Fort Meade Police and Wachenhut have moved to the 380 system.
Expect Fire to move within the month.
Carl
Expect Fire to move within the month.
Carl
Fort Meade 380
- Thread starter spanner
- Start date
- Status
I'm getting traffic on both the 400 and 380 systems, as of last week. I drive by Fort Meade and the NSA everyday and hear the MP's, and a UNID TG that sounds like Law Enforcement... the NSA system btw, is all ENC as far as I can tell.
CA
Annapolis
CA
Annapolis
What are you using to listen to the 380 system at Ft. Meade?
DPW and Fire are still on the old system.
Carl
DPW and Fire are still on the old system.
Carl
troymail
Silent Key
maus92 said:
Have you programmed it as a trunked system? I've tried to load it as a VHF and a UHF system but the freqs get rejected by the scanner... at the moment, I've loaded the freqs as conventional so I can at least hear any activity that might be there....
???
troymail
Silent Key
ok - I have it programmed as a P25 system now.... but I guess I need to get closer for the sig to lock in... which is interesting in itself because the Fort Meade 400 system is solid 5 bars at my location while the AA County system bounces around between 3 and 4 bars - and I'm sitting on the western edge of the County....
troymail
Silent Key
bear105 said:
I can hear what I believe are the MPs in the clear - TG711 and TG712... additional clear voice on TG723 (sounded like law enforcement but not like MPs).
Interesting - unless something is programmed funny on my 396, the TGs are not spaced (multiples of 16 or 32) as I am used to.... is this a characteristic of P25 systems??
Being digital - to me the quality is worse than on the 400 system... oh for the days of analog.
n3bxv
Member
I'd just like to confirm - you guys are able to follow the trunk with the 396, correct? I'm running pro96com against it and getting data, confirming the 711 TG but my pro-96 won't track it that I can tell...
Yes, I can follow the Fort Meade 380 and 400 systems as they trunk with the 396T. As stated before, the TG's on the 380 system are odd in the sense that they are not mulltiples of 16 or 32 - i.e. TG 711 which sounds like MP's. The NSA has a seperate 380 system located at Fort Meade, but it is all ENC - and not heavily used as far as I can tell.
AACo's signal strength is definetly not consistent throughout the county - it fluctuates quite a bit throughout this rather large county. Sometimes it's scratchy as well. And the quality can vary from day to day, even if you are in the same location. I wonder if some frequencies in the system are more susceptible to interference than others...
CA
Annapolis
AACo's signal strength is definetly not consistent throughout the county - it fluctuates quite a bit throughout this rather large county. Sometimes it's scratchy as well. And the quality can vary from day to day, even if you are in the same location. I wonder if some frequencies in the system are more susceptible to interference than others...
CA
Annapolis
n3bxv
Member
I knew it would track the 400 system, but didn't know about the 380. Looks like I might have to invest in one, although I thought I read that the Army was going to require encryption on all "first responder" comms, I have to see where I saw that.
troymail said:
Yes, P25 systems can use any TG number since there's no Status Bits to deal with, etc.
If you're using a Uniden scanner, have you adjusted the threshold?
troymail
Silent Key
kikito said:
I've played with the adjustments but haven't really found any gain by doing so. Most of the problems I notice with digital quality have to do with (a) the signal strength itself and (b) the small speaker in the 396. There is also a virbration issue I've seen which has recently been confirmed by Uniden apparently (UPMan has confirmed in other posts that when units are returned are being retrofitted with some rubber strips in the battery compartment/case). I inserted some additional padding (some folded paper) within days of getting my unit in an attempt to resolve that.
It just seems that the digital signals tend to be over modulated as opposed to the analog signals (like AA County, Baltimore County, etc.). The AGC seems to help but convergence is slow... so it helps for longer conversations but for routine back-and-forth conversations, it provides little help.
Another thing I've noticed is that the control channel on the 380 system presents as ~1 bar in strength. However, when actual activity occurs on one of the talk groups, the signal strength comes up to ~4 bars which seems unusual.
On the subject of status bits, etc. how are emergency buttons and other functions handled on these systems?
troymail said:
I put a couple of layers of black tape down the middle of the battery door and it works great and the tape barely noticeable.
I agree with that just as many other people, so we can hope that in the future Uniden might put out a firmware update to tweak the AGC.
That's probably because the voice channels come in stronger hence when it switches to one, the signal bar jumps up to reflect that channel's higher signal strength.
I'm not an expert on the subject but I think everything is done through the control channel data stream just like you don't need to enter Base/Offset tables like in the past because those also are sent out through the data stream.
Ft Meade Trunks
This is all very interesting to me...especially since I live in the Seven Oaks area right across the road from Ft Meade.
Would one of you gentlemen mind doing a quick table of Freqs, TGs and settings peculiar to the 396? It would be a great help to someone as lazy as me.
DOH! All I have to do is go look at the Database! Nevermind that stoopid request! :-}
This is all very interesting to me...especially since I live in the Seven Oaks area right across the road from Ft Meade.
Would one of you gentlemen mind doing a quick table of Freqs, TGs and settings peculiar to the 396? It would be a great help to someone as lazy as me.
DOH! All I have to do is go look at the Database! Nevermind that stoopid request! :-}
Last edited:
TinEar
Member
I search across the 380 band daily while searching for MilAir. The scanner stops on almost every pass on 380.55 where I hear the MPs in the clear, using their normal "Patriot" as base station callsign. Don't know if this is accidental or if they actually transmit in the clear.
- Status
