ATCO Electric P25 System

[Jay911]

Anyone got any shred of evidence that this system is, or has ever, existed?

The post is in the Community Announcements & News forum from 2008, that Raytheon got over $5M to put up an 80 site P25IP network for ATCO. JPS Communications (a subsidiary of Raytheon) and Tait are also mentioned.

I keep checking periodically in the TAFL and have yet to see any indication of new alignment of ATCO's frequencies - not that that ultimately means anything, of course, since some companies have licenses in the TAFL for frequencies long since abandoned.

Did Raytheon ever build out this system? If it does supposedly exist, what frequencies does it use and where are the sites?

 

[kayn1n32008]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (BlackBerry; U; BlackBerry 9780; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.8+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/6.0.0.600 Mobile Safari/534.8+)

I think it might be vaporware I have not heard anything of it since the announcement

 

[MtnBiker2005]

Linking to the other community-announcements-news topic

RR topic: http://forums.radioreference.com/co...an-based-atco-electric-project-25-system.html

Older topic:
RR Topic: http://forums.radioreference.com/we...-will-build-80-site-system-atco-electric.html

RR Topic: http://forums.radioreference.com/pr...181-atco-electric-apco-project-25-system.html

 

[SCPD]

Anyone got any shred of evidence that this system is, or has ever, existed?

The post is in the Community Announcements & News forum from 2008, that Raytheon got over $5M to put up an 80 site P25IP network for ATCO. JPS Communications (a subsidiary of Raytheon) and Tait are also mentioned.

I keep checking periodically in the TAFL and have yet to see any indication of new alignment of ATCO's frequencies - not that that ultimately means anything, of course, since some companies have licenses in the TAFL for frequencies long since abandoned.

Did Raytheon ever build out this system? If it does supposedly exist, what frequencies does it use and where are the sites?

There was some testing last year 60 miles or 100 kms west of Edmonton for a very short period of time. The frequencies used were existing ATCO / Fortis I have not heard anything since.

 

[Jay911]

I may have found this system. I'm going to do a quick road trip probably this afternoon or tomorrow to confirm.

One way or another, I do have a confirmed P25 system in Alberta on a VHF frequency.

 

[Jay911]

Confirmed, I have found the ATCO P25 system. Tune to existing 138-139 MHz freqs in NE/central AB and you might find a site. I have found 5 or 6 in Kneehill & Starland counties & area - will post the juicy details tonight.

 

[Jay911]

Well, this is interesting. I didn't know you could have a step size as narrow as 2.5 kHz ....

That's what the ATCO system uses. Three bases all 138.0, step 2.5k, no offset. 00-0000 to 00-4095, 01-0000 to 01-4095, and 02-0000 to 02-4095. Each bandplan is the same. This may be a crafty way to allow multiple sites with the same frequency to operate.

The SYSID is E94 and the WACN is 0ACB5. I have no idea where they came up with those numbers. One of these days I have to learn how WACNs are chosen.

Every site I found today (11 of them!) have an RFSS (zone) of 1.

I had no actual voice traffic on the system today, but I didn't spend a lot of time parked in one spot (and I haven't ever known power utility comms in Alberta to be very busy). Each site has one frequency as far as I can tell for now.

The frequencies are the same 138.x and 139.x frequencies in use by ATCO Electric, AltaLink, FORTIS, etc., in other parts of the province.

Sites I found today (I'm in the process of submitting all this to the DB):

Site 001-065
Name/Location Strome
Lat/Long 52.8283333333,-112.1816666667
Freq 138.78 - LCN 00-0312

Site 001-066
Name/Location Lonepine
Lat/Long 52.2408333333,-112.4819444444
Freq 138.54 - LCN 02-0216

Site 001-067
Name/Location Fleet
Lat/Long 52.0833333333,-111.6938888889
Freq 139.11 - LCN 01-0444

Site 001-069
Name/Location Elnora
Lat/Long 52.0508333333,-113.2455555556
Freq 139.095 - LCN 01-0438

Site 001-070
Name/Location Linden
Lat/Long 51.6433333333,-113.4536111111
Freq 138.78 - LCN 00-0312

Site 001-071
Name/Location Hand Hills
Lat/Long 51.5602777778,-112.3027777778
Freq 138.195 - LCN 02-0078

Site 001-073
Name/Location Youngstown
Lat/Long 51.3855555556,-111.2502777778
Freq 138.795 - LCN 00-0318

Site 001-074
Name/Location Drumheller
Lat/Long 51.4280555556,-112.7097222222
Freq 138.63 - LCN 02-0252

Site 001-075
Name/Location Wintering Hills
Lat/Long 51.24,-112.4497222222
Freq 138.12 - LCN 02-0048

Site 001-076
Name/Location Pollockville
Lat/Long 51.0941666667,-111.4261111111
Freq 138.24 - LCN 02-0096

Site 001-078
Name/Location Majestic
Lat/Long 50.78,-110.7361111111
Freq 139.11 - LCN 01-0444

The control channels appear to be easily detectable in the TAFL if you turn on Tx Spectrum Signature Code (and/or Rx SSC) and/or Frequency Authorization Date. All the P25 control channels have an SSC of 910 instead of 900, and an auth date in 2008 as opposed to 1993 or previous.

 

[Jay911]

Here are the frequencies that match the above criteria in the TAFL (SSC 910, bandwidth 13 kHz, etc).

Interestingly enough, there are supposed to be 80 sites as advertised by the press release. There are 82 frequencies in this list - 78 single-frequency sites and 2 sites which each have 2 frequencies. (I can't guarantee that those sites are using both freqs - just that those freqs matched the criteria.)

I also identified which sites of the above I directly monitored, and which were identified as neighbor sites. The ones identified as neighbor sites - all I know is what site I was monitoring when I "heard" them, and what site number and LCN was provided. Knowing that, I made a few "educated guesses" as to which real site was the neighbor site I was seeing on screen. In one case, Youngstown, there is no other place in the province where that freq (LCN) is in use, so that was easy. At the other end of the spectrum (excuse the pun), Majestic and Fleet (and Kitscoty and Cheecham, for what it's worth) all use the same LCN. So I may have their site numbers backwards because I don't know which one is which (they were both neighbors to the same site I monitored). On the others, I used the closest site matching that LCN. For example, site 001-076 LCN 96 could be either Pollockville or Moose Hills. Since Moose Hills is almost at the 54th parallel (a couple miles south of Bonnyville) and I was in the Drumheller area, I ruled out Moose Hills as being the neighbor site.

If you discover sites, please submit them and/or post them to this thread.

 

[Jay911]

Added information to the wiki page for this system, as well as a link back to this thread from there.

Forum admins have been kind enough to sticky this thread as well.

 

[harryshute]

I heard Fortis calling Spruce Grove this afternoon on 139.200 but it was analog.

 

[pug_27]

Bonnyville,cold lake & st Paul are also still on analog as well only a mater of time I guess.

 

[Jay911]

A lot of the sites - including the ones I have monitored - have other 138-139 MHz freqs licensed with an SSC of 900 (analog). It could very well be that everyone is still on the analog stuff and the system is still being built out - keep in mind I didn't see any voice calls/grants/affiliations/etc when I was monitoring the other day.

 

[Jay911]

I have made a Google Maps map of the sites both confirmed and the ones I "suspect" based on their characteristics in TAFL.

http://g.co/maps/q2pbm

 

[Jay911]

A bit of skip and/or good positioning allowed me to try out PRO96COM for the first time yesterday, logging a few minutes of Site 070 Linden - from the parking lot of the West Bragg Creek trailhead. That's 116 km straight-line, for what it's worth.

I have posted the PRO96COM data to the program's Yahoo group.

 

[Jay911]

ATCO Electric HPE file for Home Patrol scanners.. confirmed sites and suspected sites inclusive.

I will be roadtripping to Red Deer today (my nephew is going to trounce the competition in junior football) so I will try to confirm a few sites on the way up/back (as a passenger).

 

[Jay911]

Updated file like the above, now with HomePatrol Sentinel and FreeSCAN versions. If anyone cares I will post a PSR500/600 version too.

 

[Jay911]

Looks like I never explained the three "identical" band plans. To a scanner user they appear identical. Each one has a different transmit offset, though. If I recall correctly, one is 2.45 MHz, one is 2.6 or 2.7, and one is 3.99 MHz. This corresponds to some sites where the same frequency is used but it has a different transmit/input freq (i.e. 3.99MHz above Rx instead of 2.45MHz).

I'm going to make that PSR500 file tomorrow when I make the one for AFRRCS. Doing one for ATCO is much easier as there's only 32 freqs in what I suspect are the tower sites. That means you can put them all in one TSYS and not worry about multi-site issues.

 

[Jay911]

This is a fairly easy file to make. Anybody with a PSR500 or PSR600 should be able to load this in with Win500 and tune the ATCO P25 system immediately.

You can also simply copy the TSYS from this file into your own file in another window in Win500. Don't forget to copy over or re-make the group and private wildcards.

 

[kayn1n32008]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (BlackBerry; U; BlackBerry 9780; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.8+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/6.0.0.600 Mobile Safari/534.8+)

Saw my old party chief yesterday. He is working on a project for ATCO to survey a bunch of towers, I asked if they were transmission towers or Communication towers, he indicated they were comm towers, the sites are from drumheller to lac la biche. We have aslo been doing sites in the GP area as well. Not 100% sure if they are related to the P25 system but there is the possibility it is.

 

[kayn1n32008]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (BlackBerry; U; BlackBerry 9780; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.8+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/6.0.0.600 Mobile Safari/534.8+)

Did a bit of digging, looks like our company bid on 30-35 tower sites, some on the eastern side of the province and some in the GP area. I wonder if the sites that are on the air are at existing locations?