a Morrow County feed so I might use my secondary scanner for that... still debating. I am seriously considering purchasing some old BC-780XLT's and doing a few feeds. I have one digital at home which is all that I am feeding with now, but I have a BC-780CLT that I could feed Morrow County with.

Looks like there is very little digital out this way. Back in the midwest everyone was going to it so I have a handheld plus one in my car, one in my truck and one at home. I am hoping to start a wiki page for this area for unit identifiers and what not.
 

devicelab

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Looks like there is very little digital out this way.

There might be some digital at the FedEx Freight and UPS DCs there on the I-82/I-84 interchange. Also there's the old Army depot there on the NW side. Not sure if there's still any activity over there. It's now a part of the Oregon Military Department... so that should be a good target for monitoring.

https://www.statesmanjournal.com/st...s-big-plans-upgrades-camp-umatilla/308293002/

Oregon Military Department investing millions in Camp Umatilla - Local News - East Oregonian
 

ORE-Scanner

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Eastern Oregon
Pendleton FD is single digit starting at 1. Umatilla Rural FD is the 10 units.

You probably have figured out the fire district numbering for Umatilla County, but if not, here goes; 2 Digit numbering.

10 Pendleton FD
20 Umatilla County Fire Dist #1 (Hermiston, Stanfield)
30 Echo
40 Umatilla BIA
50 Pilot Rock
60 East Umatilla County Fire (Weston, Athena, Adams)
70 Helix

?Umatilla FD (West, and Power City Sta.)
?Ukiah
?Meacham QRT
?Milton-Freewater City FD
?Milton-Freewater Rural (Eastside, Umapina)
 

kd7jfv

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Mar 8, 2005
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Bend, Oregon
I received an email requesting help with the Umatilla 400 mhz trunked system. I don't live in the area, so I don't have an answer for him. Below is the email:

"Is there something we can do to fix the site 2 control frequencies on the RR database. I tried all day yesterday to import both sites and it won't work. If you only import site 1, it all works but you don't have site 2 radios."

I too was having problems in September and October with site 1 in and around the Heppner area while I was in the area hunting. I was locked onto the control channel, analyzed the control channel with my BCD536hp, but I never heard any transmissions in trunk mode. In straight conventional there was quite a bit of traffic on that site. I downloaded them straight from radioreference.com into my scanner. I'm hoping Will or someone else in the area can dig into this and see if we need to make some changes to the database.

Thank you,
Ben
 

willstuder

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Mar 18, 2012
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Hermiston, OR
I have both sites in my scanner but only groups for Umatilla. I will research it over the weekend and post next week. I know I have my vehicles manually programmed for both counties and they work fine. I use a BC996XT at home and two BCD536HPS in my vehicles. All were programmed from RR about 2 months ago, so something might have been changed in RR. I will research and get back to you. In the meantime I have a live feed for the Umatilla County groups.
 

willstuder

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Mar 18, 2012
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Hermiston, OR
Okay folks, here is what I have learned from the past 3 hours of research. I have been looking through my own scanner logs. I use proscan so everything is logged in a database and all transmission audio is recorded and linked to it.

The first thing I discovered is that I only hear traffic on Site 1, even though Site 2 is programmed in my digital scanners. I never had Morrow County talkgroups in my scanner so I added them yesterday. Both Umatilla County and Morrow County talkgroups are all coming through on site 1. There is a really good reason for this, which I will get to shortly.

I have spent the past four hours researching the FCC ULS database, my own records and any news and web data I can find.

I don't know what RR considers a "site" to me a site is a tower location. If you consider a tower location to be a site, there aren't 2, there are 9. I have mapped them all out here...

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1o0GeZKQUuL8I9peDRsGpAMLGuxy51vt3&usp=sharing

All sites are on the same Motorola Type 2 Smartnet System and linked via microwave. The frequencies which are listed on site 1 are the same frequencies for all towers. There are of course corresponding frequencies for each that is +5mhz which is the repeater input for each. All of this became quite clear upon searching the FCC licenses for the UMATILLA MORROW RADIO & DATA DISTRICT, specifically call signs WPTS628 and WPTP839.

So the simple answer to KD7JFV's question is do not import site 2 from RR, as it is completely inaccurate. The frequencies are actually part of another system. I need to do some additional research to figure out which system they are part of, but I know there is a public works system in Hermiston and a few other legacy systems in the area that are still around from before the radio and data district.

I will also try and find out who posted the data originally and get with them on getting it corrected.

I am by no means an expert on trunking or anything for that matter. I hope I haven't stated anything incorrectly or used terms which are inaccurate, but if I have let me know. I love this stuff and am constantly learning myself. Being new to the area, I am learning the history and inner workings of the local systems daily so if you can contribute, please do, if I can help, please let me know.
 

kd7jfv

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Bend, Oregon
WIll, check out this thread from 2005.
https://forums.radioreference.com/o...forum/377460-umatilla-county.html#post3035644

Its a bit outdated, but might give you / us an idea on how this system came into radioreference.com. I've looked at the submissions for the Umatilla Trunked system and thread seems to be start of the data submissions to radioreference.com.

I am admin for Oregon, so what ever you find, please submit via the submission method https://www.radioreference.com/apps/submit/?sid=1134 for this system. I need it submitted that way so there is a tracking method. There was only one submission with frequencies and offsets and that was in 2005.

Thanks for your help Will!
 

ORE-Scanner

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southradio

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Jan 26, 2003
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Northwest Oregon
I've traveled through northeastern Oregon a few times in the past few years. Not sure exactly how I should program my Uniden scanner for the UHF trunked system. Does it require a "custom" or "standard" bandplan? I've tried using two different "custom" systems in the BCT15X scanner with the following setup and last time didn't hear anything on the TRS. Previously, I had the freqs programmed in conventional mode and did receive quite a bit so I know I was able to receive signals. Here's what I had used last time, with two systems programmed separately to try to determine which is the correct one to use and which ended up with my not receiving anything:

System 2:
Band Plan 1: Low 453.0125 High 559.000 Freq Spacing 6.25K Offset 380
Band Plan 2: Low 460.0000 High 719.000 Freq Spacing 6.25K Offset 536

System 1:
Band Plan 1: Low 440.0000 High 559.000 Freq Spacing 25.0K Offset 440
Band Plan 2: Low 000.0000 High 719.000 Freq Spacing 25.0K Offset 0

I'll be traveling through the area later this year so would be nice to know what the correct parameters are to use with the programming software. Thanks in advance for any suggestions that might be made.
 
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