Eau Claire County SO/City PD digital?

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jpjohn

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I've been listening and they (PD & SD) are still on same frequencies and analog. I'm thinking it is just the transition to narrowband as I've heard no chatter of a switch to digital......until this report.

The only thing I will say is that the local news is somewhat of a joke so "misreporting" of the transition to digital wouldn't be the first story that they got wrong.

I remember hearing that the PD was going to have to install a tower on the southside of the city as they figured they were going to have issues when they narrowbanded. I think this is all part of that.

But I've been wrong before so stay tuned.
 

N9NRA

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Personally i wouldn`t mind if they (Eau Claire county SO) went digital, it might be intresting to see how they`d shake out using it :). Even more fun would be if they went to WISCOM :D, now THAT would be intresting! Just my thinkin`. N9NRA
 

jpjohn

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Personally i wouldn`t mind if they (Eau Claire county SO) went digital, it might be intresting to see how they`d shake out using it :). Even more fun would be if they went to WISCOM :D, now THAT would be intresting! Just my thinkin`. N9NRA

I wouldn't mind it either as it seems the other agencies that have switch recently (Rusk SO (not all the time), Barron, Menomonie PD, etc) have all been easier to monitor and have much more range then the old analog system.

Listening this morning, some of the ECPD units have a data burst on the end of their transmissions now. All units (ECPD) were told to go to city shops for a quick portable radio reprogramming session this morning. So that is the latest development.

I don't have a P25 radio at work but will try and listen over the next couple of days and see if anything pops up but again, just not buying the news story.
 

sjgostovich

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You'd think you would hear the digital modulation on their channels if they were testing on a digital mode? I'd bet dollars to donuts that it's just a late narrow banding procedure. It'd be cool if they went digital P25, but I think there would be more evidence of testing and whatnot if they did?!
 

N9NRA

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You'd think you would hear the digital modulation on their channels if they were testing on a digital mode? I'd bet dollars to donuts that it's just a late narrow banding procedure. It'd be cool if they went digital P25, but I think there would be more evidence of testing and whatnot if they did?!

Not nesessarily, ya see, here in Marathon County they did all the testing on what were referred to as "side channels" that at least i couldn`t seem to find (they later on that summer started doing testing on their regular channels), so they COULD be doing testing and we wouldn`t even know about it...at least not at first unless someone happened to stumble onto the test channel(s) they were using. But yeah, seeing EC county go digital would be kinda intresting :). N9NRA
 

sfd119

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I was in Eau Claire over the weekend and didn't think about just "searching". Eau Claire PD is analog but I notice there are now Kenwood Fleetsync identifiers after all transmissions. Don't recall hearing Sheriff but I wasn't really monitoring with the roads as bad as they were.
 

MarcusDude

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Eau Claire County Changes

Eau Claire County Changes
151.38500/159.16500 new county paging repeater <http://wireless2.fcc.gov/UlsApp/ApplicationSearch/applMain.jsp?applID=7985979>
155.00250/159.43500 new county parks repeater (replacing 151.385) <http://wireless2.fcc.gov/UlsApp/ApplicationSearch/applMain.jsp?applID=8012080>

City of Eau Claire Changes
154.11500/158.88000 WQI960 Eau Claire PD Secondary (license shows 154.115 as a simplex frequency)
155.53500 WQI960 Eau Claire PD (not listed in Radio Reference, but this is licensed as a repeater)
 

sfd119

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The new County Paging repeater was entered in Dec 2 and shows pending still. I do not believe they're using it that quick after it was submitted to the FCC? I could be wrong here.
 

jpjohn

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Eau Claire County Changes
151.38500/159.16500 new county paging repeater <http://wireless2.fcc.gov/UlsApp/ApplicationSearch/applMain.jsp?applID=7985979>
155.00250/159.43500 new county parks repeater (replacing 151.385) <http://wireless2.fcc.gov/UlsApp/ApplicationSearch/applMain.jsp?applID=8012080>

City of Eau Claire Changes
154.11500/158.88000 WQI960 Eau Claire PD Secondary (license shows 154.115 as a simplex frequency)
155.53500 WQI960 Eau Claire PD (not listed in Radio Reference, but this is licensed as a repeater)

For the first time I'm hearing FD dispatches on 151.385. PL 162.2. Sounds like just the dispatch with the responses on city or county fire.

Also hearing what sounds like telemetry or short tone bursts.

Will keep listening and try and figure out how it is being used. But it is finally active!
 

jpjohn

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Follow up on my post from yesterday

Listening today it sEems to be at least three different things going on.

1. Tones and voice broadcast of all EC (city and county)fire and EMS calls. Just the dispatch with nothing heard of any response traffic.

2. Paging tones only with no voice. Didn't seem to correspond with any public service traffic.

3. Rapid DTMF strings. Sounds like about 10-15 DTMF tones sent out rapid fire.

Maybe someone can come up with what the DTMF thing is?
 

box23

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Follow up on my post from yesterday

Listening today it sEems to be at least three different things going on.

1. Tones and voice broadcast of all EC (city and county)fire and EMS calls. Just the dispatch with nothing heard of any response traffic.

2. Paging tones only with no voice. Didn't seem to correspond with any public service traffic.

3. Rapid DTMF strings. Sounds like about 10-15 DTMF tones sent out rapid fire.

Maybe someone can come up with what the DTMF thing is?

This is a dedicated paging channel. There are a number of counties throughout the State that use such a system and more are heading that direction with WISCOM in the picture. Details depend on the specific county and how they operate, but normally a page will be broadcast on the paging channel and all subsequent communication is through other means.

Sawyer County does things slightly different in that the initial page will be transmitted on the paging channel and then simultaneously as the incident is developing with communications occurring on Fire dispatch additional pages will be transmitted with informational updates including what crew members are responding, locations individuals are responding to, additional units, additional calls for other units, cancellations, etc. It tends to be a very streamlined process because there is no bottleneck, although there can be a large amount of pages in a short period of time.

Specific responses to your questions:
1. Sounds like it is the single countywide dedicated paging channel and only used for alerting instead of updates as with Sawyer. So all pagers in the county are on that single frequency and are independent of voice communications on the dispatch channels.

2. Maybe just testing, or to activate/deactivate non human resources (pumps, sirens, dam gates, etc.) This is one of the advantages of having a dedicated paging channel is that other things can be done and sent without bothering anyone because the pagers can be taken out of monitor mode and only activate when receiving the proper tone set(s). This is unlike a voice dispatch channel where everything will be heard by at least a small number of people and if a no-voice page where to be broadcast it could create a lot confusion.

3. Similar to number 2, these could be for pretty much anything. With such a high number of digits this could be polling occurring between sirens and the base controller. At 10 digits long, there is a large number of resources that can be accommodated with unique individual codes. It also supports limited security in that only 1 or two of those digits are the actual command but hidden within the rest of the string.
 

jpjohn

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9/29/14 An announcement was made on EC City Fire (154.310) this morning that effective immediately there would no longer be tones on the city fire frequency.

Paging would occur on the country paging frequency (151.385) and direction would be given after each page on what frequency to respond on.

Haven't had a chance to monitor the situation today to see if any other changes were made and to nail down the new procedure when it comes to these types of comms. Will update if and when I learn more.
 

sfd119

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I wonder why the change? EC City Fire's tone outs vs county tone outs have always been pretty smooth, why change?
 

ofd8001

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Just guessing - fire departments try to shave time off the dispatch process to help minimize response times.

So to the extent possible, fire departments which are completely career organizations look toward alternative fire station alerting technology. If they can eliminate 16 seconds worth of "tone time", that helps with their "On Scene" time.
 

sfd119

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Just guessing - fire departments try to shave time off the dispatch process to help minimize response times.

So to the extent possible, fire departments which are completely career organizations look toward alternative fire station alerting technology. If they can eliminate 16 seconds worth of "tone time", that helps with their "On Scene" time.

I don't think you heard the old system. There's nothing saving time. They're paging the city dept off of the county's fire channel. Same info being transmitted, same amount of time. Changing channels doesn't save time.
 

ofd8001

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Yep, I'm definitely unfamiliar with the system. Was thinking the city might have been thinking about some type of IP alerting. That was done a few years back around our area.
 

jpjohn

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After listening off and on for a couple days I have this to report:

1. No tones or broadcast of call on city FD freq of 154.310. Responding units respond on 154.310.
2. Still have tones and call broadcast on city PD freq of 155.640.
3. Tone and broadcast now on 151.385.
4. Fewer tones used. At least a second or even two seconds shorter.

Will keep an ear on it and make a further report if I hear more.
 
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