AFRRCS - Alberta First Responders' Radio Communication System - INFO HERE

[Jay911]

The Ponoka site has a nice footprint, picking it up at home this morning near Ardrossan.

I've noticed that the 700 MHz sites seem to propagate much further than people have suggested they would. I'm getting on average about 100km of effective range out of a signal ("effective" meaning that a scanner will latch on and provide some kind of meaningful decode rate).

I really wish they'd put a site up on Moose Mountain.. the repeaters that exist up there now go for nearly 200 km with no significant dropouts

 

[kayn1n32008]

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Can I get someone/someones to check 772.95625 in their area?

That frequency is showing up on my SDR# display with a distinct P25 control channel audible, but I'm getting stymied at getting it to be read by Unitrunker.. I think my SDR#<>UT configuration is flawed.

At my home in Bragg Creek it's slightly stronger than the signal for Crossfield on 771.90625.

The only licenses for 772.95625 in the database are for Magrath (south, in Cardston county), Lodgepole (north), and Edmonton.. I'm kind of skeptical at any of the above being correct, partly due to my distance from them, and partly due to the fact that they're all still showing "pending" in IC license data (although you guys in the north have discovered sites which are still "pending" as of late, so maybe that's irrelevant).

Unrelated: A microwave link for Drayton Valley has shown up in the DB, and its location is a lot more sensible than the data that the Drayton 700 site had. 53.21305556,-114.9719444 puts it on 47 St, just west of the hospital, where the Google Earth view shows a radio tower already present.

I can confirm 100% it is not the Lodgepole site, I visited it on Monday and there was neither a shack nor any LMR antennas on either if the two towers at that location. As to the Dayton Microwave location, that would be the Telus site I referenced previously in this thread.

 

[beeperboy]

I really wish they'd put a site up on Moose Mountain.. the repeaters that exist up there now go for nearly 200 km with no significant dropouts

They can't. The current consumption is way too high.

 

[harryshute]

772.9562 is not Edmonton. At least not on the air now.

I too was impressed by the propagation. The Legal site comes in so well in Edmonton I thought it must be from a tower in downtown Edmonton. I will have to try Ponoka.

 

[bruce1225]

i will check 772.95625. jason but i get my google anything .lol faster on my s3. so i f u send me a message or IM VIA Google chat my response will be immediate. bruce and ill check right now

 

[Jay911]

Some of the others as-yet unidentified that are showing up on my SDR's waterfall...

772.29375 - Can see a faint line of constant signal but can't hear if there is a CC in there or not. Candidates would be Camrose, High River (doubtful, I'd hear a strong signal from there), Tomahawk (NE of Drayton Valley), and Trochu.

772.80625 - Similar as above, faint indication of constant carrier, but can't hear anything in the static. Calgary Forest Lawn (doubtful, I'd hear it) or Youngstown.

For reference, I am detecting the signal from Cluny (773.81875) about the same strength as the above two. So I'd bet Trochu and Youngstown.

773.95625 - looks like a steady signal too but there is no license in the DB for it. Fainter than the above three.

 

[Jay911]

I've updated the map with the correct position of Drayton Valley and added four new sites that came up on the north license overnight:

Carson Creek (TELUS colo, Woodlands County, off Hwy 32 near Range Road 115A)
Ethel Lake (probably a new site - closest existing license is TELUS 300m away, Bonnyville MD, near the Esso Mahkeses plant)
Swan Hills (TELUS colo, Big Lakes MD, just west of Hwy 33 about 3km north of town)
Wandering River (Rogers or TELUS colo - hard to tell - I put the flag on the tower due south of where the lat/long on the license shows, but there is another tower slightly north-northwest, Athabasca County, on Twp 720 about 2 km E of Hwy 63)

 

[kayn1n32008]

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Kitscotty sit built, colo, power meter in, mundane sit built, no power meter.

 

[Jay911]

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Kitscotty sit built, colo, power meter in, mundane sit built, no power meter.

Are you able to tell if particular antennas are installed? I noticed on one site in Calgary, which was built out either very early this year or late last year (I forget), including the 700 antennas - it's been silent and inoperative so far, but only recently (not sure when, as I was out of town for a bit) have the MW antennas been hung. I haven't had a chance to try to directly scan it, but it's one of the signals I should hear fine from my RTL-SDR at home, and I get nothing there. However it may be an indication that it's ready to go.

 

[kayn1n32008]

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Kitscotty sit built, colo, power meter in, mundane sit built, no power meter.

That should be Mundare.

 

[kayn1n32008]

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Are you able to tell if particular antennas are installed? I noticed on one site in Calgary, which was built out either very early this year or late last year (I forget), including the 700 antennas - it's been silent and inoperative so far, but only recently (not sure when, as I was out of town for a bit) have the MW antennas been hung. I haven't had a chance to try to directly scan it, but it's one of the signals I should hear fine from my RTL-SDR at home, and I get nothing there. However it may be an indication that it's ready to go.

Yes I am able to tell which are 700MHz LMR Antennas and which are long range Cell/iDEN antennas. All the sites I have seen have been colo's, and the LMR antennas have been at the 50%-ish height of total tower. Although I have not looked at TAFL for those two sites, so I am not sure if they are going to have MW links, there are satellite dishes on both shacks. Oddly, like a site I saw north of Calgary it appears as though there is an antenna mounted preamp on the Mundare site, but I did not see one on the Kitscotty site. I did not have my scanner with me so I could not check to see if the Kitscotty site was active yet. Going to have to start bringing it with me now!

 

[Jay911]

If anybody will find use of them, here's my HomePatrol favorites file and Win500 PSR-500/600 file for AFRRCS. Unzip them before use of course.

For the HP file, "import from hpe file" in Sentinel's File menu, and point to "AFRRCS Only.hpe". You will have three "systems" in the favorites file. One is the trunk system itself, one is listed as "AFRRCS OFT" which is all the VHF frequencies (and the UHF backhauls), and "AFRRCS Conventional" is the handful of conventional freqs licensed for the system. Both of these last two are "one frequency trunk" systems - you can have multiple frequencies/sites in a "one frequency trunk" system! Set up this way you will see talkgroups and radio IDs of any conventional channel users.

For the Win500 file, just load AFRRCS.p500 into Win500. All the conventional freqs are just in in conventional mode - GRE doesn't need a wacky "one frequency trunk" configuration to show TGs and RIDs. The trunk sites themselves are in 126 separate TSYS objects, which is a bit unruly ... the scanner is almost out of memory at that stage. But this is the problem with the PSR500/600 when it comes to a multi-site trunk system, you can not load all the sites into one system and let it rip.. you have to make a new system for each site.

Also - the file may tell you that some of the object IDs are invalid when you try to upload it. Let the program fix them and everything should be OK. Apparently you can't have object IDs over a certain number, though the Win500 software will happily let you type them in.

If anyone has any questions, please let me know. And of course now that I've posted this, they will put more sites in the license updates in the morning .

(Also, I used to have a 396XT/996XT file, and a PSR800 virtual folder, but I'm so far behind in catching them up, and FreeSCAN and the PSR800's programming software are so unwieldy to use, I can't bring myself to add 60+ sites to each file. If somebody wants to try the file as it stands, though, let me know.)

 

[SCPD]

772.9562 is not Edmonton. At least not on the air now.

I too was impressed by the propagation. The Legal site comes in so well in Edmonton I thought it must be from a tower in downtown Edmonton. I will have to try Ponoka.

No surprise here, those in Edmonton who monitor the Edmonton Pubic Service Edacs system are aware how good the coverage is in and around the city limits then extending at least 40~50 kms plus in most direction except north of the City. This gives you a pretty good idea the coverage a good system can cover in rather flat land.

These new 700 Mhz sites use the latest technology PA, nice gain antennas, tall towers and digital too boot should have exceptional coverage. One new site I've been monitoring is east of the City of Edmonton @ 55 Kms I can monitor the CC with a handheld in the house.

The Legal site Harry and others mention is @ 60 Kms north west of me I can catch with a handheld in the second story of the house.

I have also caught the Legal site near the Edmonton International Airport on a high gain 700 mhz antenna on roof of my Rav4, that is boarding 100 Kms.

Looking at the latest TAFL database I see newly licensed frequencies for a Edmonton downtown office building, its around 20 stories and can only image how far you will be able to monitor this site if its optimized the same as the other rural sites and full power......

 

[Jay911]

"10103 104 Avenue" or whatever it is, aka Bell Tower, is the Alberta Solicitor General's office, i.e. the "owner" of the system.

 

[beeperboy]

No surprise here, those in Edmonton who monitor the Edmonton Pubic Service Edacs system are aware how good the coverage is in and around the city limits then extending at least 40~50 kms plus in most direction except north of the City. This gives you a pretty good idea the coverage a good system can cover in rather flat land.

These new 700 Mhz sites use the latest technology PA, nice gain antennas, tall towers and digital too boot should have exceptional coverage. One new site I've been monitoring is east of the City of Edmonton @ 55 Kms I can monitor the CC with a handheld in the house.

The Legal site Harry and others mention is @ 60 Kms north west of me I can catch with a handheld in the second story of the house.

I have also caught the Legal site near the Edmonton International Airport on a high gain 700 mhz antenna on roof of my Rav4, that is boarding 100 Kms.

Looking at the latest TAFL database I see newly licensed frequencies for a Edmonton downtown office building, its around 20 stories and can only image how far you will be able to monitor this site if its optimized the same as the other rural sites and full power......

That whopping coverage may be an issue. It's hard to get the radios to hand off to the next site when the RSSI is over the top. I suspect they'll be turning the power down on the base stations once users come on board.

 

[harryshute]

One of the reasons Edmonton EDACS coverage goes so well outside of the city is the four simulcast towers bordering the city. When the multi vehicle crash south on QE II happened they were out of range. They took their D-Ops (Disaster Ops) truck with a mobile repeater to the Leduc weigh scales which was in range. Portables then communicated on the mobile repeater while the D-Ops truck forwarded it back to Edmonton EDACS using just the LID of the truck for all units on the mobile repeater.

AFRRCS appears to be using the same four sites as Edmonton EDACS if you go by the microwave licenses.

 

[Jay911]

AFRRCS appears to be using the same four sites as Edmonton EDACS if you go by the microwave licenses.

Are there better names for them than "199 Street" etc which is what I've been using in my spreadsheet?

 

[harryshute]

199 street is Lewis Farms (West)
Strathcona (South)
Evergreen (North)
Century Place (Downtown)

Not sure if Downtown will stay at Century Place or go to Bell Tower.

 

[Jay911]

Thanks - I've updated the spreadsheet, and when LMR sites come up, I'll use those names rather than the street addresses.

The current license shows Bell Tower for the central downtown site, but they've been moving stuff around before, so who knows....

 

[SCPD]

"10103 104 Avenue" or whatever it is, aka Bell Tower, is the Alberta Solicitor General's office, i.e. the "owner" of the system.

Also used for radio systems.....