Ameren EDACS sites gone?

[kruser]

This evening I came home after a 4 hour power outage around the Creve Coeur area and went to tune Ameren's P25 and EDACS sites.
I found no EDACS signals at all from the STL City, High Ridge, St. Charles or Creve Coeur sites.

I just listened to the EDACS site in Creve Coeur about a week ago and it was running at that time but is gone today.

It looks like they may have finally thrown the switch on the old EDACS sites around St. Louis and are now fully on the P25 sites.

Anyone in areas further out from St. Louis care to check those EDACS sites and see if they are also off the air now?

The four I listed above is about my limit for Ameren site reception. I did check all the former edacs frequencies in case they moved the control channel but found no edacs signal at all for the Creve Coeur site on any of the P25 frequencies or those still listed for the edacs site.
I also manually tuned the 850 to 860 range with an Icom R9000 and again found no strong edacs signals. Creve Coeur pegged the meter here when it was running as the transmitter was just a couple miles down Olive from my QTH so if it was still there, I'd think I would have found it pretty easy during the manual tuning. I did still hear some distant edacs signals but not strong enough to decode and they were not near as strong as any of the sites I listed above were in the past.

 

[talkpair]

Still getting an EDACS control channel on 858.0875 for the Lawson site, which appears to be Ameren's western-most site.

 

[kruser]

Still getting an EDACS control channel on 858.0875 for the Lawson site, which appears to be Ameren's western-most site.

I also have a report that a site or two are still running edacs up around Hannibal as well so it looks like they may be shutting down the edacs sites near headquarters first and working out from there. All the sites I listed are neighbors of each other on the P25 side of things here. There is also a neighbor site shown in Illinois but I never could copy it once the trees green up for the summer.
Logging just site 606 this evening with Pro96com, I've confirmed that all the frequencies that are still listed for the edacs site 002 are now in use with active voice traffic on the P25 site 606 at the same location. I confirmed that by ear as well.

One of the security talkgroups was the only one I still heard only on the edacs site a couple weeks back but they are now heard on the P25 site as well. Many of the other talkgroups were simulcast between the P25 and EDACS sites as short as a week ago. Some were only heard on the P25 site I'd noted recently so I figured they were very close to shutting down the edacs sites here.

I've not had time to confirm the other three sites I listed but I sure can't find any edacs control channels for any of them. The edacs site in the city (site 005) was always the weakest here and they did rotate that CC around on the edacs site so I tried all the known freqs for those two city sites and found no edacs signal even with the yagi aimed that direction and open squelch. The P25 CC signal (site 202) comes in more than well enough to decode. The edacs signal came from the same tower and had the same signal strength but it is gone tonight.

I really only monitored the Creve Coeur sites regularly but did occasionally monitor all four within range. Really all eight sites as there was an edacs and a P25 site at each of the four locations. I can only confirm that the Creve Coeur EDACS site was still online about a week ago. Not sure when the others may have went silent as it could have been a month since I last monitored the other edacs sites.
The security TG that was only heard here on the Creve Coeur edacs site was simulcast on the city P25 site but not on the Creve Coeur P25 site. They were the only TG left that was only heard on EDACS site 002 but not at all on P25 site 606. Now they are on the P25 site 606.

 

[scanman1958]

OK. Let me get this right. I have not listened in on Ameren for a while. And I too, today, checked my programming. I also have Creve Coeur, StL, High Ridge and St Charles in my system as well as St Clair Co. I hear nothing. Nothing at all. I did pick up a couple control channels but they were not decoded.

Is Ameren completely off EDACS in the StL area? If so I will start from scratch. Thanks.

 

[kruser]

Yep, all the local area Edacs sites seem to have been shutdown and they have now moved to the P25 sites.

Some of the rural Edacs sites are confirmed running but nothing I've found in our area.

 

[scanman1958]

One more thing. I noticed the listing for all channels and sites is different on the Ameren link. Why are there some sites with nothing but control channels and other sites (also ID'd quite different) listed with what looks like voice channels only. It seems confusing. Also I notice that there are as many as 4 sites in some counties. Any idea why? Guess I will have to start reprogramming.

 

[zzdiesel]

Does anyone know if Bakerville has switched yet?

 

[semo]

Does anyone know if Bakerville has switched yet?

I'm picking it up on 857.8375. Tower ID 2301. Neighbors are
Marston (3201):855.0625
Charleston (2601):858.7875
Dexter (2801):854.6375

Bakerville frequencies should be 856.83750, 857.83750, 858.8375, 859.83750.

System ID : 010
System Name : Ameren P25
WACN : 85343
Tower Number (Decimal): 23-1
Tower Number (Hex) : T1701
Tower Description : Bakerville
Control Capabilities : Data,Voice,Registration
Call Sign(s) :
Timestamp : Thu Aug 8 00:44:28 2013

 

[kruser]

One more thing. I noticed the listing for all channels and sites is different on the Ameren link. Why are there some sites with nothing but control channels and other sites (also ID'd quite different) listed with what looks like voice channels only. It seems confusing. Also I notice that there are as many as 4 sites in some counties. Any idea why? Guess I will have to start reprogramming.

Some of that could be remnants of the early P25 system when they changed the CC often. Also, the way they setup this system, it does not broadcast alternate CC's so in theory, any channel can become a CC.
The City site is an example, that sites CC has been switching but I've not seen the other local sites switch CC's since they shutdown the Edacs system here.
Being as the CC can and does change, it makes sense they would be listed as all CC's. If not and a person downloaded just the CC's into their scanners, they would lose the site if it switched to a channel that was not marked as a CC. I've always made sure and downloaded all known channels for this exact reason.


As far as the number of sites, it's anyone's guess but my guess is they need reliable coverage in very large areas and could also be working a large area doing storm repair. I've heard several crews working storm damage when a storm has come through our area, it was not uncommon to hear the different crews on the sites nearest them. Activity would be heard on all sites. I guess they may have also planned on the fact that a tornado could take out a site our two in a populated county so they could still use the other sites.
Some of the sites are low power and only seemed to be used by the personnel working at a power plant like Rush Tower for example.
That's all just speculation on my part and is just a guess derived from my monitoring since they moved from VHF low band to the Edacs sites and now the P25 sites.

 

[zzdiesel]

Thanks Semo