Appalachian Power (American Electric Power) -- migration to P25

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mtindor

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Hi Folks,

For those of you within the Appalachian Power footprint, be aware that AEP (who owns Appalachian Power) is upgrading their EDACS system to P25. They have built out most if not all of Ohio by now, and they are already working on West Virginia.

I'd like to encourage people within the Appalachian Power service area to review the AEP map below (enable WV in the legend if the blue dots aren't showing up).


The blue dots are all Appalachian Power locations with FCC licenses. Most of them will either be active EDACS sites or P25 sites, or a combination thereof. You can click on the blue dots to get site location information, callsign information and frequency information.

If you have access to DSDPlus, Pro96Com, or Unitrunker and can search 854-862 mhz for any P25 control channels with a WACN of 92715 and a SysID of 1F7, please gather as much information as you can and provide it to us so that we can update the database.

1. control channel frequency
2. WACN (92715), System ID (1F7) and Site ID (## or ##.##)
3. Any peers / neighbors listed including the frequencies / channel numbers of the neighboring site control channels

Any P25 control channels for this system will be in the 854-862 mhz range. So that is the range you would want to check.

The following counties have Applachian Power sites licensed:

Boone
Cabell
Clay
Fayette
Greenbrier
Jackson
Kanawha
Lincoln
Logan
Marshall
Mason
McDowell
Mercer
Mingo
Ohio
Putnam
Raleigh
Summers
Wayne
Wyoming

I am sure there are some P25 sites online in WV, but us Ohioans can't just make continuous road trips all over America to track down this info for you. West Virginians with P25-capable scanners and the ability to use DSDPlus, Unitrunker or Pro96Com are those who can really help identify new sites online.

Please ask any questions here -- Post any information you get here. Screenshots from DSDPlus, Unitrunker and Pro96Com are fine.

Thanks

Mike
 

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mtindor

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Hello WV Folks. I've been seeing a lot of FCC updates for AEP microwave sites in WV. Definitely a sign that they are working hard on building out the P25 system throughout the Appalachian Power territory in WV.

Please consider doing a scan of 854-862 Mhz with your digital scanner, DSDPlus, Unitrunker, Pro96Com and let us know of any new P25 sites you find online in the Appalachian Power territory. They will be WACN: 92715, SysID: 1F7. And there is very little (if any) 800 mhz P25 in West Virginia. So these sites should be easy to spot. If you hear P25 on 800 Mhz in WV, it's AEP/Appalachian Power.

Mike
 

fredva

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I've been able to pick up the following site from a location near the Jackson-Mason county line. I'm thinking it's the Evans/Leon site. That site is located not far from Evans in Jackson County, but is in an area that probably has a Leon mailing address in Mason County.
 

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mtindor

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I've been able to pick up the following site from a location near the Jackson-Mason county line. I'm thinking it's the Evans/Leon site. That site is located not far from Evans in Jackson County, but is in an area that probably has a Leon mailing address in Mason County.

Nice job on the Leon confirmation. Thank you. I've added it to the DB. I've added some new (likely) neighbors to the RR Wiki

RRDB System Entry
RRDB Wiki
Google Map
Code:
04.04   854.9125        # Hurricane WV (Putnam)         # WPCQ251        neighbor of 3.3             # NEEDS CONFIRMED
23.23   855.6125        # Hamlin WV (Lincoln)           # WPCQ252        neighbor of 3.3             # NEEDS CONFIRMED
30.30   854.0875        # Institute WV (Kanawha)        # WPCQ257        neighbor of 3.3             # NEEDS CONFIRMED
 

fredva

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What type of traffic are you picking up? Residential or commercial repair service calls?
None at all yet. I found a control channel that wasn't already listed for a nearby AEP site, and ran Pro96com on it. During the time I ran Pro96com, there weren't any transmissions. One radio apparently affliated with the site. It's a weekend, and no bad weather causing outages (that I'm aware of, just rain), so that may be the reason for the lack of activity.
 

HikerGuy

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New site that seems to be in Greenbrier County (Duo, WV)

854.7625 CC
855.5875
858.7875
NAC 005
Network 92715.1F7
Site 92715.1F7-5.5
WQBV595

No neighbors listed.
 

mtindor

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New site that seems to be in Greenbrier County (Duo, WV)

854.7625 CC
855.5875
858.7875
NAC 005
Network 92715.1F7
Site 92715.1F7-5.5
WQBV595

No neighbors listed.

Sweet! Than you. I'll get it added. Must have just put it online if it has no neighbors.

Mike
 

mtindor

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New site that seems to be in Greenbrier County (Duo, WV)

854.7625 CC
855.5875
858.7875
NAC 005
Network 92715.1F7
Site 92715.1F7-5.5
WQBV595

No neighbors listed.

Next time that you have a chance to copy this site, please see if any neighbors are listed now. @firemantom26 in Wintersville OH just picked up 1F7-31.31 Coal Fork (Kanawha) and 1F7-40.40 Madison (Boone) sites this morning. Of course, they are quite a bit farther west than Duo. But, they all listed many neighbors. So maybe Duo will have some neighbors now.

That was a 150 mile straight line shot on 800 mhz. Not bad at all.
 

firemantom26

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Next time that you have a chance to copy this site, please see if any neighbors are listed now. @firemantom26 in Wintersville OH just picked up 1F7-31.31 Coal Fork (Kanawha) and 1F7-40.40 Madison (Boone) sites this morning. Of course, they are quite a bit farther west than Duo. But, they all listed many neighbors. So maybe Duo will have some neighbors now.

That was a 150 mile straight line shot on 800 mhz. Not bad at all.
Maybe @Bubba1661 can sniff out some sites from his location. Mike and I feel that more AEP sites are on line.
 

firemantom26

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I will hopefully have my new setup running today. My 800 yagi will now at 30 feet, added to my 1240 feet location. I have a clear shot to the south and hope to decode some more AEP sites in West Virginia. @mtindor we just need some good propagation.:cool:
 
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DeaconHarry16

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Beckley WV
I noticed this new AEP system is in the RR database for Greenbrier County but not in the updated Uniden Sentinel database for SDS100.
Am I missing something here?
Thanks,
Harry
 

DeaconHarry16

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Is it possible that AEP will uses the same frequences for the P25 system as now used for the present system?
The reason I ask is when I query P25 systems in the RR database it returns AEP P25 but frequencies are the same as the ones
I monitor here in Beckley on the old system (example Kingston site)...
Thanks
 

mtindor

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Is it possible that AEP will uses the same frequences for the P25 system as now used for the present system?
The reason I ask is when I query P25 systems in the RR database it returns AEP P25 but frequencies are the same as the ones
I monitor here in Beckley on the old system (example Kingston site)...
Thanks

Absolutely. The EDACS (current) system is being replaced by the new P25 system. When they turn up a new P25 site completely, they decommission the old EDACS site. The old EDACS site freqs are used on the new P25 system. Most sites have at least one licensed freq that isn't in use on the EDACS system. They usually will fire up the P25 site with the control channel on that freq. Then they eventually migrate the traffic over.

So it should not be any surprise that you find a certain frequency listed as active on the old EDACS system and the new P25 system. (Thanks for the reminder -- I need to specifically make sure that we decommission the old EDACS sites in the DB once we know that their corresponding P25 is online. But that is hard to tell. Oftentimes, when they initially fire up a P25 site, the P25 and EDACS for that location are both online for a period of time.

So we are depending upon users / sleuthers to not only tell us when new P25 sites are online, but then also depending on them to check to see if the corresponding EDACS control channel is no longer active at the same site (so that we can remove the old EDACS site).

There are probably a lot of cases in the RRDB right now where the EDACS site for a particular location and the P25 site for that same location are listed. We can't remove from the old EDACS system unless somebody verifies that it's no longer online.

Mike
 

mtindor

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There are probably a lot of cases in the RRDB right now where the EDACS site for a particular location and the P25 site for that same location are listed. We can't remove from the old EDACS system unless somebody verifies that it's no longer online.

Mike

@DeaconHarry16 For instance, if you look at the AEP P25 system in the database, 99.9% of the Ohio part of the P25 system is built out -- as is Indiana / Michigan. But, if you look in the old AEP EDACS system in the DB, the old EDACS sites are still listed. This is because nobody close in each of those specific EDACS site areas have confirmed that they are actually offline (when I'm quite sure they are offline / have been decommissioned).

And I suspect this will continue to be the case for quite some time. Unless somebody checks each licensed frequency at a particular location and verifies that there is NO EDACS control channel on any licensed frequency at that location, it has to remain in the DB as a live EDACS system.

Mike
 
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