Business Itinerant congestion question

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thorium

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i intend to license business itinerant UHF (380-470) frequencies for use at diffferent sites in and around the DFW metroplex.
Ill be using EF Johnson 5100 (4W), in digital mode (P25 conventional), with AES encryption.

Does anybody know how busy these frequencies are in the DFW area?

How well this kind of digital transmision hold up if the itinerant frequency I’m using has a moderate amount of other traffic (since they’re shared frequencies)?

thanks!
 

fwradio

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There are a ton of itinerant UHF channels in the Group C list. I would suggest licensing up a lot of them and then you would be able to change channels as you encounter interference until you find one that works. There is no telling who is really using what channels. There are probably more unlicensed operators than there are licensed ones on the itinerant channels.
 

thorium

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Thanks for the replies. Im thinking I’ll get a cheap USB SDR to monitor the frequencies so I can choose the least congested. Any recommended Windows software that will make that task easy?
 

prcguy

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Many years ago when I was first setting up some UHF itinerant channel repeaters I had a Radio Shack Pro 2004 scanner with a logging tone/DPL reader attached and scanned prospective channels. Every few days I would check the logs to see if the activity was actually conversations showing many of the same PL/DPL used over and over or if its was just noise or other. I would keep locking out channels in the scanner until I had the quietest of the bunch and then I would apply for a license on the quite channels I found.

These days you could use an SDR or any kind of receiver and feed a computer sound card with a recording program that has audio squelch. That program will log the time and duration of each transmission and you can go back and hear the conversations or tell if they were digital. In the end you can compare channels and see how busy each one is.
 

Rex_Viper

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....There are probably more unlicensed operators than there are licensed ones on the itinerant channels.

Yep with all these radios available online that come programed with test frequencies. A local mega church did just that and is using yellow dot. I mean come on you’ve got enough money to get your own license
 

IAmSixNine

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I was not debating the legality of it.
Was more of a, hum if your going to go encrypted and digital why not license your own frequency vs using a public potentially crowded = interference itinerate business frequency.
With digital and encryption any bit of interference will cause those 1s and 0s to not work properly or increase the potential for them to not work properly.
 

jonwienke

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Encryption has no impact on interference with digital signals. Error correction coding is applied after encryption, not before.
 

Project25_MASTR

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i intend to license business itinerant UHF (380-470) frequencies for use at diffferent sites in and around the DFW metroplex.
Ill be using EF Johnson 5100 (4W), in digital mode (P25 conventional), with AES encryption.

Does anybody know how busy these frequencies are in the DFW area?

How well this kind of digital transmision hold up if the itinerant frequency I’m using has a moderate amount of other traffic (since they’re shared frequencies)?

thanks!
Lots of itinerant use in the metroplex. Partially due to Bearcom who puts nearly all of their rental repeaters on itinerants (only real exception being the Austonian in Austin) and runs them at full power (40-50 Watts...because almost none of the New Builds or ROC techs know how to or why you should turn the power down). That being said, if you keep your power low (under 10W) and don't set your radios to busy channel lockout...you shouldn't have an issue. More of a UHF problem than it is VHF problem I've noticed though (then again I run some very screwy NACs (3D1, C1A, FB1, A7F).
I was not debating the legality of it.
Was more of a, hum if your going to go encrypted and digital why not license your own frequency vs using a public potentially crowded = interference itinerate business frequency.
With digital and encryption any bit of interference will cause those 1s and 0s to not work properly or increase the potential for them to not work properly.

Nah...doesn't matter if it's encrypted or in the clear with digital it will perform alike.
 
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