Passing the Buck?

[wv_mountaineer]

By way of the Submit Button I sent this message to the Indiana Admin to look into. The reply I got back from ScannerFreak was to put up a post in the forums. Which if you read what he was sent you will see that I told him that I have already done so in the past. Correct me if I'm wrong but I didn't think you were supposed to keep beating a dead horse within the forums. So I went to the source that does the posting! Well here it is.....

DO NOT REPLY TO THIS MESSAGE

Dear wv_mountaineer,

The following note was posted by an administrator to your submission ticket

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From: scannerfreak
Subject:
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Please post this info in the forums. Thanks.

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You can respond to this message by updating the submission ticket at the
following link:

User Submission # 131799

You can view the status of all your submissions at the following link:

Your Account - Submissions

Sincerely,

The RadioReference.com Admin Team

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AND HERE WAS WHAT I SENT!!!

I am in and out of all 3 of these mills a few times a week. I have asked and talked to the security and fire dept. and they have all told me that they "the mills" are using total encryption on their system. So this must mean either Torbo or NEXEDGE. I have looked at the FCC Database to verify this but I really have to clue about the Emissions side of radio frequencies. I have never heard any radio traffic from the mills on any of the posted frequencies and I have been listening for the past 3 or 4 years. I have also posted to the Forums for someone to look into the licenses and see if they can tell me if the Emissions tells anyone that this is indeed a Torbo or NEXEDGE system. Well I have never received a real answer. So maybe you can look into it and if the posted is bogus it can be deleted so there is no confusion as to the system. Trust me when I am inside the 3 mills I want to know what is going on. I have heard some traffic from the transport buses and the slab haulers but that traffic has be either on the CB or a 155.???? frequency.

Scott

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Well ScannerFreak has done work on the database for US Steel and that can be confirmed within the "Downloads and Reports" section. You can see for it yourself. So why is Admin posting stuff that they don't research for their selves first? I have this same problem within my area as well. I know they volunteer their time and really get nothing for it but Please do it right if your in the position.
Okay guys my rant is over and I am now ready for y'all to kick me for picking on the FREE HELP!

If you live in the Gary, East Chicago or Portage In. area do some searching and see if you can help me set the Database straight. Thanks for your time.

 

[mtindor]

At least one of the licenses [one from Gary, WPVY408] indicates allowed emissions of narrowband analog FM voice as well as digital voice/data. I didn't go through any other licenses to look.

What I'd recommend is that you program the frequencies for each factory into a separate scanlist / bank, as conventional frequencies, and see if you hear anything on them then [whether it be digital garbage, decoded digital voice, or analog voice].

It's easy to determine if they are in use by programming them in conventionally. If, you do hear conversations, or data, across the channels routinely when you have the frequencies programmed in conventionally, then it's probably just a case of the trunked system not being properly determined / set up and thus you aren't able to follow any conversations.

If you have a close call [or similar feature like spectrum sweeper] available on your scanner, simply turn it on whlie your in the factory and make sure it's scanning all of the business bands. It likely isn't going to pick anything up but local transmissions in the factory, which is what you want -- and that would be a very easy way to tell if its analog voice, digital voice, digital data, or nothing happening at all.

Mike

 

[mtindor]

Incidentally, at the risk of ending up on your S-list, I'm with ScannerFreak. There isn't anything for him to do. Confirmed data wasn't submitted, so it doesn't belong in a submission. It's a query about a system [whether it's in use, what the trunk type is, what the emissions are, etc], so it belongs in the forums as a Q&A / request for assitance in identifying the system type of post.

Mike

 

[mikewazowski]

Well ScannerFreak has done work on the database for US Steel and that can be confirmed within the "Downloads and Reports" section. You can see for it yourself. So why is Admin posting stuff that they don't research for their selves first? I have this same problem within my area as well. I know they volunteer their time and really get nothing for it but Please do it right if your in the position.

He has worked it based on User Submissions. Database Admin's rely on User Submissions to post stuff and they assume that the poster has researched it for himself.

Since you don't have any real information to add to the system and all you have is the word of a security guard, there's nothing he can do. You should research the system for yourself and once you've got some confirmed information, you can submit it.

TRBO and NEXXEDGE are digital with the option of being encrypted. There are a lot of other forms of encryption out there so you're guessing.

It is possible that they've upgraded the old LTR system to a new digital system but without any proof, there's no reason to change the system that's already in the database. Come up with some concrete proof that things have changed, submit it and it will get changed.

 

[W2NJS]

I suggest to the OP that the next time he's in the mill he try to determine what kind of portable radios are in use. That will tell him a lot about what encryption possibilities are open to the users of the system. When you were told that they are using encryption it does NOT necessarily mean that they are using TRBO or Nexedge. It may well be that they're using some older method such as DES-XL. Again, finding out what model radios are in use will tell you a lot to start with.

 

[wv_mountaineer]

You're funny..

It is Digital and it is ENCRYPTED. I can tell you that just from the annoying sounds that I hear coming through the speaker. It is differently not an LTR System even though the license shows that it is. Not just some channels but all channels listed under the 400 frequencies. Now would this be enough info for it to be changed in the database? If one guy's word is enough to come up with some bogus info and have 3 or 4 channels listed then me talking to the person in charge of US Steel Security and the Fire Dept. should be more than enough, right?
I'm using a 396xt to find the frequencies so Close Call and inputting them as Digital and Analog channels have been exhausted. For about 3 years I have been trying to listen with no success or satisfaction! I have posted in the Digital and LTR Forums asking for folks to look into the license along with asking locals to scan and or do searches. Guess what? Not a whole lot of help. All I am asking is that someone that knows what they are looking for to look into the FCC Database at their licenses and make an educational decision on what they are looking at and let me know what he or she thinks.

 

[mtindor]

It wasn't necessarily bogus. See, there are LTR-specific talkgroups listed on the system. That means at one point it definitely was LTR. Heck, it could still be LTR [I think], but likely they moved on to TRBO or NXDN or P25. So the next thing to do is determine what you are hearing. There is an audio sample site or two on the internet where you can go and listen to what NXDN, TRBO and P25 sound like. You may know what they all sound like.

But the system can't be changed to reflect what's going on until we know what's going on. It certainly is good to know it's encrypted, because that tells us that we have to consider that the system is no longer LTR. I doubt you can "get" an audio sample while you are in one of the factories, but if you listen to what TRBO, NXDN, P25 sound like prior to going into the factories again, you'd be able to tell us for sure what the deal is.

As was mentioned earlier, nobody would doubt that it was digital -- but there are a whole lot of combinations that could end up in digital voice. So more info needs to be obtained before the database can be properly changed.

I can't make an educated guess based upon FCC records because I _do_not_ believe the FCC record adequately reflects what's going on with the system -- at least not the license for the one Gary site I looked at. If you can get an audio sample of the digital audio, or if you can listen to some digital audio samples and compare, then you would be in a much much better position to tell us what's going on.

Mike

It is Digital and it is ENCRYPTED. I can tell you that just from the annoying sounds that I hear coming through the speaker. It is differently not an LTR System even though the license shows that it is. Not just some channels but all channels listed under the 400 frequencies. Now would this be enough info for it to be changed in the database? If one guy's word is enough to come up with some bogus info and have 3 or 4 channels listed then me talking to the person in charge of US Steel Security and the Fire Dept. should be more than enough, right?
I'm using a 396xt to find the frequencies so Close Call and inputting them as Digital and Analog channels have been exhausted. For about 3 years I have been trying to listen with no success or satisfaction! I have posted in the Digital and LTR Forums asking for folks to look into the license along with asking locals to scan and or do searches. Guess what? Not a whole lot of help. All I am asking is that someone that knows what they are looking for to look into the FCC Database at their licenses and make an educational decision on what they are looking at and let me know what he or she thinks.

 

[mtindor]

Incidentally, all licenses currently listed for each of the sites on the US Steel system would indicate plain old analog voice. You say it is not. The FCC records don't jive and you have to do some legwork yourself to figure out what type of digital modulation is being used / trunking architecture is being used.

The Gary 1 site is an exception - although it lists vanilla analog voice, it also lists a couple data emissions. Not digital voice emissions but rather digital data emissions.

So I think you're going to have to tell us what's going on, and not vice versa.

One question -- If you program in all of those frequencies for a site, do you hear any digital signal that could be a 24/7 control channel? Or are all transmissions intermittent?

Were you monitoring with a scanner capable of picking up P25? If so, did any decoded P25 come through? If not, they still could be P25 but encrypted, or they could simply be some other digital flavor like NXDN or TRBO. Sure other encryption options are possible, but I think unlkely.

Mike

 

[scannerfreak]

I'd like to thank the other admins for responding to this. I didn't see this until just now and they responded quickly and appropriately

 

[W2NJS]

What with all the licenses and locations this company obviously possesses, I think it's a big waste of time to try to figure out from the FCC listings who is doing what in all the locations they have as related to radio communications. What's wrong with my suggestion that you start by observing the model radio(s) being used at one or more locations? Such an observation could make various radio models possibilities or non-starters as to methods of communications being used and from that point on it would save an awful lot of wasted time and needless speculation. But hey, that's just me.