2013/14 - MOSWIN- (PLEASE USE 2015 Thread if NEW subject)

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KC0CSE

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Howdy folks, long time no talkie...

I've been busy with getting used to MARRS for work, and the ole GRE scanner has been somewhat neglected. I have MOSWIN programmed in, and it's working to monitor Troop A traffic, but here are a few questions that I have. I have searched and researched the best that my limited free time allows, but I'm hoping y'all don't mind that I'm going directly to the people who are most likely to know for your opinions.

Issue 1: Programming. With the GRE / Radio Shack scanners, how are you programming the system? Are you using multiple control channels from multiple sites on one "system" or are you programming one control channel / site per "system"? And, if it's multiple systems (one per cc / site) are you scanning them all at once, or one at a time?

Issue 2: Losing programming. This may be a specific problem with my scanner, but after several days (sometimes only hours) of success scanning MOSWIN, along with some MARRS and older local trunking systems (in different systems / scan lists) off and on, MOSWIN quits working in the scanner. The "T" trunking indicator stops showing, and if I disable all of the scan lists *except* the MOSWIN scan list, then "Nothing Enabled!" shows up. I've been correcting it by keeping my programming in a vscanner folder and re-flashing from that v-scanner folder when the error pops up.

Issue 3: Uniden Programming MOSWIN. I have a relative with a Uniden scanner, and I'm going to be programming MOSWIN for him soon. Are there any issues / pitfalls you can steer me away from programming the Uniden since I'm used to the GRE?

Thanks fellas,

DFB25

Check your PM......Mike KC0CSE
 

ccfd40

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The Radio Shack Pro 2055 is an analog scanner you will need a digital scanner for MOSWIN.

Thanks! I was afraid you might say that. I will check in the morning to be sure that I have the model # correct but I am pretty sure thats it. What do you recommend I buy? We are on a tight budget!
 

kruser

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Not sure why it's listed as failed, I'm picking up City Fire Dispatch on the South Site as I write this.

I cannot get the control channel where I usually can. I can hear all the voice channels though and monitor them as conventional repeaters just fine. It's like the control channel radio is running at a reduced power level or something. I can barely discern there is a signal on the CC frequency. Of course I checked my equipment but all my other signal levels from the various city systems are normal out in my neck of the woods.
Who knows, they could have re-aimed the CC antenna for better coverage in the area the south site is intended for.
 

scanman1958

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kruser.....Where are you located? I live in the city (southwest side) and get the south tower without an antenna, but I have noticed not a lot of radio traffic goes through that tower with the city's system. (please don't ask me to explain. I might explode) But I have noticed with the north tower an increase in garbled radio traffic especially when city fire is talking. Even some missed "dispatches". For me, that is very unusual. I wonder too if something has changed with the north tower?
 

kruser

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kruser.....Where are you located? I live in the city (southwest side) and get the south tower without an antenna, but I have noticed not a lot of radio traffic goes through that tower with the city's system. (please don't ask me to explain. I might explode) But I have noticed with the north tower an increase in garbled radio traffic especially when city fire is talking. Even some missed "dispatches". For me, that is very unusual. I wonder too if something has changed with the north tower?

I'm very near 141 (Woodsmill now) & Olive on the eastern edge of Chesterfield.
I can pickup the STL City north site really well but the South site can be tricky. It needs a yagi aimed at the tower. I actually use separate yagi's for both sites but for different reasons.

Usually I get the 700 MHz south site including the control channel fairly well but for some reason right now, I can only hear the voice channels but the CC is barely audible. I can hardly tell there is a signal on the CC frequency. The voice channels all come booming in though and I get near perfect decode from them all.

The 700MHz South tower or site never did carry all the cities traffic even all the way back to day one when it came on the air years ago. At first, it only carried the south PD districts like 1 and 2 and I think one other.
Then that site went off the air for over a year, maybe two. It came back as conventional P25 repeaters but was used only for fire and maybe EMS use not long after fire switched over to the P25 radios. Only two of the repeaters could be heard out in my area.
At the same time, they changed the south site's license to a "state license" and removed the original call sign. Not long after all that (couple months maybe), the trunked control channel started broadcasting again.
At that time, I started hearing the south PD districts again as well as fire and EMS but still no North district traffic. I also regained the missing voice channels as it was once again a trunked site.
That seems to be how it is operating right now today even though I cannot hear the control channel. I can still hear all the voice channels and do hear Fire and South PD district chatter just fine but no control channel so I cannot track the site. Lucky for me, the traffic on the site is low so scanning the voice channels only does not cause me to miss much.

For myself, the North site seems to be working normally but it is a simulcast site so you could be getting multipath distortion from the north site.
I also use a yagi for the north site so I can aim at only one tower. That helps me get near perfect decodes from the north site. I can aim at either tower but one of them places the aim directly through Ameren's Creve Coeur tower which is not far from me. Plus some cell towers. The signals from those towers do have an influence of the cities southernmost 800 MHz sites signal and my decode levels drop off some as the Ameren site is used. I find that a yagi aimed slightly north of the Ameren tower gives me the best decode of the cities 800 MHz site even though the signal level is not maximized. The northernmost tower of the 800 MHz system is unreliable for me due to trees, hills and buildings but I can use it for my main signal during the winter months as long as it is not snowing or raining heavily. I think the yagi nulls out the Ameren site being aimed slightly north of the site and that really helps me pull in the cities 800 MHz site.
I use an omni for Ameren and other local non simulcast sites.

Also, any and all traffic that is heard on the cities 700 MHz site is also heard on the 800 MHz site so if you want it all, monitor the 800 MHz north site. I kept expecting them to break up the districts between the two sites when the 700 MHz site came online but that never happened.
I also hear south district cars only on the north site but dispatch will be heard on the south and north sites when they reply to a south district car only heard on the north site. I still think that is because not all cars have radios with the 700 MHz frequencies programmed into them or possibly can't even do 700 MHz at all if they are pretty old radios. Fire was given new radios that can do either. I guess some of the city PD cars may be using radios made before the 700 MHz band was finalized so they could have an 800 range only.
 

scanman1958

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From the length of your response you can now see why I did not want to reply. He he. Almost everything you said is what I have seen and heard. When the city first started trunking they only had the downtown tower at the comms center. The Sublette Ave site was a back up. It, by the way, is located at the highest point in city. (Sublette Park is the high spot). So it's signal should go far. Then they put up the north tower (the tallest of all the city's towers) and basically used that full time. But I know that there were signal issues way down south in Dist 1 along Broadway near Lemay. Not sure why the south tower had been turned off. A couple years I think. Then as MOSWIN was getting started in the St Louis area it was turned back on and, as you said, I would hear mostly Dist 1 & 2, Dist 3 and some other traffic. That was pretty much it. And.......I don't have my scanner programmed the way it probably should be. As long as I can remember I only have the north tower programmed to monitor the city TRS. It works fine, for the most part. I assume I am hearing 99% of all traffic. I only have the south tower programmed in my MOSWIN system (along with the north tower and other local MOSWIN sites. Not 100% sure how much it is used. I used to pick up a lot of MOSWIN traffic on the city's towers but not lately. Too much change, too fast. It has been hard to keep up with all the changes. Wish I had more time to play.

See, why I did not want to reply. My head hurts. I hope this made sense.

To Stlouis50, not sure why you can't pick up the north tower if you work in north city. You can't miss it up at Union and Natural Bridge.
 

scanman1958

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I forgot. Yes you do have a job ahead of you trying to pick up a signal past all those towers along Lindbergh and Olive. That too is the highest point in the county. The city has a water storage tank in Stacey Park in Olivette for that very reason. Great water pressure downhill all the way to the city.

You also live in a fairly high point in the county. Near the county EOC right? I can see why you have good reception there. Which leads me to my next question. Can you pick up StarCom21 from your home, with or without a yagi? I live in a low spot in the city with two pretty good sized hills between my and IL and on a good day I may pick up one site in Monroe Co. Or maybe the St Clair Co site. In a nutshell I don't listen to StarCom at all because of it. I bought a five element yagi and got some LMR400 cable but still only get one to maybe 3 bars from any one site in IL. And the signal constantly fades in and out. But, BUT.....I have had my 396xt sitting on my dashboard driving east on Manchester Rd out in Ballwin near Metro West house one (at the top of the hill) and can get five bars and a great signal.......for a short distance. How bout that?

Sorry to rant. guess I will check back tomorrow with any replies.
 

nick1427d

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What frequency are you guys using for control channel on the south site?
 

kruser

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What frequency are you guys using for control channel on the south site?

774.081250.

That's what my service monitor shows for the center freq as well as the Icom R9000.

I think the DB here may have a typo and have it listed as 774.0825.

I also did start receiving my normal signal levels from the south site again last Thursday or Friday. Then came down sick and that was all she wrote.
I did check this morning though and the CC is still there with an S7 signal on the R9000 on 774.081250 MHz.
 

kruser

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I forgot. Yes you do have a job ahead of you trying to pick up a signal past all those towers along Lindbergh and Olive.

Sorry scanman, I missed your posts.

Yes, I'm very near the current EOC but I'm not sure what will become of it once the new ECC is up and running. The EOC is a neat place if you have ever taken a tour. They have duplicate county PD dispatch consoles and all with everything ready to go. Some of the PD broadcasts come off one of the towers located there. Mainly 155.565.
Of course I don't have the luxury of the tall antennas!

I can only get one Starcom site year round and that is the Madison county site. I used to get some of the other 3xx sites as well as the St. Clair simulcast site but when the 3xx sites went off the air a few years ago, I also lost St. Clair's simulcast site. I could probably get it right now with the trees clean of leaves though. And yes, I must use a 12 element Yagi for reception of Starcom as well as some of the distant Ameren sites. I have a pair on rotors fed with LMR400.
My Omni's are also fed with LMR400 and most go through one or more 8 port Stridsberg multicouplers which feed some 18+ radios. Not enough ears for them all though!

I'm also near several hospitals here and they all have a 152.240 MHz paging transmitter on their roofs. That wipes out VHF on the GRE made radios. I must use a PAR 152 MHz paging band notch filter which also wipes out the new Moswin towers in Weldon and Imperial as they both have control channels on 152.600 and 152.550.
I was able to retune the PAR filters and still filter the paging crud enough but allow the Moswin signals through. It works well now.

Being in an apartment, you can forget about an indoor antenna. Way too much RFI/EMI for almost anything. I've spent countless hours grounding my equipment both internally and externally as well as running shielded Cat6 net cable. I'm now really radio quiet from my own equipment. I use a loop (also on a rotor) for my SW work.

I can still pickup several Moswin sites mainly from the west through the north directions but I do lose them during bad weather.

And as I'd mentioned, the STL City South site signal did return for me. I get about an S7 on an Icom meter which equates to a full meter most times on a Uniden although the Uniden does not have perfect decode at all times from the south site. I do see signal fade so I'm likely picking up a reflection or interference from all the cell sites around me.]
I drove from 270 and Olive one day to my place at the old 141 and Olive and counted 23 or 27 cell sites in that 2.5 mile journey!!
A couple cell sites were removed when they built the new 141 and the loss of one did seem to greatly help my reception from the STL City north site or Sublette site.
I think one or two may have been Nextel also so they could be dead now as well.
Radio as a hobby is hard here with all the RF in the area. It takes lots of patience and experimentation as well as a slew of notch and stub filters for finding the correct notch filter combo. Stubs are generally too wide but they help me narrow down signals that may be desensing my scanner type receivers.
The Icom's are pretty much immune to anything you can throw at them.
 

nick1427d

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774.081250.

That's what my service monitor shows for the center freq as well as the Icom R9000.

I think the DB here may have a typo and have it listed as 774.0825.

I also did start receiving my normal signal levels from the south site again last Thursday or Friday. Then came down sick and that was all she wrote.
I did check this morning though and the CC is still there with an S7 signal on the R9000 on 774.081250 MHz.

I'm getting strong decode with identical TGs on both

774.08125 AND
774.08250

To verify I set up two different "sites" on separate scanners and both worked.

I don't think the frequencies listed under the south site are accurate. Not to mention the MOSWIN license for that site technically doesn't even exist yet. It's been applied for but according to my searches no actual frequencies have been assigned.
 

nick1427d

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Can you pick up StarCom21 from your home, with or without a yagi? I live in a low spot in the city with two pretty good sized hills between my and IL and on a good day I may pick up one site in Monroe Co. Or maybe the St Clair Co site..

I doubt it is the Monroe county site. The closest STARCOM/St. Clair County P25 site to you guys is actually 359A in East Carondelet you also might get decode from 359J in East St. Louis. The St. Clair county simulcast sites are also STARCOM sites. There are no STARCOM only sites online in St. Clair County anymore.

Considering this is a thread for MOSWIN, if you need help or have questions regarding STARCOM PM me.
 

kruser

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Hi Nick!

Yes, the frequencies are close enough for a scanner to decode either being as scanners do not have super tight front ends.
774.08125 is the correct control channel frequency though. Both frequencies are the same as far as a scanner is concerned.
If they ever come out with true narrowband scanners, then the small difference in frequency could make a difference in receiving and not receiving the control channel.
I wonder if an APX series radio would work with the incorrect frequency entered in.

If you run Pro96com, you can see all the other site frequencies. The correct CC frequency is also displayed as 774.08125 with Pro96com which gets its info directly from the datastream.

The last I checked, STL City dropped the license for the south site and it is now licensed under a 'state license' which will not show up in a typical FCC license search. I think one must search the CAPRAD database to see the listing. This could change though as most state licenses are low power like 2 watts and I know this south site is running more than two watts of power.

Remember when the south site went off the air completely for like a year or two? Then is started coming back several months ago. That is when I found that they had cancelled the original license and licensed it under a state license which I found odd and still do.
I've not studied state licenses enough to know if an actual trunked system can be licensed under a state license or not.

Perhaps someone that knows more about state licenses will chime in and offer some suggestions.

Do you happen to know the application number you found for the south site? If you found an application, it does sound like they are going to switch it back from a state license again in the near future.

I've not heard any of the Troop C talkgroups on the south site yet.

I'm getting strong decode with identical TGs on both

774.08125 AND
774.08250

To verify I set up two different "sites" on separate scanners and both worked.

I don't think the frequencies listed under the south site are accurate. Not to mention the MOSWIN license for that site technically doesn't even exist yet. It's been applied for but according to my searches no actual frequencies have been assigned.
 
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kruser

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I doubt it is the Monroe county site. The closest STARCOM/St. Clair County P25 site to you guys is actually 359A in East Carondelet you also might get decode from 359J in East St. Louis. The St. Clair county simulcast sites are also STARCOM sites. There are no STARCOM only sites online in St. Clair County anymore.

Considering this is a thread for MOSWIN, if you need help or have questions regarding STARCOM PM me.

The only site I can get reliably is 3-001 out of Madison County.
Nothing at all for me from the 359x sites these days.
 

nr0q

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I just got MoSWIN programmed in to my RadioShack Pro197 here in Macon County with the CC and ACC for Macon and surrounding counties. Programmed in all the Trp B and Region B TGs and a wildcard group. I'm actually quite surpised to hear so much traffic, much more then I used to hear when they were on the lowband system.

But I doubt many of you care much about that as much as I think I found another county agency that is using MoSWIN!! I need to set my laptop up to record to verify this but while running ID Tracker III while scanning overnight I noticed this morning that a new talkgroup showed up. 24001 which according to the list at Missouri Statewide Wireless Interoperable Network (MOSWIN) Trunking System, Statewide, Missouri - Scanner Frequencies would be "Adair County Law All" I wonder if Adair County Sheriff's Office is testing out using MoSWIN??


Matthew Chambers NX7AZ
District B ARES / Skywarn
 

iamhere300

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Missouri - Scanner Frequencies[/url] would be "Adair County Law All" I wonder if Adair County Sheriff's Office is testing out using MoSWIN??


Matthew Chambers NX7AZ
District B ARES / Skywarn

24001 would be Adair County All, not Adair County Law All.

All the radios in that county that are on MOSWIN are supposed to have that channel as part of their basic programming, so what you heard could have been anyone in the county.
 

nr0q

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24001 would be Adair County All, not Adair County Law All.

All the radios in that county that are on MOSWIN are supposed to have that channel as part of their basic programming, so what you heard could have been anyone in the county.

True, I misread that.. I'm new to MOSWN, only been listening for about a week. I'm going to try to get set up to record scanner audio so that when I'm not sitting here listening I can find out if they are actually using that TG or just testing. So far I'm hearing normal traffic on all of Adair Counties conventional systems.
 
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